Yesterday, Google released a native “ad blocker” for the Chrome internet browser. Does this spell doom for affiliates? Is it time to panic? Are 20 great years of the affiliate channel now reaching an end? Not so much.
There seems to be a lot of speculation on the impact of this update, for better or for worse. Now that it has been released, however, here’s what we do know:
- It’s automatically built into Google Chrome, the now dominate browser for internet users.
- It is meant to enhance user experience on the web, hence the quotation marks around the mention of “ad blocker” above.
- It will primarily be used to suppress ads that interrupt a user’s flow on a website. This primarily consists of pop-ups, autoplay video ads, interstitials and ads that cover more than 30% of a users screen.
- Ad tracking will not be blocked, except for malicious and blacklisted software.
Those last two points are particularly relevant to the affiliate channel. First, if you’re doing things like showing well placed and non-obnoxious image or text ads on your website, you’re likely not going to see anything blocked. In fact, the majority of affiliate links are used in-content, which doesn’t impact any of these display guidelines. All of that said, if you are actively using pop-up ads or interstitial ad serving between page loads, you might see some decline on those ad deliveries.
The second and more important takeaway is that the software that makes affiliate marketing work isn’t suppressed. This is the case for both affiliates who use affiliate links on their websites and the merchants who use AvantLink’s tracking code to detect your referrals and sales.
So, what is the simple take away from all of this? Same as it ever was- keep focused on producing valuable content for your visitors and use affiliate marketing as a way to enhance that content and you’ll be just fine.
New Merchant Program Launches
**AvantLink Australia Launch**
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