Dive Brief:

• In an interesting move the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) said pursuit of revenue has taken precedence over user experience and ended up creating the current ad-blocking issue facing marketers, publishers and ad tech firms.
• "As technologist, tasked with delivering content and services to users, we lost track of the user experience," Scott Cunningham, senior VP-technology and ad operations at the IAB, said in a statement.
• In light of the ad-blocking dilemma, the IAB launched a new advertising effort called L.E.A.N., or Light, Encrypted, Ad choice supported, Non-invasive.

Dive Insight:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau put out a surprising statement: "We messed up." Essentially the organization is taking the blame for intrusive, revenue-centric ads that eventually created the current climate where most consumers choose to block ads.

"We messed up," IAB's Cunningham said in a statement. "Looking back now, our scraping of dimes may have cost us dollars in consumer loyalty."

Dean Murphy, the developer behind one of the leading ad-blocking apps, believes that consumer aren’t necessarily looking to block ads. Instead, they are just trying to have the best experience possible while surfing the mobile web.

“The issue is really about performance," Murphy told Ad Exchanger. "The majority of people, myself included to a degree, are not that bothered about the privacy intrusion on particular websites. The profiling is just part of what the websites do and how they make their money. Facebook and Twitter, for example, are free because, in exchange, you hand over a portion of your data for them to use.”

Meanwhile, publishers have taken to asking visitors to disable the software or "white-list" sites, allowing ads to be served. Some publishers have gone as far as blocking content for non-compliant users.