AdTech Is In Denial

AdTech is in denial. It’s shocking. Things are much worse than I imagined.

For example, Grant Le Riche, Managing Director for Canada for TubeMogul, says there’s too much fuss about ad-blocking: Ad Blocking Hype is Overblown. To keep things short, ad-blocking grew “only” 41% globally last year, but there’s no reason to worry because ad impressions available from *their* platform in Canada grew 275%.

Is he serious? If his company is doing fine, that’s good for them. But what does that have to do with the state of online advertising? And even if ad impressions had grown 275% globally, which is very unlikely, there would still be a huge problem: more impressions cannot make up for a smaller reach, especially if it’s the younger, more educated, more informed, heavy user crowd that is rushing to install ad-blockers.

Which, of course, is exactly what is happening.

But it gets worse: he apparently doesn’t understand that if the problem was caused by tracking and targeting, more tracking and more targeting is unlikely to be the solution:

Finally, as the quantity and quality of data used for audience targeting improves ad relevance and drives increased engagement, ad blockers’ popularity and prevalence should stabilize.

But, trust us, we would not stand by if it were a real problem. Right!