We are a generation that is sick of seeing ads for every single thing out there. Firstly, they interrupt what you are doing online then they creep the heck out of you, thereby making you want to block them altogether. And when ads somehow make it past the ad blocker, we are grown to ignore them subconsciously.
Very recently, I was reading an article that had about 7 banner ads on it. When my friend pointed out if I saw the ads on that page, I scrolled back and literally counted each ad that my mind had conveniently ignored. It was shocking but I was very happy that I spared my brain from focusing on the useless advertising that was barely relevant to me.
But why do ads even exist?
Advertising is the key to product discovery. It drives economic growth by telling people about innovations and new services, it helps people choose between several options in the market, it allows some businesses to exist and offer free services to their customers, and more importantly, advertising is just a form of storytelling which allows us to express our personalities.
Well if ads were so necessary then why is advertising sooooo bad today?
The state of advertising today is so bad because of the way ads are executed. The amount of anonymized personal data out there is gigantic and scary. The internet has become the place to freely express ourselves with barely any securities. However, this freedom of expression has cost us our privacy.
Businesses want to offer free trials, subscriptions and services to get you hooked to their products and turn you into a recurring customer. And this is simply because we are a generation that likes subscribing and renting things at our disposition than owning them. The term “ownership” is just too scary for us.
In order to cater to our “subscription” generation, business models have evolved in the same way taking along bad ads for the ride to compensate for free trials. Traditional advertisers who spent millions of dollars on ads could now get the same reach for a cheaper price showing a minimal looking creative and re-targeting the same ad over and over again. This is how we ended up with ads that completely suck.
Every time I see an ad on Facebook for Uncle Drew I watch it. So they show me more ads. At this point I feel like I have seen half the movie. Is anybody else having the same experience? — One of my Facebook friend who was sick of seeing the same ad over and over again
And he is not alone…
91% of people say ads are more intrusive today than 2–3 years ago
87% say there are more ads in general than 2–3 years ago
79% feel like they’re being tracked by retargeted ads.
Bad ads intrude, manipulate and sometimes even offend us.
If it’s one problem that ads look bad and are repetitive then it’s totally different and a much serious problem that ads actually are offensive. Then there are ads that come with the free malware, autoplay, and irrelevant content. Sometimes the messaging is so off which makes me wonder if there are any standards around advertising. There are thousands of boards like IAB that push to set restrictions and standards around ads but somehow they are ineffective because hey…. these boards are overseen by the same advertising giants that show ads to us in the first place.
Well clearly, current advertising is not cutting it for our generation. The number of people with adblockers has grown to 400M and is only expected to rise. Here are the top reasons why people use ad blockers:
- Ads are annoying/intrusive (64%)
- Ads disrupt what I’m doing (54%)
- Ads create security concerns (39%)
- Better page load time/reduced bandwidth use (36%)
- Offensive/inappropriate ad content (33%)
- Privacy concerns (32%)
- Reduced data usage (for mobile plans) (22%)
- I don’t like contributing to a business making money off my browsing (18%)
- Ideological reasons (8%)
In addition to the above reasons, ads today lack transparency and feedback cycle. I am not sure why I am being shown a particular ad and have no way to communicate my experience back to the marketers and brands.
An overly complex and fragmented industry — advertising with so many solutions in the marketplace has somehow successfully managed to be inefficient at winning a consumer’s attention today in a fun, engaging and non-intrusive way.
We simply do not want to be interrupted by those ugly looking popup and banner ads, unskippable “skip ads” on Youtube, and creepy re-targeted ads on Facebook and Instagram which we have seen before.
And this brings me to question — will the world ever be rid of bad ads? Will there ever be ads that I would actually want to experience?
To be continued…..
