Brother Jones sent a fascinating New York Times article to us that made the wizard smile because
it proved something that he’s been saying for years. You know how online marketers like to position broadcast media as “interruption marketing” and “push marketing” while they call online media “permission marketing” and “pull marketing”? The wizard has said from the beginning that these terms create a false distinction.

This article is about the alarming rise in the use of online ad blocking apps. It turns out that digital marketers will lose about $22 billion in ad revenues this year because more and more of us are choosing not to be interrupted by annoying online offers.

Heh, heh, heh.

Here’s my favorite paragraph:

“Ad blocking has been around for years, but adoption is now rising steeply, at a pace that some in the ad industry say could prove catastrophic for the economic structure underlying the web. That has spurred a debate about the ethic of ad blocking. Some [online] publishers and advertisers say ad blocking violates the implicit contract that girds the Internet — the idea that in return for free content, we all tolerate a constant barrage of ads.”

Just a few days ago, Marco Arment wrote:

“People often argue that running ad-blocking software is violating an implied contract between the reader and the publisher: the publisher offers the page content to the reader for free, in exchange for the reader seeing the publisher’s ads. And that’s a nice, simple theory, but it’s a blurry line in reality.

By that implied-contract theory, readers should not only permit their browsers to load the ads, but they should actually read each one, giving themselves a chance to develop an interest for the advertised product or service and maybe even click on it and make a purchase. That’s also a nice theory, but of course, it’s ridiculous to expect anyone to actually do that. Publishers are lucky if people even read the content with any real attention today, let alone the ads around it.

Ads have always been a hopeful gamble, not required consumption.”

Amen, Marco, amen. The public has never been required to pay attention to ads. This is why the seductive skills of a good ad writer are so very necessary to success.

Do you want my definition for “opt-in advertising”?
Opt-in ad; (noun) any ad – delivered by any media – that a customer willingly chooses to read.

If a customer is intrigued by the photo, the illustration, the subject line, the headline, or the opening line of a TV or radio ad, they “opt-in” when they choose to give the ad their attention and hear what you have to say.