Growing use of ad blockers means that dealers will have to get increasingly sophisticated in their use of online marketing, said e-commerce specialist iVendi.
James Tew, CEO, pointed out that online marketing would have to change after Apple incorporated ad blocking capabilities to its new iOS9 operating system and the technology became more widely used on Windows PCs.
He said: “Over the last few years all advertisers – including those in the motor industry – have often used online ads in a fairly blunt manner, just getting in front of as many people as possible.
“This type of advertising has never been popular with those using the internet and there has been a move over the last couple of years that has seen increasing use of ad blocking technology.”
Tew said that, over a period of time, online marketing would have to become “smarter” and more targeted than the “scattergun approach” currently employed by some car dealers.
He said that online marketing would be used to target individuals based on what they know about their needs and preferences, adding: “Most people already see a version of this approach through their use of Facebook or Sky Adsmart, which can target campaigns at a particular demographic based on age and postcode, for example.
“This is something that we have already been starting to work on, giving dealers tools that enable them to learn more about potential customers through their social media activity, for example. With this kind of information, they can communicate the correct proposition to each person, making their advertising much more efficient.”
Jason Dews - 01/12/2015 16:34
Third party ad blockers have existed pretty much since ads have been around, Apple and indeed Google make good revenue out of delivering ad content to in-market users and I doubt that this will change in the long run. I believe (and applaud) that every user has a right to tailor their content to be personal to what they wish to receive to enhance their web experience, this will only sharpen the impact of the delivery in the long run with smarter, more outcome focused strategies being applied. Using the scattergun approach when it comes to delivering ads to potential customers is much like playing a song on a piano by hitting all the notes at the same time, it doesn't sound right and people aren't going to want to listen. Hit the right note at the right time to the right audience and you will see an impact. With Social Media and Adwords Search and Display networks allowing you to pick what, where ,when and how with advertising in increasing complexities it would seem ill-advised to do anything else. Something that James Trew and his colleagues at iVendi picked up on sometime ago in 2014 in there News article 'Technology set to make dealer marketing ever more closely targeted' (https://ivendi.com/ivendi-news/2014/03/technology-set-to-make-dealer-marketing-ever-more-closely-targeted/) With mobile operators such as EE & O2 moving in on the ad-blocking front-line, a unilateral approach to blocking ads looms over as the biggest worry out there at the moment for the Mobile Marketeer. With the ability to block ads 'carte blanche' at network level mobile providers seems to be poised to regain some of the revenue given over freely to Google and Facebook, how? Well one would assume they are going to request revenue for adding certain partners to a whitelist (or digital blackmail as it could be referred to), again the only impact here is going to be more expensive but sharper, more focused ads to the in-market consumer. This isn't the end of this layer of the digital advertisers toolkit, it's just going to shift focus to what is important - Increasing organic relationships through content marketing, a good use of the social media tools and smarter adverts levied at increasing the consumers web experience. Intrusive advertising sucks, we've all hovered over the 'skip' button on a video waiting for the count down whilst some soulful advert delivers its payload. Long be it's demise I say.