Ranting About Online Ads
What It Would Take For Me To Disable AdBlock
The most notable player in the online advertising space currently would be Google. Google has faced consecutive quarters facing issues around their advertising revenue. Well, this shouldn’t be a huge shock as the shift users moving from desk to mobile. The mobile shift isn’t the only factor though; the other piece is that nearly everyone now runs AdBlock.
The advertising world is still stuck in the 90s and hasn’t caught up.
1)The Platform Is Lacking In Intelligence
The existing advertising platforms given to publishers is rather lacking on learning individual users. Users shouldn’t be shown the same ad multiple times when the user hasn’t shown an interest.
I don’t have a drivers license, I’ve never owned a vehicle, I have never clicked on an automobile ad and or visited any dealer’s website. There are times on Youtube when an ad about a truck will repeatedly be shown to me. This same advertising tactic happens with beauty products for women. I’m not a female, never have I made a purchase for any beauty products, and I’ve never provided any behaviour to trigger showing interest in those ads.
Advertising like this is a waste of my time, waste of advertising dollars, and this shouldn’t be happening.
2)Problems With Live Content
Let’s start with the fact that most ads the audio is not normalized with the video. Nobody wants to go deaf because the advertisement’s audio doesn’t match the video’s audio volume.
I run AdBlock religiously on Twitch. The reason I run Adblock is that some ads interrupt critical moments in the live stream. Hear me out, I know the ad has to play at some point, and I’m fine with that. How I wish the system worked was that when the ad needs to play the video player buffers out the live stream. The ideal scenario would be once the advertisement had finished the stream continues from where it was before the ad. This scenario would work by having the ad play and then the video player playing at a 5–10% increased speed to catch up to the actual live stream.
3)Educate & Enforcing Quality
The days of simply mass bombarding people with a product are over. Consumers expect condense and or extraordinary quality ads. Youtube’s advertisers have been producing quality ads; I have even caught myself watching the Youtube ads instead of just spamming the skip button.
Advertisers should be shown what a successful advertisement is. Providing an open platform that shows the top ranking advertisements on Youtube would likely help others produce higher quality ads.
The other solution to force ads of high quality is to shut down ads that are producing terrible results. This solution reminds me of the Uber taxi rating system works. e.g. If the driver consistently is below 4.4 stars, they’re terminated. If the video advertisement is skipped 98% of the time, then the platform would issue a warning about the advertisement needing to be revised. Failure to revise the ad and the continual high skip to watch ratio would result in the ad being suspended.
Wrap Up
I’m willing to watch ads instead of paying for a service. The problem is that the majority of ads are absolute garbage. Produce quality ads and I think AdBlock wouldn’t be as rampant.
