What Happened
After signing deals with Caribbean mobile carrier Digicel and European carrier Three Group, Israel-based ad-blocking firm Shine is now reaching a new continent as it strikes a deal with Econet, an African wireless service provider with 40 million subscribers across Zimbabwe, South Africa, Burundi, and Lesotho. Econet will install Shine’s ad-blocking technology, which wipes out all in-app and mobile web ads at the carrier network level, for all of its subscribers. Econet is required by government regulations to provide a choice for customers to opt in or out of Shine’s service.
What Brands Need To Do
Shine’s network-level ad blocker prevents most mobile ads from loading, causing severe issues for digital publishers and, to a lesser extent, to online advertisers and brands that rely on reaching customers via mobile platforms. It remains to be seen if more carriers will pick up this practice, but the fact that three global mobile carriers have been willing to give Shine a try speaks to a larger trend of consumers being fed up with the subpar ad experiences currently plaguing mobile sites and apps.
Therefore, brands need to take a proactive approach to deal with consumers’ growing aversion to ads. One good way to do so is to explore new formats of digital ads, such as sponsoring online events and livestreams and producing branded content. Also, since Shine’s software won’t affect in-feed ads on social networks for now, brands may consider increasing their social ad spend. For more information on how brands can fight the increasing usage of ad-blockers, check out the Ad Avoidance section in our Outlook 2016.
Source: AdExchanger
