Revealed: why ad-blocking has not hit mobile yet

Mobile marketers who believe they have escaped the worst excesses of ad-blocking might want to look away now: over half (55%) of UK consumers find mobile ads annoying and disruptive and choose to skip or ignore them yet only 47% have actually heard about the technology.
According to research by Instantly, the largest provider of audiences and insights tools, this suggests that despite the constant presence of the topic in everyday news, industry concerns around consumer attitudes are perhaps premature.
The study goes on to show that only 18% of consumers have actually installed an ad blocker in the last two months, yet 39% said that they would install one if it was offered to them.
This, the report authors claim, demonstrates that once educated about the topic, some consumers will look to make their content ad free. However, over half (51%) said they would only install if it wasn’t too complicated.
The research revealed that social, search and music platforms are the most used among consumers, all of which have an increasing number of mobile ads within their applications. Half (50%) of consumers said they never click on mobile banner ads and with over a third (36%) of consumers spending 3-5 hours on their mobile device each day, advertisers are missing a large part of their audience with mobile ads.
The same trend is true of video, with 55% of respondents always skipping ads on YouTube – one of the biggest mobile content providers in the world with over half of its overall views coming from mobile devices. Video banner ads in general are also always skipped by over half (51%) of consumers.
However, having to pay for ad-free content is not an option for the majority of the survey participants. Only 16% are generally willing to pay and out of this small group a majority of 75% would only pay £1-2 for ad-free content.
There is some good news for adverisers, though; they are able to increase their click rates with simple implementation tweaks, and the use case for programmatic advertising is becoming ever clearer. When asked why consumers click on ads, the top three answers were:
When the offered service fits my immediate need (52%)
A good image (30%)
A humorous approach (23%)
Instantly managing director Ben Leet said: “Ad blocking is currently being discussed in the news on a daily basis, but all the stories are focusing on the media itself and not the consumers. Our research helps brands, publishers and advertisers understand consumer attitudes towards ad blocking, and how they can potentially address this big issue. It also provides evidence that, when messaged correctly, programmatic advertising will be favoured by consumers as well as media buyers.”

TOPICS:ad-blocking mobile marketing