Many consumers bypass Madison Avenue with software that filters out online advertising. Adblock Plus, for example, averages about 13 million daily users on one browser, Firefox, alone.
Now a tech start-up, AdKeeper, is charting a course directly against that ad-blocking current, arguing that consumers like to see ads and will want to save favourites in one central location.
Participating advertisers place a small button on ads with the AdKeeper logo ? a ?K? formed by an exclamation point and less-than symbol ? and when a consumer clicks the button, the ad is stored on a page on AdKeeper.com along with any others the consumer has saved.
Scott P Kurnit, who is the chief executive of AdKeeper and the founder of About.com (which is owned by The New York Times Company), acknowledged that many people are initially puzzled at the prospect of saving ads. ?The question rational people have is, ?Hey, don?t people dislike ads ? why would people keep ads and why would they go back and look at what they?ve kept?? ? Kurnit said.
The answer, he said, is that consumers do like some ads, but dislike how distracting they can be on the internet. With AdKeeper, online advertising becomes ?truly invitational rather than interruptive?, said Kurnit, who as an example mentioned consumers encountering online movie-trailer ads at work, and saving them to view at home later. ?It?s time-shifted advertising,? Kurnit said.
A study by AdKeeper and 24/7 Real Media, a WPP company, found the main reason that people ignored banner ads was that they did not want to be pulled away from websites.
Once ads are saved to AdKeeper, the click-through rate improves to 3.4%, meaning consumers are 34 times more likely to end up viewing the ad, according to the company.
AdKeeper, which was formed in 2010 and began running in a test version in February, has secured more than $40 million in financing. Many of largest US advertisers are already putting the AdKeeper button on some ads.