3 ways to make adblockers redundant

“Turn it off, it’s just adverts” – with the advertisements in children’s films, we received a strong and lasting lesson from our parents at an early age: adverts are annoying. When watching TV you can just switch off the set to avoid the product messages. To fight adverts online, there are adblockers: they simply hide adverts that appear on websites. Almost every fourth internet user in Germany has installed this kind of adblocker, a study by the German Association for the Digital Economy (BVDW) determined.

They are a massive problem for companies. Websites which are financed by clicks on adverts on their pages are losing revenue. And the companies placing the adverts are not reaching their audience. Because if a user doesn’t see any adverts at all, there is no chance that they will become attentive; no chance of a subconscious interest being awoken, no chance of making contact with a brand.

But do adverts really need to be so annoying that users have to resort to an adblocker? Why don’t companies just design advertisements in a way that doesn’t annoy users? And how would that work? Carolin von Karstedt, Head of Department in OTTO’s Display Advertising Team, has three tips:

1. The basics: adverts that fit the situation

People are not equally annoyed by all forms of online advertising. What really irritates us as users are pop-ups which edge onto our screens and pre-roll videos which delay the video start. Similarly, websites on which the content is barely visible in the midst of loud adverts, where everything flashes and lights up, are perceived as very disruptive. If we want to stop online advertising from merely being an annoyance, we therefore have to make some very specific changes.

The first key idea is: tailor-made adverts which fit the situation. Adverts are perceived to be less disruptive when we ...

• ... consider reader convenience. That means: not bombarding the eyes with flashing elements, but also not annoying users with weak contrasts and poor readability
• ... integrate moving images: because moving images draw attention to themselves without being intrusive
• ... consider loading times through resource-saving design. Nothing is more annoying than having to wait for a page just because an advert isn’t loading which you don’t want to see anyway.
• ... tell stories in short pictures. They don’t need to be blockbusters in five acts - often a simple insight is sufficient, a situation that the customer recognises from their own life.

1. The handicraft: personalisation

To make adverts less irritating, we need to know who we’re dealing with, where the customer fits into the customer journey.

At OTTO we are assisted by our so-called attribution model, which allocates the various online marketing channels to their influence on the customer journey – Did a person just now have their first idea of buying a new television, or have they already looked at further details on umpteen channels and are on the verge of making a purchase? Depending on these factors, different advertising materials, online marketing channels or triggers can be useful, such as social media to awaken an interest, retargeting to issue reminders, or affiliate marketing if the customer is on the verge of choosing a provider.

We also need to know which adverts a person has already seen. Then we can decide how much contact we can still make without annoying the customer – and which messages and advertising methods to use. In short: we must choose the right time to place our adverts, provide relevant content and in the right dose.

2. The cure: adverts which people like sharing

It’s the best thing for all involved if the user themselves does the job that we would otherwise spend our budget on: namely distributing our adverts within their own networks. Because that means that they liked them. And even more than that: they find them so relevant that they want to share them with others.

One example of when we did this successfully was in 2016 with the fictional pop singer Ricardo and the other ‘Extreme Testers’, who tested OTTO’s services in bizarre ways. Or with the German remake of the viral Oven Kid duet from Australia. Up until now the OTTO clip has been viewed more than 7.7 million times. In the films we often also show specific products from the range, but at the end we don’t get stuck on a simple “buy me” message. Instead it’s about inserting the brand into the customer’s life, to bring them pleasure, and perhaps even to make them laugh.

In this way we’ll reach people with adblockers or we won’t.

An appeal to finish: in the advertising sector we must all as a team become aware of the fact that we bear the responsibility for the quality of our content. Because one black sheep with intrusive advertising and no user relevance can easily be enough to compel a user to install an adblocker. And then they don’t differentiate between annoying and relevant advertising.