That’s right, the holiday season ecommerce bonanza is coming.

For our October Ecommerce Digest we take a closer look at the expected growth for online holiday sales, landing page optimization for the holiday rush, as well as recent news that touches all online retailers: the proliferation of ad blocking software.

Bright Outlook for the Holiday Season

Happy Holiday Season Expected for Retailers | eMarketer

In this analysis by eMarketer, we see that the overall forecast for the holiday shopping season is strong. Ecommerce continues to make up a significant component of holiday shopping. They expect online sales “will hit 9.0% of total retail sales this season, or $79.40 billion, up from 8.3% share last year.”

eMarketer also asserts that mobile ecommerce continues to grow. “We estimate that by the end of 2016, 25.0% of all retail ecommerce sales in the US will take place via mobile devices.”

Their analysis of a recent study by Signal found, “an impressive 60% of respondents intended to increase mobile holiday buying activity.”

Optimizing Your Site for Seasonal Sales

SEO & Black Friday: How Are Brands Preparing Their Landing Pages? | Econsultancy

How carefully do you curate your seasonal webpages? This article from Econsultancy examines different landing page strategies in terms of the strength of their SEO.

One approach, employed by UK retailer Currys, favors leaving your Black Friday landing page up year-round. Author Ben Davis says, “Currys has had one page ranking consistently all year. [Their Black Friday landing page] peaked recently at number one and has been live continuously since Black Friday 2014…Currys page is the only British retailer ranking for a host of Black Friday search terms.”

Keeping their site active, while regularly updating content and linking to other seasonal pages has positioned them well to take excellent advantage of the seasonal rush.

Davis emphasizes that overall web presence may be less important than a well targeted landing page. Amazon’s inconsistent ranking for key seasonal search terms illustrates his point. “Amazon is ranking well, so [they] might not be worried by its blip in the SERPs for the phrase ‘Black Friday 2015’, but it still shows how search performance can be affected if you don’t keep an eye open.”

Speaking of Mobile: Let’s Talk Ad Blocking

Ad Blockers — Friend or Foe? | cleverbridge Ecommerce Blog

We have known for months now that the fall release of Apple’s iOS 9 would support ad blocking on Safari. Its launch brought on a flurry of articles about the implications for online retailers, advertisers and consumers.

Randall Rothenberg at AdvertisingAge points out that “Ad blocking is the latest crisis du jour” for digital marketing, presenting significant challenges to the industry.

Meanwhile, Mark Jones at PerformanceIN highlights the reaction of City A.M., one UK site which has banned traffic from readers using ad blocking technology. City A.M. is currently “informing users that the site ‘relies on advertising to fund its journalism,’ and asking users ‘having trouble seeing adverts on the page’ to deactivate ad blockers if they wish to view the content.”

Even APM’s Marketplace is getting in on the deluge of commentary about ad blocking. In this recent piece, they explore new trends in digital advertising, meant to resonate personally with consumers. Brian Wong, CEO of the digital marketing firm Kiip, makes the point that while traditional advertising strategies attempted to overwhelm viewers with ads, “those laws of physics are different on mobile. In fact, you see a brand many times and you get more annoyed.” Listen to the whole piece to learn about what Kiip and others are doing to market to customers in today’s increasingly ad-hostile atmosphere.

All the tumult ad blocking technology has wrought inspires some self-reflection, as noted in this article from Econsultancy. The trade industry group Interactive Advertising Bureau admitted, “We messed up.” The current backlash has inspired IAB’s senior VP Scott Cunningham to confide, “We were so clever and so good at [digital advertising] that we over-engineered the capabilities of the plumbing laid down by, well, ourselves. This steamrolled the users, depleted their devices, and tried their patience.”

As we saw in this week’s Ecommerce Eye Candy, not every analyst agrees with the woeful tune sung by most articles on ad blockers. For a more comprehensive look at how ad blocking is affecting the entire industry, be sure to see Signal’s handy infographic below about the rise of ad blockers.

To learn more about strategies for holiday season ecommerce, download our Six Guides on Ecommerce Essentials today.

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As we discussed earlier this month, ad blockers pose a serious challenge to every industry that relies on advertisements to drive online revenue. Apple’s release certainly sparked the larger conversation, but is the iOS 9 ad blocker as dire as everyone says?

The days when only a desktop or Android user could block ads have now passed, as we enter a brave new world where iOS devices will block ads as well or better than those other platforms. What impact this change will have is not yet known, but much of the language around the digital marketing community is near apocalyptic.

The Mobile Majority says we can relax. Apple’s addition is an extension in their Safari app, and will only affect mobile site browsing. As author Cameron Fitchett points out, “We’re at a point now in 2015 where an average consumer spends only 12 percent of their time on their mobile phone in a web browser.”

Take a look below to see Fitchett’s conclusions about ad blocking’s implications for digital advertisers. See just how deep its impact is and what other digital marketing streams may be targeted next.

Do The Mobile Majority’s numbers resonate with what you see? Let us know if ad blocking software presents your business a challenge or an opportunity in the comments below.

The post Ecommerce Eye Candy — Mobile Ad Blocking [Infographic] appeared first on cleverbridge.

“The future of advertising is the Internet.” — Bill Gates

“Surf the web without annoying ads!” blasts one well-known website promoting the installation of a browser extension that allows users to prevent ads from popping up on their computer screen. “Easily disable most tracking and browse the web anonymously,” the site copy continues.

With no ads and no tracking, the promise of an uninterrupted online experience seems almost too good to pass up for many consumers. As with anything that seems too good to be true, it really is. The ramifications for both consumers and advertisers profoundly affects not only web browsing, but the whole purpose of the Internet as we know it.

Available since at least 2004, ad blocking software has achieved more prominence with the release of iOS 9, the operating system for Apple’s iPhones and iPads. Until now, ad blocking was mostly used for desktop computer screens. With the rise of mobile usage, ad blocking is now on those devices as well. This means that another front has opened up in the constant battle between advertisers’ need to promote their products and consumers’ need for hassle-free online browsing.

In basic terms, ad blockers filter or alter advertising content on a webpage. By blocking or stripping down this content, users can view websites without embedded videos, banner ads, pop-up windows or even pictures — the types of content that make up the vast majority of advertisements. Aside from blocking intrusive interruptions, the benefits to the user include faster loading of web pages, less use of bandwidth, and improved security from malware.

“Advertising is totally unnecessary, unless you hope to make money.” – Jef I. Richards

What may be a benefit to users can lead to a substantial, even disastrous, loss of revenue for website owners whose livelihood depends on those blocked ads. This is especially true for affiliate marketers, who rely on commissions for purchases made through their site. Much has been made in recent years of the need for affiliate marketers to provide quality content to online users. But without a revenue stream, many of these affiliates will be forced to shut down. Quality content doesn’t come free, and this is the conundrum facing consumers who use ad blocking software: By impeding the content publisher’s revenue, they, the consumers, risk not only losing the amount of quality content available to them, but the content itself may be limited to only those that can afford and are willing to pay for it.

Just how much money is at stake here?

According to PageFair, a provider of “counter ad block solutions to web publishers,” the use of ad blocking software could cost online publishers almost $22 billion in 2015 based on the estimated 198 million worldwide users of such software. As the number of users of ad blocking software climbs, lost revenue to the online advertising industry will also increase, and this will have far reaching and lasting effects on affiliate marketing.

There is a valid point to be made, however, that many of the reasons consumers are flocking to ad blocking software can be traced back to those in the online advertising industry that have “ruined it for the rest of us.” So says Michael Rogers of Affiliate Marketer Training. “Ads have become such an annoyance around the web that people are simply fed up with it. The browsing public is deciding en-mass that they won’t stand for it anymore. They are no longer willing to put up with free content in exchange for advertising.” Rogers goes on to advise affiliate marketers to diversify and not “rely solely on one form of revenue.”

But what it means to diversify and create additional revenue streams for affiliate marketers will depend on several factors, not the least of which is what is being used as the base revenue model.

An affiliate site full of banner ads may be affected far more than a blog with mainly text links. A site that captures customer data such as an email address (e.g., for a newsletter sign up) for remarketing efforts can better afford to lose revenue from blocked ads. After all, they can make up the difference by promotions sent via email. Sites that offer value to their users (i.e. quality content) through an online blog or newsletter, for example, will still continue to attract quality traffic and thrive.

Diversifying is solid advice for investing and affiliate marketing. The larger lesson here is to accept the rise of ad blocking software and its challenges, much like one of Google’s algorithm updates (remember Panda?). What may have been seen as a death knell to some gave rise to much needed improvements to online searches. These improvements in turn created higher quality experiences. Although the fear of potential ruin because of blocked ads and restricted revenue is real, affiliate marketers should not lose sight of best practices for SEO and PPC campaigns which still govern how ads and sites are ranked in search engines.

Ad blockers are not going away any time soon, and their full effect on the industry remains to be seen. There may be court challenges as to the legality of their use. Some in the industry are trying to frame the issue in ethical terms, likening the use of ad blockers similar to music and software piracy. As a response to their use, some site owners are preventing users from accessing content unless the software is disabled or their site white-listed, allowing at least some ads to be shown. Others are moving towards a subscription model to access content.

Keystone

However things shake out in the end — ads becoming less intrusive (or more ingeniously placed), users paying to access content, or some sort of détente reached between advertisers and ad blocker software publishers — affiliates must choose to meet this latest challenge or risk being blocked from their future.

Has ad blocking impacted your affiliate marketing revenue? Tell us how you are overcoming this challenge in the comment section below.

John Hernandez is an Affiliate Marketing Manager at cleverbridge.

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