<p><em>Two big wars are being waged online. A big grab for content, and a tug of war between advertisers and ad blockers, writes <strong>Mala Bhargava</strong></em></p><div>Anyone who gets their fix of news articles, jokes, movies and other content on the Internet, knows what it is to be bombarded by ads. And not just pretty ads that sit around on the side minding their own business, but ads that fly out to cover the content you’re trying to see, ads that pop and ping and refuse to go away until you click on the little cross in one corner, ads that take you off to another site if you as much as touch anything by mistake. Sometimes they’re in so many multiples that by the time you get past all the ads, you’ve lost interest in the content. We are all familiar with the ads on YouTube. You have to wait out at least five seconds or sometimes see it several times in a long video, for the privilege of watching.</div><div> </div><div>I long since stopped arresting the ads on YouTube when I stopped to think how I was taking away from the little bit of revenue someone was getting for making or putting up that video. But I haven’t been able to be as charitable with ads that pop up in browsers, all over my phone, and in apps where I want to read undisturbed. Clearly, somewhere along the line, ad makers and publishers went overboard. The scales tipped and consumers’ tolerance snapped, making them forget that it’s the ads that are paying for the content to be created and presented. And that’s where ad blockers started to become prevalent.</div><div> </div><div>Technology may have advanced to the point where advertisers could throw ads at you in innovatively annoying ways — but it has also progressed enough to galvanise developers into coming up with clever ways of banishing those ads from your sight. In fact, ads don’t just irritate consumers but also track where a user is going online and gather more and more information to fine tune advertising messages, giving them a benign label of “personalised.”</div><div> </div><div>And so it was, that with the launch of iOS9, Apple’s operating system for iPhones and iPads, that ad blockers became a new part of the system allowing users to not see any ads. Users made a beeline for these, particularly for Peace, an ad blocker developed by well-known developer Marco Arment, who is also the maker of the reading app Instapaper. Peace was soon the No. 1 paid app on the App Store. And then suddenly and unexpectedly, Arment withdrew the app and offered users a refund. Arment realised that his app would hurt all ads, including ones that weren’t being annoying and decided that this didn’t feel at all good.</div><div> </div><div>Users who are busy consuming vast quantities of content online probably don’t give a thought to an intense war that has been going on behind the scenes. Not just between advertisers and those who want to block ads, but between the giants of technology who need to lay ownership to content so that they can channel users towards their own platforms, for if the web is about anything, it’s about numbers. And many publishers are giving in and partnering with these platforms. </div><p> </p><div>On the other hand, what is to happen to smaller publishers who rely more heavily on revenue from advertising to create content? Will new forms of advertising come up? Or new models of revenue generation? Will the web slowly change as the age-old format of users not paying for content but agreeing to see ads becomes redundant? That’s what will pan out in the next few years unless we hopefully stop to think of just how peace comes at a price.</div><div> </div><div><strong>mala@businessworld.in,</strong></div><div><strong>Twitter: @malabhargava</strong></div><div> </div><div><div>(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 19-10-2015)</div></div>
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