If you believe some of the recent analysis and forecasts for the effect of ad blocking on the business, you would be forgiven for pulling over the duvet and going back to bed.
But how are some of the biggest brands reading the apparent threat? With a mixture of trepidation and confidence, according to a recent panel discussion.
“There’s always a dire warning – the industry generally figures it out,” said Bank Of America enterprise media SVP Lou Paskalis. “The difference this time is that we to figure it out, we have to move away from the very construct of advertising.”
Paskalis is talking about an end to the old-style, repeated one-to-many push of salesy marketing messages, replaced by a more empathetic customer relationship.
“We have to get out of the advertising business, we have to get in to the people business, we have to get in to the content business, to get in to the engagement business,” he advocates. “When clients come after you about ROI, start talking about ROR, which is return on relationship – that is where the true value is in a longer term.”
But not all brands will be equally affected by ad blockers.
“It’s very segment-specific,” according to Vonage media VP Kathryn Szumowski. “The gal who’s buying home phone service from Vonage is a 55-year-old white gal who watches Judge Judy. Her ability to understand ad blocking and find it and turn it on is far less of a concern for us than when we talk about some of our small business efforts, where we’ve got a much more tech-savvy audience.
They were questioned by Tobi Elkin.
Programming Note: Paskalis will be a speaker at the Beet TV executive retreat in Fort Lauderdale this month.
This video is from Media Future Conversations 2015: Unblocked – Valuing Human Attention In A Content-Driven World, an event presented by true[X] in association with Beet.TV Please find more event videos here.