Native contextual advertising company, Vibrant Media, announced on Wednesday the release of new technology that cuts the weight of its native ad products by 75% to 30.5KB. This
includes in-text, in-image, out-of-stream video and high impact native ad formats.
The development of this new technology adheres to new principles put forward in the Interactive
Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) new LEAN initiative. LEAN refers to advertisements that are “light, encrypted, ad choice supported and non-invasive.”
According to
Vibrant, the smaller ad formats will cut down on ad-blocking software downloads. “If other players in the industry start to act on the IAB’s LEAN initiative, we would expect to see a
reduction in the rate of people downloading ad blockers,” Craig Gooding, founder and executive chairman of Vibrant Media, told Real-Time Daily via email.
An IAB UK
study noted that 54% of people who use ad blockers do so because ads slow down their browsing experience.
“When you’re hitting ad weights of around 30KB, the impact of
digital advertising on the download of web pages is unnoticeable,” added Gooding. “Advertising needs to fit seamlessly into the consumer’s browsing experience - not just by being
native, relevant and entertaining -- but also technically.”
Getting below 30.5KB “will be a huge challenge,” according to Gooding. “However, we’d never say never.
Technology is amazing.” Importantly, according to Vibrant, the reduction in ad weight does not affect the quality of the creative.