The Beer Boys have come together to back Obama! Here is a 2008 rendition of the Budweiser Wassup Campaign from 2000 that is adapted for the Obama presidential campaign. Although I think this idea did outlive its appeal on television sets, to see it resurface in the context of the U.S. election is a delight. This goes to show that good ideas, even those that have gone stale can be reused and adapted for other brands through capitalizing on the relationships that were formed by a legacy brand. In this case, the Obama brand is clearly benefiting from its genius. Enjoy!

So I covered a story about AdBlock Plus yesterday and one of my subscribers (whose primary source of revenue is from ad banners) reacted rather acerbically toward them.

Unfortunately, we now live in an online world run by social behaviors that naturally work toward a tipping point and there is little you can do to stop Adblock Plus’ proliferation except at the policy level.

If you are for it, you don’t need to rally support because people are being recommended the plug-in upon installation of Firefox 3.0 and its immediate benefits to the user seems to justify their action. However, if the Internet is not monetized through online advertising, users won’t be able to get content for free anymore. Somebody has to pay for it and that person will likely be the user. There’s no such thing as a free meal and ad dollars keep websites running and content creators paid.

Still, that is not going to change the fact that people hate banner ads and will block them to create some mental peace and quiet. So, how can we all win?

You’ll have to wait for my next post to read about how I would work around this problem.

Whatever your position, here are more leads to other people who are discussing about the Adblock Plus.

Firefox and AdBlock Plus
Jason Dunn, JasonDunn.com, June 24th, 2008

Drugs and Adblock Plus shouldn’t be in the hands of everyone else
Andrew Brown, The Guardian.co.uk May 1st, 2008

AdBlock Plus can quietly kill ads – and perhaps the internet economy
Nick Carr, Guardian.co.uk – Sept 20th, 2007

Who blocks the (ad) blockers?
Chris Soghoian, CNET News.com Sept 11, 2007

Whiting Out the Ads, but at What Cost?
Noam Cohen, NYTimes.com Sept 3rd, 2007

Adblock Plus threatens the online revenue model
Noam Cohen, International Herald Tribune Sept 2nd, 2007

Feel free to let me know what you think.

Never mind how grateful I am of the speed of Firefox 3.0, today I want to talk about this handy add-on tool Adblock Plus which enables users to block banner ads directly on websites and what that means to the online ad industry.

The first thing you have to realize is that we are not talking about pop-up blockers anymore. We’re blatantly talking about “Ad” blockers, that’s right, particularly AdBlock Plus which was developed by Wladimir Palant. This add-on literally shuts off all banner ads with the click of a button to all the websites that display ads. Major media owners like Yahoo are not exempt from it either. No ad space can escape the eradicative powers of the AdBlock Plus.

There is no harsher reality to the traditional online advertising industry than this. Adblock Plus has logged 21,434,766 downloads (as of today). That’s 21 million 4 hundred thousand and bla bla bla… people and their machines, and that is only for the Firefox browser; I think you get the idea.

I downloaded and tried it and it stripped and got rid of all the ads on all the websites I frequent, no joke.

Here’s an example of what RedHerring.com looks like normally.

This is what RedHerring.com looks like after I enabled AdBlock Plus on Firefox 3.0.

Here’s another example of what CNET.com looks like normally.

And here is what CNET.com looks like when AdBlock Plus is turned on.

Notice there are no ads!

With 21.4 million downloads to AdBlock Plus, this renders all banner ads useless because it won’t even show up with the tool turned on. This feature is not media-owner controlled, it is user-controlled so there goes your audience. They choose not to be your audience!

I question how and why internet advertisers believe their ad banners are communicating the right messages across. Common sense stuff… people are hating banner ads to the core because they are distracting, intrusive, and annoying. The only banners they don’t mind clicking on are (frankly) from sources that they trust and the deal has to be really, really good. For example, if HSBC advertised an offer of a “no-questions asked” 10% interest paid on a month-to-month basis on your Savings account if you switch from your current bank to HSBC, yes, you’re going to get millions of people clicking on it. Still, with AdBlock Plus, even ads I don’t mind clicking won’t be showing up anymore.

People channel surf on TV during advert slots. With the web, they’ll turn you off completely because they can. The only way users cannot turn you off is if you infiltrate and build your brand and products into the very marrow and breath of the content they bask themselves in.

Although this post is not about my proposed strategies (you can hire me for that ) a good example would be to have a brand like Pizza Hut build an online ordering facility for home delivery into a virtual world for online RPG games like the SIMS, instead of offering coupons online via ad space.

There are no absolute answers and ad space will still generate revenue for media owners, but with things like the AdBlock Plus being allowed to exist, online banner days will soon come to an end.