Indrani Sen: Adblocking knocking on our doors!

By Indrani Sen

Globally, adblocking has been a cause of concern for publishers, advertisers and agencies for quite some time, but industry in India have been generally oblivious to its effect. A survey conducted in 2015 by GlobalWebIndex was an eyeopener. The survey showed that number of people actively using adblockers in India increased over one year from 2 million (second quarter of 2014) to 4 million (second quarter of 2015) with a trend of steady growth. (http://www.livemint.com/Industry/p3FZbvf9oulswnCf4zGxbN/iPhone-users-in-India-embrace-ad-blocking-survey.html). The survey showed that 42% of India’s iPhone 6 users use the software to block ads on their devices compared with a global average of 31%.. India ranked fourth among the 34 countries surveyed by the market researcher—after Russia, Poland and Indonesia—in terms of adoption of adblock.

During the last few weeks, the online media erupted with various news of adblocking. On March 11, Opera became the second web browser after Apple’s Safari browser to introduce a new feature ‘native adblocking’ in its browser. While Apple enabled its mobile operating software iOS9 to block ads on the Safari browser, Opera has equipped its new desktop browser with the feature. Users of Opera browser can compare the time taken to load a page or a website with the adblocking device turned on and off. It also gives the user an option to view the white list pages with advertising like the popular apps Adblock Plus.

On March 30, 2016 Samsung announced that adblocking feature will be available on its Android browser which comes preloaded in all Samsung phones. Samsung’s first attempt to introduce adblocking was thwarted by Google when it debarred all adblocking apps from its PlayStore as per its policy guidelines. This announcement will surely have effects on online advertising revenue in India as Android-based phones have more than 90% share in the smartphone market in India while Apple has less than 2% share.

Next day, on April 1, we learnt that Microsoft Corp. Is planning to introduce a built-in adblocker into the next version of its web browser Microsoft Edge which has already replaced Internet Explorer as the default browser of Windows 10. Indians will take time to adopt Windows 10 and Microsoft Edge, so this may not be an immediate threat to the Indian system. However, if Microsoft decides to withdraw Internet Explorer, then it will be a different story.

Adblocking is definitely knocking on our doors which may burst open soon. The comparatively high cost of data consumption in India, is likely to attract more and more smartphone users to adblocking in order to save money. Video ads, particularly animated ones require more bandwidth and shrink battery life. Indian consumers, who are not yet ready to pay for viewing online content, will not pay for viewing online ads if they can help it.

On March 31, 2016, Advertising Age India published an interesting article “AdBlocking & User Experience: A Classic Case of Cobra Effect” by Upal Pradhan, Founder & CEO, Kratos (http://www.adageindia.in/blogs-columnists/viewpoint/ad-blocking-user-experience-a-classic-case-of-cobra-effect/articleshow/51614001.cms). Mr Pradhan has advocated against comprehensive blocking of ads on mobiles by pointing out its adverse effect on the entire ecosystem.

“The Guardian’s Changing Media Summit 2016” held in London on March 23-24 had a panel discussion on “Will the rise of adblocking lead to the reinvention of advertising?”It turned out to be one of the most controversial and talked about topic of the event. The round-up of the event titled “Six things we learned from The Guardian Changing Media Summit 2016” (http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2016/mar/29/guardian-changing-media-summit-2016-roundup) published on March 29, 2016, gave highlight of the various opinions expressed on adblocking by leading speakers from different cohorts of the media industry.

Among the nuggets of wisdom shared by the speakers in the above Summit, I liked most the comment by Helen McRae, UK chief exec and chair of Western Europe at Mindshare, “We’ve forgotten that human insight is the determining factor into how successful your message is going to be. Adblocking is a symptom of something much larger – consumers want interesting, engaging and useful content, or they’ll block it.”

Our advertising and media industry, still in the process of adopting and adjusting to the changing world of digital media, need to simultaneously explore reinvention of advertising for countering adblocking.

Indrani Sen is a media services veteran, having worked with JWT, later Mindshare and then with Emami. In recent years, she is an independent consultant and academic. She is Adjunct Professor in charge of the Media Management programme at the Symbiosis Institute of Media & Communication, Pune. The views expressed here are her own.