Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
Block And Tackle
The sense of urgency about ad blocking has dissipated.
But ad blocking didn’t go away. It’s actually become a more baseline feature for web browsing.
The new Safari version includes a tool called Web Eraser, which isn’t exactly an ad blocker, but lets users remove certain portions of web pages they visit (and, of course, what people erase are … the ads).
Late last year, Microsoft Edge users were surprised to discover YouTube videos wouldn’t play even though they weren’t using a dedicated ad blocker. YouTube does prompt people to disable an ad blocker when it detects the software. But it turned out Edge had quietly become an ad-blocking service of its own. (Plus, by shutting out Edge users, Google was taking a dig at Microsoft.)
And third-party ad blockers are more popular than ever.
Last Friday, the Acceptable Ads Committee – the nonprofit organization that governs the Acceptable Ads Standards – announced that its ad program now boasts 350 million users, Campaign reports. That’s up from 250 million in late 2020.
Eyeo, which operates an ad network of ad blocker users who agree to see ads – adheres to these standards when making ad opportunities available to reach people who have downloaded AdBlock and/or Adblock Plus.
Can Reddit Avoid The Red?
Speaking of ad blocking.
One digital media company that truly benefits by ad blocking might be Reddit. That’s because Reddit is home to millions of active, logged-in users who use ad blockers whenever they’re on the web.
“We are going to be a need-to-have,” Reddit COO Jen Wong tells Marketing Brew, after being pressed on whether the company can grow beyond a “nice-to-have” part of the media plan.
“I would argue we are a need-to-have because we already have users that you can’t find anywhere else,” she says.
Reddit also must grow its total advertiser base. Currently, its 10 largest ad spenders represent about 25% of total annual revenue. Investors don’t like that kind of risk – when one or two advertisers can walk, say, after a change of CMO or a screenshotted ad in the wrong place, seriously affecting earnings.
“We’d like to continue to diversify,” Wong says. “We’d like to have 10 to 20 times the number of advertisers that we do today, but that’s not unusual.”
Search Engine Domination
Big media brands’ efforts to game Google Search to maximize commerce impressions are starving specialist publishers.
HouseFresh, a blog that publishes in-depth reviews of home air purifiers, has written previously about its search traffic getting gobbled by the likes of Dotdash Meredith (DDM), Money and Forbes. Now, it shares insights into DDM’s “keyword swarming” strategy, courtesy of one of its former employees.
The goal is to identify a search topic that could yield affiliate revenue, then “swarm a smaller site’s foothold on one or two articles by essentially publishing 10,” according to HouseFresh’s source.
The tactic is lucrative. More than 80% of DDM’s traffic and digital revenue comes from commerce-related sites like Food & Wine. Since 2020, plenty of other big media brands have gotten in on the action – particularly those owned by ad networks or private equity firms.
Advancements in generative AI make it even easier for these publishers to churn out endless reams of junk commerce content.
And Google’s March algorithm update made the problem even worse, pushing product recommendations from big-name sites — and Google’s own commerce listings — to the top of results. After the update, HouseFresh lost 91% of its search traffic.
But Wait, There’s More!
Sony Pictures and Apollo Global Management made a formal $26 billion all-cash offer for Paramount Global. [WSJ]
After years of caution, pharma advertisers are embracing influencer marketing. [Digiday]
YouTube is testing pause ads. [Mashable]
Snap pitches advertisers on its Olympics plans. [The Information]
