Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
THE AD INDUSTRY has to shoulder some of the blame for the escalating arms race between ad blockers and online advertisers, according to one leading industry figure.
AdRoll co-founder and president Adam Berke said the ad sector had “done a bit of a poor job” explaining to users how it helped pay for all the free content people expected to get online.
“There has been this implicit agreement between internet users, which we all are, and advertisers that says OK, I’m going to get these products for free,” he told TheJournal.ie.
I’m going to be able to read your article for free, I’m going to be able to listen to music for free, I’m going to be able to watch this video for free – everything I want, I want it for free, but there’s going to be advertising.”
According to figures from Dublin-based anti-adblock company PageFair, an estimated 18% of internet users in Ireland now use software to block internet ads, which many complain blight their favourite sites or make pages slow and unresponsive.
The Washington Post this week took the drastic measure of shutting out readers using ad-blocking software, citing its need for digital ad revenue to pay for the people who accessed its journalism free online.
“When you use an adblocker, you are actively hurting the content creators that you love,” Berke said.
I think some companies like the Washington Post saying ‘hey, we rely on advertising to provide you with this content, please (exempt our site) on your adblocker or turn it off maybe’ is the right kind of dialogue to get out of the arms race.”
Retargeting
Berke’s views aren’t a big surprise, of course, given his company’s bread and butter is selling advertisers tools to make their digital campaigns more effective.
He was in Dublin late this week where his rapidly-growing company, the most-popular platform for digital ad “retargeting”, employs around 100 staff, its second-biggest office worldwide after its San Francisco headquarters.
Last year AdRoll raised $70 million (€62 million) in one funding round as it reported an annual revenue rate of $150 million (€132 million), still a tiny fraction of the $135 billion (€119 billion) it was estimated companies spent on internet ads in 2014.
Online advertising has quickly evolved from essentially the same as the print equivalent – images on a page – to something bought, sold and manipulated in real time based on anything from the time of day to users’ locations.
Retargeting takes that process one step further, crunching unique user data – from desktop browser cookies to other anonymous identifiers on Apple and Android devices – and using it to funnel digital ads towards individual users.
Visitors to a site, for example a bike shop, can be targeted with future ads for similar products once they leave the site in a bid to convert them to customers.
A browser looking at bike accessories could even be bombarded with different ads to a road-bike shopper.
Berke said it would only be a matter of time before all advertising went down a similar route to online ads and became programmable – even hold-outs like the TV industry, which still sold slots on a show-by-show, network-by-network basis.
People will do the jobs of creating strategies and targeting and creative and things of that nature, and then we will use technology to do the stuff that humans aren’t very good at like make millions or billions of real-time bidding decisions and optimisation decisions,” he said.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Is this a wind up ?
On the other hand I’d love to have the money to buy it
Just like and share to be in with a chance to win one.
Not for me.
I couldn’t tell my boss I was late because of my watch.
Don’t see any reason there to pay 1.1m for a watch, save the money and ask someone the time, or if you can pay that type of cash for a watch why the fu*k would you care what time it is
I honestly think a finely made watch is beautiful. I feel naked if I don’t wear one on a night out. I think a watch and ring is the only jewellery a man should wear. I do have a watch fetish but have never spent any more that 500 euro on one. Any more is just silly. But sure if you are loaded why not.
I agree family guy, I wear my watch all the time and feel naked without it.
Does it have a calculator though?
And all it does is tell the time
does it have a sexy voice..??
Ill have 2
One for each wrist?
Oh yeh. I’ll be unbalanced if i don’t
Another upstart of a company.
Established no doubt, to separate new money easterners from their cash.
Well if they’re foolish with their dollars.
Maybe they deserve to be shafted.
Your a boor.
Fact are booring.
My auld Casio will do me. Best 15euro I ever spent.
I’d rather have a Veyron.
But not the cost of running it. They would financially cripple you, which is why the vast majority of those on the market have hardly been driven.
You think the running cost is why the majority of veyrons are not driven in public…?
Skin, no, not the sole reason but almost certainly a contributory factor.
Four sprung durch technik?
Time is your worst enemy, why would you pay 1.1 Million, for a watch, and half the world’s Children starving, it beggers belief.
300 watches = 1 children’s hospital
But you can’t wear the other 299 watches on your arm now can you.
Do the ladies really judge a fella by the piece on his wrist?!
To spend that much on a watch you’d have to have a piece for a head…
It’s not what’s on his wrist that they care about, it’s the distance from the wrist to the tip of the middle finger. So shallow…
I’ve got 200 of these unwrapped which can’t be sold. Like and share to be in with a chance to win one :)
Well it would also have to bring me my tea and toast up to the bed in the morning as well if I paid that price for it!!!!!!
Does it only work when tethered to an iPhone 6?
what is a power reserve function? and how is it powered?
Looks like the strap is extra!
If I could afford this I would care what time it was
Saw a watch that cost $350,000 in a shop the other day. It’s made from authentic pieces salvaged from the Titanic! Some people…
Watch yourself….
have your say