In the great wide world of online, display ads are everywhere. Top of the page, right, left, bottom – and, sometimes even popping up and floating in your face. Many consumers find these ads intrusive, especially when they are irrelevant. So, they simply ignore them – or, stop visiting the sites on which they appear

In fact, consumers have become so annoyed with these ads that some entrepreneurs created a whole industry around getting rid of them – ad blockers. And these software companies have caught on fire -- as of the end of 2016 there were an estimated 615 million devices using ad blocking software to help consumers avoid seeing ads, according to an article in Business Insider.

While this is all well and good, it presents a huge problem for display advertisers. How do you know when your ad is being displayed or blocked? Well, Google, the world’s biggest web advertising company, has the answer. The company just announced plans to integrate a native ad blocker into its Chrome browser.

Wait! What?

Why would Google do that? Wouldn’t that hurt their advertising revenue? Actually… probably not.

Ad blocker software companies earn money in just a couple of ways. Most are free for consumers to download and install onto their browser of choice. Some also have a premium version that allows for increased functionality. However, most revenue comes via “extorting” or charging companies fees in exchange for white-listing their ads, which then allows them to be shown to users of their ad blocking software. Large companies, including the likes of Google, Microsoft and others, have paid money to ad blocking companies to do just that.

With their own internal set of ad standards, Google, on the other hand already controls which ads Chrome users see through their networks. By creating their own native ad blocker, not only do they eliminate the need to pay these ad blocker software companies to show these ads, but they also gain even more control of which ads are seen. It’s even possible (although not without a lot of legal battles) that Google could block all ads which don’t come from its display network -- essentially forcing other companies to pay them in an epic 360 transfer of revenue and power over which advertisers and ads can be displayed to users.

What does this mean for display advertisers?

It means they’re in an epic battle -- caught between websites hungry for revenue and the agencies that sell advertising. Metrics get skewed when the agencies SAY the ads are being served but in fact consumers don’t see them due to ad blocking software. Websites are fighting back by refusing to allow users to see their website AT ALL unless they disable ad blocking software. But, in many cases, consumers simply bounce from that website and head to another for the information they seek.
The battle continues between which display ads are, and are not seen, along with who is in control. This is something advertisers should pay close attention to. Depending on how the ad is being requested, and the method the particular ad blocking software is using, impressions can be recorded which were never seen by the consumer.

Only time will tell how this all plays out. With valuable real estate up for grabs, this type of trend typically yields higher prices and more competition for eyeballs. Buyer beware.

                   TV Analytics Solution Selected By Auto Dealer Panel as the Most Innovative

Columbus, OH (October 27, 2016) – Clarivoy, the automotive industry’s leading provider of multi-touch sales attribution, today announced that the company’s proprietary TV Analytics solution has been named the winner of the 2016 DrivingSales Innovation Cup Award for the Most Innovative Dealership Solution of 2016. Clarivoy competed on stage with four other finalists at the 2016 DrivingSales Executive Summit (DSES), and was selected as the winner by a panel of auto dealers.

Clarivoy’s proprietary TV Analytics solution stringently maps online traffic to TV ads, matching advertising spot data with website visitors, granting advertisers a transparent snapshot of which TV ads truly influence sales.

Dealers who used TV Analytics were able to make data-driven decisions for their media buys that helped decrease their cost per website visitor as much as 2X. TV Analytics also provided the visibility one auto dealer group needed to intelligently broaden their cable reach, maximize the investment they make in TV, reallocate more spend (16%) to cable and reduce their cost per website visitor by 62 percent.

Agencies also greatly benefit from this solution. In fact, by combining TV Analytics data with cost information, one agency shifted their investment in underperforming spots to local insertion and upgraded other national inventory to higher converting and more socially active networks. As a result they achieved a 40 percent lift in their schedule’s performance.

Clarivoy’s intuitive TV Analytics dashboard lets dealers quickly visualize the impact of their advertising:

• Identifies which networks, programs, creatives and dayparts convert potential consumers into buyers.
• Optimizes cost per response by identifying the most efficient website traffic drivers.
• Powered by a proprietary graph model, the solution extracts “important influences” from hundreds of spots and months of data, assigning true proportional credit.

“This is a great validation of the hard work the team at Clarivoy invests in product development to ensure our dealers are supported by the best technology and most effective solutions. I am very grateful for all their efforts and delighted that dealers have chosen our proprietary TV Analytics solution as the Most Innovative Dealership Solution. I also want to give a big shout out to Andy Mohr Automotive Marketing Manager, Lisa Masariu-McCoy, and Marketing and Technology Director at Germain Motor Company, Shaun 'NIFF' Kniffin. They really know their stuff and it is their incredible results that impressed the judges and helped us win. When it comes to understanding the results of their advertising, dealers can’t afford to guess anymore,” said Clarivoy CEO Steve White.

“When advertisers move away from a Last Click Attribution model and utilize a Multi-Touch Attribution approach to measure the impact of their marketing investments, they will be amazed to realize all of the marketing touchpoints which led to the purchase of a vehicle and that TV should remain an important part of the media mix,” White added.

For more information, or to sign up for a product demonstration, visit: http://www.clarivoy.com

About Clarivoy            

Clarivoy is the auto industry’s leading provider of multi-touch sales attribution and advanced digital targeting tools. Their solutions reveal more about their clients’ customers, their advertising and their path to success so they can drive more sales.  Clarivoy’s proprietary technology grants marketers incomparable visibility into their customers and campaigns – across all channels, all devices – online and offline.  Armed with this new information, marketers can stop guessing and start knowing what is working and what is not. http://www.clarivoy.com