Intrusive ads fuel for the ad-blocking fire

Independent News and Media (INM) chief executive, Robert Pitt, warned on Friday that online publishers need to be careful about the type of ads to which website users are exposed, or in some cases, subjected.

In recent weeks, visitors to Independent.ie have been confronted with a so-called interstitial ad – one that covers the whole screen and must be swiped away before you can look at the content you came to see – for Eir Sports, featuring Leicester City footballer Riyad Mahrez.

In the ad, Mahrez reached for the camera facing him and the screen of the viewer’s smartphone appeared to crack. If regular visitors to Independent’s homepage had to keep negotiating this form of annoying ad, one can imagine how the screen could be cracked in reality after the iPhone was flung against a wall in frustration.

Pitt quite rightly pointed out that interstitials – used by many publishers, and not just INM – and other intrusive ad types rub customers up the wrong way. “We need to find less intrusive ways; there had to be a balance,” he said.

Intrusive ads are the fuel for the ad-blocking fire. Hordes of customers annoyed by unwanted ads go on to install software that rebuffs all advertisements, which is a putative disaster for the online publishing industry. Pitt said the potential impact of ad-blocking software on the industry is overblown.

But what about network-level ad-blocking, where network operators such as mobile phone companies install software that weeds out all ads, all of the time? Three is testing this technology in the United Kingdom. Three is also the second biggest network in Ireland. Wouldn’t this be a disaster for Irish publishers?

“It would be very problematic,” said Pitt, with no little understatement.

Perhaps the most vocal proponent globally of network-level ad-blocking is Denis O’Brien, who has rolled it out across all of Digicel’s network, as part of his battle to get a slice of Google and Facebook’s advertising revenues.

O’Brien is, of course, by far the biggest and most influential shareholder at INM. His right-hand man chairs the board. If the billionaire succeeds in his aim of rallying other mobile operators to install ad-blocking software, it may rebound on his Indo investment.