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Apple Ad Blocking Should Be Good News For Publishers

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Apple’s latest iOS will allow users to block ads on their smartphones, thereby letting them join a consumer trend that has already turned nearly two hundred million personal computers into “no ad” zones. Some argue that it’ll be so popular that it’ll put content creators and publishers out of business.

How about it leading to improved ads, or replacing them with something better?

The argument for online advertising has never been convincing. 

At best, it sees ads as a tool for monetizing experience that is otherwise provided for free, and looks for proof to how well it worked for the proliferation and success of radio, and then TV.  

At worst, it’s a specious argument, because the internet isn’t consumed via computers as another passive content channel. Mobile is experienced differently from that, as most use cases are related to different circumstances, many of them actionable, like shopping.

People tolerated ads on their TVs, never liked them on their computers, and really don’t like them on their smartphones.

Yet tech startups and established platforms have claimed that advertising is some magic pixie dust that should allow them to monetize content that was usually acquired and consistently offered for free. Few critics have challenged that assumption, choosing instead to reference its repeated failure to materialize as the result of a work in progress.

That work, and all of its someday benefits, are about to get a lot harder to believe. 

Of course, Apple’s move can be seen as a swipe at Google, which makes an immense amount of money via advertising. But it speaks to a much larger question that has publishers and the platforms on which they rely so scared:

What are the alternatives to ads?

Subscriptions are an option, and they’re making a comeback these days as publishers realize that giving away content was a nonsense fad idea. Selling apps can monetize content distribution, while providing spaces that are protected from ad blockers, so there could be places in which to experiment with making ads that are better, more liked, or used.

Or the answer could be relying instead on big data solutions that use online experience as an information gathering tool that enables marketing outreach via email, social content, and other means. If consumers could “pay” for their content consumption simply by being observed as they consume it, there’s no need for something to replace ads.

However, this raises the ultimate fear of Apple’s iOS move: It will educate and inspire consumers on the issue of online privacy, and move many of them to make it harder, or impossible, for their data to be collected or used. 

Maybe the alternatives to ads will have to be a lot more alternative than previously thought?

There’s more buried just beneath the surface of this story. As I noted earlier, apps will still be able to show ads, users may opt-in to receiving them from certain sources (Apple’s blocker isn’t browser-wide, but rather a family of third-party tools it’ll offer) and, despite how many people choose to use a blocker, many more will probably miss it altogether.

And there’s always iAd, which is Apple’s mobile advertising platform, which may or may not have the same problems with blockers on its products as other platforms might.

For everybody else, though, the challenge is clear. Apple is going to give its customers the opportunity to block browser ads on their mobile devices, which means publishers will need to create a better, more compelling case for monetizing content.

Nobody ever woke up wishing they’d seen one more ad the day before. This was as true in the days of AM radio, just as it is today. Apple is simply bringing a long-overdue fact into the conversation about online experience.

The changes that might occur as a result could be good news for everyone.


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