Dave Reed, Managing Director at MediaMath wrote for the IAB UK about the affects of ad blockers on the web.
Describing ad blockers as a short-term fix to a long-term issue and how they encourage consumers to “unwittingly stifle the very content they seek.”
He explains what ad blockers are and the benefits they appear to have for consumers that install it (eliminate “annoying” digital ads they feel are intrusive or irrelevant to improve their online experience), Reed then goes on to explain how fewer than half of UK consumers realise that the vast majority of the free online content we access daily is funded by advertising.
Coupled with this, digital ad revenue not only funds online content, it also provides a revenue stream for research and development that is rarely recognised – think self-driving cars and connected glasses – an example of today’s innovations for tomorrow’s connected world.
Read the full article to find out more about where the harm is in ad blocking, what companies have been doing in light of this issue and what this means for the future economy of the internet.