OREANDA-NEWS. August 20, 2015. This week, we’re sharing three very different views into the advertising is being transformed, by mobile ad blocking software, the explosion of political ads in the United States, and marketers desire to use their own customer data more effectively.

Today, the adoption of ad blocking software in the United States in desktop browsers is 41% and in the UK is slightly lower, at 34%, according to eMarketer. However, it’s only a small fraction of that for mobile; 11% in the US and 7% in the UK.  But big change is on the horizon; with the introduction of iOS 9.0 in the near future, iPhone and iPad users will be able to natively add ad blocking to their mobile browsers. This will further increase the importance of advertising in native apps, which already consume 88% of mobile user time, because native ads within platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn still appear to users who use ad blocking technology.

Advertising agencies know that political elections mean ads - lots and lots of ads. Pivotal Research Group, via eMarketer, reports that there will be “only” \\$280 million in political ads in the United States this year, but that number will skyrocket to \\$2.6 billion in 2016, a nearly 10x increase. Those ads are being purchased earlier and earlier in the election cycle as advertises use targeting options to reach only their desired audiences. According to TubeMogul, people in early primary states are already seeing a surge in political ads; those stats saw a 84% increase in web pre-roll video ads in June 2015 alone.

Finally, the CMO Council and eMarketer report that marketers still struggle to analyze the data that they collect to create personalized experiences; 33% of marketers say they struggle with this, while only 29% of marketers think that they do it well today.  At Salesforce, we believe using data to create 1-to-1 customer journeys for your customers is essential to building a successful business, and with Salesforce Active Audiences, you can directly connect your customer data to your advertising on Facebook, Twitter, and now Instagram.  Ads are more successful when they target using your own company data.