Dive Brief:
- Publishers looking to use a type of "pay-to-play" model to address ad blocking might have to look for fresh solutions. A new study from Tune has found that 75% of respondents weren’t willing to pay $1 to avoid in-app ads for a year.
- Meanwhile, separate earlier research from Tune uncovered that 25% of smartphone users are making use of ad block apps and browsers.
- These two data points taken together should raise alarms within the ad industry given the importance of the mobile channel in marketing. Tune pointed out, citing eMarketer research, that close to 75% of digital advertising in the U.S. will be mobile by 2019.
Dive Insight:
Ad blocking tech is a serious challenge and pain point for the online advertising space. The fact it is making inroads into mobile devices is one more clear sign that end users are becoming exhausted by intrusive ads that offer a poor user experience. And while the industry is trying to sort out how to react to the trending adoption of ad blocking tech, consumers are making their preference known.
"The data says that 68.3% of smartphone owners who do not block ads are not willing to pay even a dollar. And the data also says that 67.4% of smartphone owners who do block ads are also not willing to pay even a dollar," John Koetsier, Tune’s mobile economist and the report's author, wrote in the white paper. He explained that statistically, it wasn't a significant difference, adding that looking at the percentage of those willing to pay $1 per day and $1 per week, that difference is also small.
"What does this mean? Those who want to block ads want to do it for free," Koetsier said.
The ad blocking debate is only getting more heated, but the ball is clearly in advertisers’ court in making sure the user experience doesn’t create more people who decide ad block software is the solution.
