Business Analytics Capstone
Framework for Strategy
Philipp Thomas Stute
09th April 2020
Problem Statement
Problem Statement–
Overview of the problem of Adblockers on GYFs
• Major portion of GYFs revenue comes from selling advertising to companies who place ads on
GYF’s digital services
• GYF users see advertisement on GYF sites, services and third-party apps/sites
• GYF has followed the trend and transitioned to mobile advertising, which lead to a 70% part of
GYF’s total digital ad revenue
• Since the introduction of adblockers like AdblockPlus they have become a significant risk for
companies like GYF, that make most of their revenue with digital advertisement services.
• To begin with, the principle of adblockers and their increasing use will be outlined, followed by
their effect on stakeholders and on GYF.
Problem Statement–
The working principle of Adblockers
• Adblockers are software solutions capable of removing or altering online advertising in a web or mobile
browser or nowadays even in an application.
• Market leader in adblocking solutions is Adblock Plus, mainly used as a browser extension
• Adblocking has also become popular on mobile devices. With the introduction of iOS9 Apple integrated
adblocking in their safari browser.
Source: Mobile adblock report 2016 from Blockthrough/PageFair
• End of 2016: 615 million adblocking devices, 62% of those mobile
• 17% year-on-year growth
Problem Statement–
The working principle of Adblockers
There are a lot of
motivations behind
adblock usage:
The main motivation is,
that users feel more
secure using adblockers,
they feel less interruptions
and faster website loading
Source: Mobile adblock report 2016 from Blockthrough/PageFair
Problem Statement–
Effect on stakeholders
There are mainly three stakeholders effected by the use of adblockers:
1. Publishers
• Publishers rely on revenue from ad-clicks to compensate for website hosting and their own expenses
• Usage of adblockers diminishes their revenue, because ads do not get displayed to all website users
• Alternatives are mandatory or opt-in paywalls to support creation of free content. This however might reduce the number of
visitors. A study by PageFair showed, that this measures reduces the number of website visitors by as much as 75%
2. Advertisers
• The usage of adblockers limits the outreach of advertisers to less people thus diminishing the effectiveness of digital advertising
• Advertisers would in consequence be unable to deliver tailored marketing and offers to customers, which could effect the
relationship between the advertisers and their customers leading to less revenue
• This could lead to advertisers returning to traditional, but expensive advertising like billboard advertising, or TV advertising
3. Ad-serving companies like GYF
• With low revenue to publishers and insufficient customer outreach the revenue streams of GYF advertising space would
be greatly reduced.
• This could lead to a shift from digital advertisement to old traditional advertisement, like billboards or TV ads
• Adblockers may charge ad publishers like GYF to be whitelisted by default, which would have a big impact on GYFs
profitability
• GYF may suffer from diminishing digital advertisement by publishers, as they could tend to create their own apps,
which would have a huge impact on GYFS revenue
• Platforms like Facebook or AppleNews could became dangerous for GYFs strategy as publishers might tend to publish
their content on these platforms
Problem Statement–
Application Exercise 1 – Research Methods and Tools (Optional)
1. Given your definition of the problem faced by GYF, what type(s) of research will you employ to learn more about
the strategy the DATA Team should pursue?
I would consider using causal research methods as we have clearly defined the problem of
adblockers on publishers, advertisers and ad-serving companies like GYF. Having defined the
problem gives us the ability to ask the correct questions.
1. 2. What research tools could you use to conduct that research?
I would use focus groups. I also would use social media data, as well as mobile data, that allows us
exploring, how many people and especially who (on a customer analytics perspective) uses
adblockers. Big data could help us exploring who uses adblockers and on what websites and
services, thus helping us to draw conclusions from this.
