[Watch] Advertisers are ‘following eyeballs to digital’ – IAB chief

moneyweb.co.za

The digital landscape, both locally and abroad, is changing fast – with advertisers moving more of their spend to the medium. Guy Phillipson, CEO, IAB UK (Interactive Advertising Bureau), spoke at the recent IAB Summit in Joburg, and chatted to Adlip about how digital is evolving – and where the threats and opportunities lie.

“In the UK in 2004, internet advertising was at 4% of a 17 billion pound [advertising] market, and in 2015, it was standing at about 42% of an 18.5 billion pound market – so it’s completely shot from last to first,” says Phillipson.

In the “early”days, advertisers didn’t know much about digital at all, and many were very skeptical about it, he notes.

“The media agencies weren’t tooled up with experts and planning departments, so it was all left up to pure play, small agencies.”

Through a process of “evangelising”, Phillipson says that digital became almost a “challenger brand”, and lots of work had to be done to help people understand it and buy into it (and spend more budget over time).

“Ultimately, [digital] has to be the way to go, as more and more people get tooled up and spend more time on their devices. Money follows eyeballs, so it’s just a question of how fast the market can move.”

Lean Digital Advertising

He says that across a number of markets, including the UK, around 20% of internet users are employing some kind of ad-blocker. The chief reason is that certain types of online advertising tactics are highly annoying, and in addition, mobile data is used up by media-rich adverts (hampering a faster user experience).

“We’ve [the IAB] recognised that and brought in new rules around ‘lean advertising’, calling for fewer and better ads, less overlays, etc,” says Phillipson. “But the ad-blockers themselves have an agenda – and it’s a bit of a racket.”

For example, certain major companies and publishers pay money to be “white-listed” by ad-blockers, which in his view, is “racketeering of the first degree” – with the public generally unaware of what’s going on.

According to Phillipson, some ad-blocking platforms even use tactics that violate privacy rules and net neutrality rules, although they are now attracting the attention of regulators.

“However, it’s still up to us to make sure that the ad experience is better, because that’s the end game – and the consumers will get content funded by advertising, because 90% of them aren’t willing to pay for content.”

So what does this mean for content marketing?

He points out that most of the native advertising and content on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, etc are “untouched” by ad-blockers – because they’re blocking an ad-server, and content marketing is being served via a CMS.

“We’re seeing rapid growth of that style of advertising, it’s about 25% of all display advertising – which is big in itself, in the UK, so that will grow.”

Phillipson adds that given the increased dwell time and nature of the content, “it’s ultimately more valuable and will provide a higher yield” for the publisher than a normal advertisement.