The DC superhero Flash might be able to escape danger and save the world, but the freeware software Flash is on its last legs. Google’s push to freeze Flash is the latest blow in the software’s seemingly impending death by a thousand cuts and is being met with thunderous applause. What was once the standard for rich media ads became the bane of many users’ browsing experience, slowing down load times and even crashing browsers. As it is lowered into its final resting place, Flash provides a crucial lesson for programmatic advertisers: the customer experience must always be the priority.
Famed tech VC, Bill Gurley, recently pointed out that business success comes from eliminating customer anxiety. For customers today, anything that interrupts their browsing experience becomes a source of anxiety. The continuous flow of content consumption has become an expectation, and when that flow is stalled or subverted, customers become upset and form a negative association with the cause of disruption. Flash frustrated users to no end by dragging its heels through a web page’s loading process that otherwise would have been smooth and efficient. Similarly, customers can become frustrated when they’re given ads that either have little relevance to their current browsing circumstances, or invade the content they’re consuming.
This is increasingly important as ad blocking software becomes more readily available. In an age where customers are more empowered than ever, experience can make or break a brand. A quality ad experience can not only increase engagements, but also form the association of the brand with smooth browsing.
Another fact that can be seen in Flash’s demise is that a smooth browsing experience isn’t just a preferred customer desire, it’s a critical need for publishers. The ads that ran on Flash may have been clunky, but what turned everyone against them was how they impacted the publishers. Running a simple web page suddenly took an obnoxious amount of processing power. Content that should have been loaded quickly took a back seat to slow-loading ads. Then, as if to kick users when they were down, Flash became a conduit for malicious malware to worm its way into customers’ computers. It wasn’t the brands that suffered because of this, it was the publishers. People associated increasingly negative experiences with the platforms on which they were experiencing them, which forced publishers to act and remove the use of Flash from their sites.
Programmatic advertisers should take this to heart as well. If the customer experience is ignored, say by bombarding them with irrelevant or too-frequent ads, publishers will be forced to re-evaluate their monetization methods as more customers will make the jump to ad blocking software. It’s a lose-lose situation, whereby the experience hurts the brand, publisher and the customer. The use of native ads can help with the perception of ad overkill and relevancy, but they have a dark side as well. While they can be very engaging, they can also make a customer feel tricked into viewing an ad they thought was content. This could cause customers to form an association of distrust with the publisher, something that publishers definitely don’t want.
The best way to ensure that this does not happen is the appropriate use of real time data, like intent. With the right intent marketing strategy, brands can ensure that they are reaching the right audiences in a way that is most likely to generate positive results. A customer is much more likely to engage with an ad that they haven’t seen before and that promotes something relevant to their lifestyle versus one that is irrelevant to their experiences, or one that they’ve seen a hundred times before. It seems almost commonsensical, but yes, creative still matters. According to a recent Rubicon Project survey to over 2000 holiday shoppers, 74% of consumers found advertising less bothersome the more relevant the ad was and 77% were more likely to engage with the ad the more it was personalized. This personalization can be driven not only by intent, but many other data points including location, weather, 1st party data and in many other ways.
Many say that the death of Flash was inevitable, but it didn’t have to be. Its retirement lays out an important lesson for programmatic advertisers that customer experience is the most important thing. Without it, you end up turning everyone against you. Fortunately, programmatic advertisers today know the power that customers have and can use the tools at their disposal to ensure that everyone comes out a winner.
Julian Mossanen is Regional Vice-President, Buyer Cloud at Rubicon Project
