DND: Telemarketing:: Ad-blockers: Digital Ads ?????

Originally published on LinkedIn.com on Nov 30, 2015 By Jainil Sanghvi
Recently, I installed the Ad Block plus to enable myself to be able to watch TV shows online in peace without being disturbed by banner ads. Digital ads have brought a revolution in the way the marketers spend $$, that’s exactly what happened when telemarketing commenced, isn’t it?
Then “Do Not Disturb” was made available to the telephone users who did not want to receive the “Disturbing Calls”, the unprecedented rise of Ad Blockers seems to follow the pattern drawn by the DND services.
Adobe, one of several startups helping publishers fight ad blocking, reports that 198 million people globally are now blocking ads, up 41 percent from 2014. In the US, ad blocking grew 48 percent from last year, to 45 million users. A recent(Reuters study) put the numbers even higher, saying that almost half of all US internet users block ads. But taken together, ad blockers are hitting publishers in their digital guts. Adobe says that $21.8 billion in global ad revenue will be blocked this year.
The damage is more than financial, fundamentally the users, particularly millennials have already decided that they hate online ads BUT they aren’t willing to pay even a small fee to stop the ads, only 11 percent (according to the Reuters study) would pay to make ads go away. No wonder, the advertisers are serene about Ad blockers affecting their business models.
Will this be the case in the Future? How far is the threshold to tolerate ads in an average internet user?
Jainil Sanghvi
Post Graduate Hospitality and Tourism Management Student
Toronto, Canada Area
Hospitality