I’ll be attending the Bima Breakfast Briefing in Edinburgh on 5 November where Andrew Girdwood (Girdy), Media Innovations Director at our partner agency DigitasLBi is a panelist.
The BIMA is the British Interactive Media Association, and one of its remits is to support and promote the British digital industry (they also have an office in Scotland).
Breakfast Briefings are held throughout the UK and take the form of hosted panel sessions where, over a coffee, digital professionals get together to discuss latest issues facing the industry.
One big issue at the moment is ad blocking – with a recent IAB survey showing that 15% of British adults currently use ad blocking software, and it’s the focus of the Edinburgh briefing on the 5th November (Title: Ad blocking – will it change online advertising forever? Tickets via EventBrite).
I’ve been following this discussion for some time – it’s been one of the key talking points for the industry in 2015. Some talk about ad blocking in the context of the end of the web as we know it, while the New York Times revealed that ads account for over 50% of your mobile data usage while browsing news sites. This not only slows down speed and impacts on mobile UX, but also eats into your battery and data allowance / money. You end up paying for these ads that make your life hell!
I asked this year’s MSc Digital Marketing class (soon to be revealed here on The Digital Scot) about their use of ad blocking the IAB figure of 15% seems about right.
I don’t tend to use ad blockers (for professional reasons – I like to see what goes on) and simply don’t use sites with annoying ad formats.
Pet hates are definitely video auto-play ads, YouTube unskippable pre-rolls, and lately I’ve another one to add to my hate list: Skype autoplay video ads (used to promote some new Matt Damon film, no, not the one on the photo 😉 ).
We’ll be covering Digital Advertising as part of the MSc Digital Marketing a little later in the semester, and the Edinburgh Bima Breakfast Briefing will be an excellent opportunity to not only meet and network with old and new friends, but also take back to my students the latest knowledge and insights on ad blocking straight from the leading industry experts!