Why am I not surprised to hear from countless automotive executives that their “marketing agency” didn’t tell them about this?  One word: shenanigans. 

Here’s the deal.

Beginning on January 10, 2017, Google is going to deal a major blow to the most annoying pop-up ads.

We’re talking about the mobile ads and full screen pop-ups that take over your phone.  Google is going to start severely spanking companies that use them by lowering their page ranking.

Now to be fair, Google says there are “hundreds of signals” that go into how they rank websites.  But what this ultimately means is that many publishers are going to have to rethink how they’re allowing advertising on their sites so they don’t get slapped.

The goal here is pretty simple.  These ads are pissing people off…and so Google wants to fix that.  And before you freak out, perhaps you should be asking yourself…do you really want your ads to be pissing consumers off?

Now Google says that “reasonable” banner ads will still be acceptable – they just plan on lowering the rank of websites upon which “content is not easily accessible”.  We’re talking about the ads that gray out the content below them, the ads that are nearly impossible to find the (x) and those that generally screw up the user experience.

As a consumer, I say great.

As a marketer, I say awesome.  It’s about damn time we weed out some of the crap that agencies are using to pad the numbers they are giving their clients regarding the “results” of these obnoxious ads.

No wonder why so many ad agencies are calling it ad-maggedon. 

I suppose we’ll see what happens come January 10.  Which, on a side note, is only 10 days before the inauguration…when we hopefully won’t be swearing in someone who will lead us to Armageddon. 

#MakeAdvertisingGreatAgain

POSTED BY

Kyle Reyes is President and CEO of The Silent Partner Marketing.  He's also an acclaimed Keynote Speaker on entrepreneurship, leadership, marketing and social media.  You can find him on Facebook, LinkedIn and Snapchat (@dasilentpartner).