Happy Friday, all! We hope you’ve had a great week. In this week’s edition of Five on Friday, eMarketer shares why it believes consumers need choices to stop them from using ad blockers, Kissmetrics tells us why customer empowerment is the way to improve retention, Tubefilter shares that “YouTuber” is the most desired career (yikes!), CIO offers 9 crazy-useful PC productivity apps, and Moz explains how small digital publishers can grow their network and save time. We’re all for being more productive, saving time and growing our network. We can’t wait to read their top tips!

Consumers Need Choices to Stop Them from Using Ad Blockers

eMarketer recently interviewed Brian Kane, co-founder and COO of Sourcepoint, a content compensation platform for publishers, about ad blocking in Europe. Kane estimates that, across platforms and publishers they work with, the rate of ad blocking in the U.K. is about 18 percent, with slightly higher rates in France and Germany.

However, data shows that ad blocking rates have stabilized or decreased. He believes that is due to publishers trying to take control of the user conversation. Some publishers have locked content from users when their ad blockers are turned on, and users are asked to whitelist those sites to get access to content.

“Ad blocking is a symptom of this broken communication between media companies and consumers about how content is paid for. Publishers need to illuminate that value exchange,” says Kane.

The key is opening the conversation with readers. Kane says the publisher default is to use advertising as a revenue stream which he thinks is an old model. Instead, publishers should give readers the option to opt in using their preferred method: a) whitelist the site, b) opt-in to advertising, or c) leave. Kane says more than 50 of users will opt in to advertise when given that as a choice. There’s now a fourth option – giving consumers the ability to pay for ad-free content or in an “ad-lite environment.”

Read the full interview with Kane on eMarketer here, including Kane’s predictions for the future of ad blocking.

The Most Desired Career: YouTuber

Yes, you read that right. According to a recent survey of 1,000 kids and teens aged six to 17 conducted by travel company First Choice, quoted by Tubefilter, one-third said they wanted to be a YouTuber. Apparently, that’s a legitimate career aspiration. Young people are drawn to creative careers with an emphasis on self-expression. Seventy-five percent want a career in the online video industry, 1 in 5 want to be a pop star, and 1 in 25 want to be a model.

First Choice listed the following as the top 10 jobs kids want:

• YouTuber
• Blogger/vlogger
• Musician/Singer
• Actor
• Filmmaker
• Doctor/Nurse
• TV presenter
• Athlete/Teacher
• Writer
• Lawyer

Kissmetrics: Customer Empowerment is the Key to Great Retention Rates

As much as we want every customer to be a long-term one, that isn’t realistic. There will always be churn. Kissmetrics quotes an annual report from Recurly that shows the average quarterly customer churn rate for subscription services of physical goods is 10.6 percent, while average quarterly churn rates for digital subscription services are around 8.25 percent.

Subscription companies, however, can improve retention by taking active measures. First, companies need to understand how much customer churn costs them. When you lose a customer, not only do you lose their subscription revenue, but you also lose potential revenue because loyal customers tend to spend more money, more often. Also, for every customer you save, you are also saving customer acquisition costs which are said to be five times more expensive than retaining an existing customer.

Kissmetrics says the way to retain loyal customers is by “fostering experiences that empower your audience.”

“You must leave them with positive emotions about what your product or service can do for them, their goals, their challenges, or their quality of life. That’s what inspired them to do business with you in the first place, isn’t it?

Customer empowerment can’t be improvised. It must be an in-depth, planned process involving steps both before and after they become your customers. Let’s look at some tactics for minimizing churn by maximizing a sense of customer empowerment throughout the customer lifecycle,” says Kissmetrics.

They offer a few ways to empower customers:

• Celebrate how your product impacts your customers’ lives and goals.
• Share with customers ways to better use your product through education (e.g., webinars, blogs, ebooks, instructional videos, etc.)
• When the time is right, offer an upsell such as a new feature or a different subscription tier that better meets their changing needs.
• Ask your subscribers what they need.

For more useful information on empowering your subscribers to improve retention, read the full Kissmetrics article here.

CIO.com: 9 Crazy-Useful PC Productivity Apps

Many of us have multiple devices, but according to CIO.com, PCs are still the primary interface through which we work. That said, we want to be as efficient and productive as possible while using a PC. To that end, Paul Mah recently offered these 9 crazy-useful PC productivity apps via CIO.com.

1. TidyTabs for organizing and tabbing multiple windows from different applications
2. AquaSnap for managing and tiling windows from different applications
3. MultiMonitorTool for working on multiple monitors
4. MusicBee to manage, find and play music files on your computer
5. Airfoil for streaming audio from your computer to your network
6. Nitro Pro for reading and editing PDF files
7. Snagit for simple, powerful screen capturing and screen recording
8. PhraseExpander for expediting data entry tasks, ideal for doctors, customer care and IT
9. RescueTime for time management by tracking time spent on apps and websites

For more information on these helpful tools, read Mah’s article on CIO.com.

Small Digital Publishers Can Compete with the Big Dogs

Being a small digital or niche publisher can be challenging in our fast-moving, crazy-competitive media landscape. But they can still successfully attract new audiences and compete with bigger publications by using content marketing and search marketing concepts, says Moz. They offer these tips for consideration.

1. Platforms like Google AMP, Google News and Medium, as well as social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, are great opportunities to share content.
2. Content marketing tools like CoSchedule, BuzzSumo and Canva can help reduce the number of tasks a small publisher needs to manage each day. Canva, for example, is ideal for quick, quality graphics when your designer is busy or, gasp, you don’t have one!
3. Identifying and focusing on your niche can be advantageous in building an audience, says Moz. To find your audience, define your own unique voice and advertisers and readers alike will find you and share with like-minded folks.
4. Focus on quality, not quantity. The quality of your content is at least as important, if not more so, than the frequency of your posts. Pay attention to what your readers what, says Moz.

Get more tips for small digital publishers from Lydia Gilbertson for Moz here.

We hope you enjoyed this week’s Five on Friday! Do you have topic ideas or suggestions for future Five on Friday columns? Do you want to hear more about SEO, productivity tips, or industry news?  If so, email me at [email protected]. I’d love to hear how we can help you be more successful! Have a great weekend.