• by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, October 15, 2015

A surprisingly frank essay by the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Scott Cunningham today addresses the ad blocking problem with a blunt assessment of how the online ad biz got to this point:

“We messed up,” writes the IAB’s vice president of technology and ad operations in the very first lines an essay that serves as an announcement of a new IAB anti-blocking effort and, significantly, a sort of industry-wide  mea culpa. It’s an interesting read.

“As technologists, tasked with delivering content and services to users, we lost track of the user experience,” he writes.

Cunningham writes, “The fast, scalable systems of targeting users with ever-heftier advertisements have slowed down the public internet and drained more than a few batteries.  We were so clever and so good at it  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.”

Today, the IAB Tech Lab launched what it’s calling the  “L.E.A.N. Ads program,” the letters standing for “Light, Encrypted, Ad-choice supported, Non-Invasive ads.”

Those are “principles,” Cunningham wrote, that will help guide the IAB’s new advertising tech standards, but those standards don’t exist yet.

“L.E.A.N. Ads do not replace the current advertising standards many consumers still enjoy and engage with while consuming content on our sites across all IP enabled devices. Rather, these principles will guide an alternative set of standards that provide choice for marketers, content providers, and consumers,” he wrote.

In an email exchange, Cunningham explained, "We have a Ad Blocking Working Group and all of our other standards creation working groups established to handle the execution of the LEAN principles along side our other work."

Cunningham’s post, after months of muted concern about blocking that only recently became a lot louder, seemed like a step in the Kubler-Ross model. The online ad business seems to have gone from denial, to anger to bargaining, and, if the IAB’s stance means anything at all, is now emerging from depression to some sort of acceptance of the problem.

At the MediaPost Publishing summit in Asheville N.C. that ended yesterday, ad blocking was the 800 pound gorilla that did not sit quietly in the corner of the room. Panel after panel grappled with it including one featuring Ray Faust, vice president of national and emerging seals for the Star-Tribune in Minneapolis.

That paper recently tried a one-day analysis of blocking, determining that of 183,864 visitors to the newspaper site, 20,401 were using blockers. When an on-screen graphic urged them to switch off their devices, that figure fell, but only by 5%.

Many panelists suggested that without some relief,  around 30% of their users will be cruising their sites with ad blockers on, though Faust’s predictions weren’t quite that high. (And one panelist noted that in Germany, ad blocking has become something of a national obsession, with blockers amounting to some 40% of the users on some sites, and growing.)

For publishers, ad blocking is a tricky business. Systems that “block the blockers” are on the market, but those businesses thrive only if the problem keeps getting exposed. Indeed, Tom Sly, Scripps vice president of digital revenue, said that group, which includes several big market TV station Websites, determined that reporting about ad blocking would have the effect of being the way viewers first found that the software existed, exacerbating the situation.