NDM Story 8: UK digital ad spend soars despite fears over ad blocking

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/08/uk-digital-ad-ad-blocking-display

Despite the rapid growth of consumers buying ad blocking software, this has not greatly 

affected the digital ad market as it has surprisingly grown by twice the rate it has normally grown at. There has been a lot of talk about digital advertising due to the many challenges that it has been facing however, these challenges have not hindered the industry as it is "maintaining strong revenue growth at a much greater rate than the overall economy.” Even though many consumers are downloading ad blocking software, the revenue garnered from ads have increased particularly from mobile advertising. It is said that as users spend more time on their phone, advertisers begin to focus on directing their attentions and budgets there.

• UK digital display ad market which grew by more than a quarter in the first half to £1.31bn.
• UK advertisers spent a record £3.98bn on all forms of digital advertising in the first half
• Digital display advertising grew 27.5% to £1.31bn in the first half.
• his is slightly down on the 30% growth rate reported in the first half of last year, but up on the 26.4% reported for 2014 as a whole.
• PageFair estimates that UK ad blocking grew by 82% to 12m active users in the year to the end of June.
• Mobile advertising as an overall category saw a 51% increase in spend to £1.08bn in the first half, accounting for 27% of the total UK digital ad market and 39% of the digital display market.

I believe that the number of people who have access to the internet massively exceeds the number of people who know about ad blocking software, which gives great opportunity for advertisers to continue focusing their advertising in one area; mobile advertising. I think that when the time comes and more consumers become aware of ad blocker, advertisers will them begin to get affected by the impact of this possible change. There is a possibility that advertisers may find a new way around ad blocker to put out their ads. There may even be new technology that ad blocker has not been introduced to, therefore making any new technology, an easy target to display ads on.