Swiss online portals: fight against adblockers

AD BLOCKER More and more people are using tools like Adblock Plus to block online ads. What are Swiss publishers doing to curb the use of ad blockers? MK asked four publishers.Adblockers are on the rise. Worldwide, according to the Study "The Cost of Ad Blocking almost 200 million people use adblockers. In Switzerland, adblocker penetration is 15 percent. The number of users is around 1.1 million. The proliferation of adblockers is now costing the advertising industry almost $22 billion worldwide.Advertising disturbs usersWhy are adblockers so popular? An Survey from MK shows that 59.5 percent of Adblock users feel disturbed by online advertising when reading a website. 56.8 percent believe that online advertising is too intrusive. After all, 43.2 percent fear that malware can spread through online advertising - as it is recently on the popular news portal 20minuten.ch Users feel distracted when reading articles and disturbed by pop-up, fast-moving, full-screen advertising," says Noemi Fraefel, Marketing Manager of the online portal Watson. "In addition, many are now concerned about the security of their data online. Especially since the malware case at 20 Minuten in April, users who were previously too technical have also become concerned with the issue. "Christoph Zimmer, Head of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations at Tamedia, sees annoying ads and longer loading times as the main reasons for the adblocker boom. Nevertheless, he is convinced that adblockers harm media users in the long term: "Without advertising, there is no free information. Even paid media services cannot be financed without advertising. "Myriam Käser, Head of Corporate Communications at the NZZ Media Group, points out that the price level for low-quality online advertising has fallen. "Especially on websites that are strongly reach-oriented, more and more annoying forms of advertising can be found. This leads to a defensive reaction among some users: they install adblockers to protect themselves from such forms of advertising."Note for Adblocker usersSwiss publishers are using different measures to prevent adblocker use. At Watson, adblocker users have recently been receiving a request to whitelist Watson on their blocker with brief instructions on how this works. It is pointed out that advertising is used to finance the salaries of the 50 Watson journalists. Furthermore, Watson promises not to sell "quite troublesome" advertising material.

On Watson.ch, Adblock users are asked to deactivate it.Currently, about 20 percent of Watson users use an adblocker. Thanks to countermeasures, the trend is downward. "There has been a lot of personal feedback from users who understand the problem well - but still don't want to do without the adblocker," explains Noemi Fraefel. "Many have asked us if they can support us in another way, for example with an ad-free subscription. We are now looking into these options as well."Sensitize usersAt Tamedia, efforts are being made to sensitize users to the issue and to show that even free content must be financed. To this end, Tamedia has launched a campaign on 20minuten.ch, for example, showing the people behind the media product and urging users to deactivate adblockers. "Many users are not even aware that the most important source of funding on the Internet is advertising," says Christoph Zimmer.

On 20minuten.ch, the creators address users directly with the request to deactivate the adblocker.Experience at Tamedia shows that even simple messages lead to a significant trend towards whitelisting, i.e. switching off adblockers. "In addition, it pays to disallow certain ad formats and improve page load times," says Zimmer.High-quality advertising and native advertisingAt the NZZ, it is important not to play out too much high-quality advertising so as not to disrupt the user experience. "We have a lower proportion of adblocker users than other media because we deliberately avoid very invasive forms of advertising," says Myriam Käser. Since May 2016, nzz.ch has also been asking non-subscribers who use an adblocker to uninstall it.Finally, the Ringier publishing house is also addressing the issue of adblockers. Online specialists track how often adblockers are used on individual websites and for what reasons. "Basically, we strive to make advertising creative and so relevant and interesting for users that it is not perceived as annoying, but as informative and entertaining," says CCO Edi Estermann.Ringier has long relied heavily on native advertising - a form of advertising that is not blocked by adblockers. Ringier Publishing Media - now a part of Admeira - has had a team in place for some time that focuses on tailored offers and especially on native advertising. "Ringier has taken on a pioneering role here and has also developed new forms of advertising and offers in a targeted manner with media agencies," says Estermann.Author: Simon Wolanin