After Adblock writes an open letter to Twitter drawing up an ‘Acceptable Advertising’ code, Dominic Mills asks if we are about to enter a new phase in the fight for the heart and soul of the online world.
The tactic of writing an ‘open letter’ – commonly used by economists, doctors, teachers etc to the press to moan about something – always makes me smile.
It combines artifice (a self-righteous expression of public concern) with frustration (the people who really matter don’t care what we think) and an opportunistic desire for publicity.
And here’s a perfect example from Adblock to Twitter earlier this month.
To paraphrase the letter: “We see you’re floating soon. That means you have to start delivering real revenues, which in turn means you’ll have to ramp up your efforts to sell advertising. But if you go too far, too fast, you’ll piss of your users.
“If you do that, they’ll turn to our lovely Adblock Plus service, and then you’ll be in a right mess.
“But don’t worry. We can help. Just work with us to draw up a ‘whitelist’ of acceptable ads. Then you can make loads of money, keep your users happy, and keep those nasty Wall Street investors off your back.
“Oh, and by the way all we want in return for whitelisting your ads is a percentage of your ad revenue – say 30%.”
Well ok, they didn’t explicitly say the last bit. But they didn’t have to because this is – to use an old-fashioned term – a shakedown. And don’t be shocked, because that’s how the Adblock model works.
Actually, I quite admire their cheek, not least the way it’s dressed up in a cloak of high-mindedness.
Sign up to our ‘Acceptable Advertising’ code and, Adblock promises, “not only would your ads not be blocked by the millions of Adblock Plus users, but you’d be helping to shift the paradigm of online advertising away from the blinking, privacy-killing pro-market stance to the clean, privacy-protecting user-first one.”
Who could resist an offer like that, even if it costs Twitter an arm and a leg? It will be fascinating to see how Twitter responds.
There are other ways to look at it, of course, one of which is that this is no more than the free market – and what market is freer than the internet? – in action. It is certainly true that there is consumer demand out for Adblock’s services.
It claims 200 million plus downloads of its software with, according to its letter to Twitter, 1.5 million alone in one week this month.
No doubt its charter for Acceptable Ads strikes a chord with many:
– Acceptable Ads are not annoying
– Acceptable Ads do not disrupt or distort page content
– Acceptable Ads are transparent with us about being an ad (that might deal a death blow to the ‘native advertising’ trend)
– Acceptable Ads are effective without shouting at us
– Acceptable Ads are appropriate to the site or tweet that we are on
But, in truth, this is all pretty vacuous, apple-pie stuff: most advertisers, charlatans or con artists apart, would subscribe to that. And if they didn’t, they’d find out pretty soon that it didn’t work. That’s called market forces.
Who is to say what’s appropriate, and when is an ad loud – a good thing, surely – but not a shouter?
I certainly don’t have confidence in Adblock as judge and jury.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that we may now be about to enter a new phase in the fight, not to put it lightly, for the heart and soul of the online world.
There are lot of online providers dependent on advertising revenue that will have to decide how they are going to play it.
Equally, there are millions of consumers who are wedded to the utility, functionality and content of free sites.
ITV’s response to deny Adblock users access is pretty ballsy and makes the choice clear: “if we lose revenue due to ad-blocking, this may affect our services in the future.”
At root though, it’s the advertisers who control their own fate. Get their advertising right – more creative, more relevant, more contextual, more rewarding – and the threat of adblockers is dissipated.
POG peacocks strut their stuff in Miami
I’m sure I’m not the only one who would have liked to have been a fly on the wall at the Four Seasons in Miami last weekend when the top executives from Publicis and Omnicom (aka POG) gathered for a confab about their upcoming nuptials.
What a perfect choice: city of superficial glamour, vanity, drive-by shootings and inhabitants who strut their stuff like peacocks.
No doubt there was a lot of macho posturing by agency and media bosses as they jockey for position, and let’s hope the less-than-stellar results this week from Publicis (slowdowns in emerging markets keeping a lid 3.5% lid on revenue growth) and Omnicom (third quarter net income down 3.9%) didn’t rain on the parade.
My contact with an inside track tells me the most significant development of recent weeks, however, is Maurice Levy’s appointment of Arthur Sadoun as global CEO of Publicis Worldwide (the agency) and COO-elect of Publicis the holding company – effectively his anointment as heir apparent and a move by Levy to cement control of his legacy.
Sadoun, apparently, is a tall and charismatic individual, a younger version of Maurice and the two share an educational and cultural background. Sadoun is married to a TV presenter and regularly appears in Paris-Match magazine – not in itself significant, but which cements his place as a bona fide member of the Parisian elite.
This makes him, as they say in France, ‘famous inside the Peripherique’ – Paris’ orbital road – which is like being a member of the establishment in London only more so.
Don’t be surprised therefore, says my contact, if the deal to install Omnicom CEO John Wren as sole CEO of POG in 30 months’ time is not all it appears and it is the French who, in the shape of Levy and Sadoun, are really in charge.
We shall see. Havas CEO David Jones was quoted earlier this month saying the Americans are the real winners in the POG deal. But such are the Machiavellian manoeuvres going on among the holding companies that it wouldn’t surprise me if he was just trying to wind up Levy.
