Something doesn’t ad up about America’s advertising market

&gt; In the analogue era the rule of thumb was that ads could comprise no more than 33-50% of TV or radio programming, or of a magazine’s pages, says Rishad Tobaccowala, of Publicis, an advertising firm.<p>My tolerance is <i>way</i> lower than that now. Commercial TV is basically unwatchable, as is commercial radio. The internet is pretty horrible without an ad blocker. Anything more than 10-20% advertising just gets turned off immediately.

This isn&#x27;t a particularly new insight :-). And the phenomenal rise in the use of ad blockers, dvrs that skip commercials, and direct to streaming services suggest that not only has &quot;big advertising&quot; poisoned the commons they are at risk to training an entire generation in the art of avoiding their product. It&#x27;s my hope that they entire house of cards will collapse.<p>There clearly are &quot;good&quot; advertising options. People will often read topic specific periodicals (magazines, newsletters, Etc.) both for the editorial content and the advertising of service providers surrounding the topic. And of course there are people who will be more excited about the advertisements on the Superbowl next weekend than the game. But advertising as envisioned by Google and Facebook feel like they are under siege and there is a race to the bottom in terms of what advertisers will pay, and so how much they &#x27;care&#x27; about the end product.<p>The growing battle will be advertisements &quot;embedded&quot; in content. People can already replace billboards in movies or on Youtube with ads for actual products. At some point these &#x27;insertion points&#x27; will be programmed in as meta-data in the distribution of content so that they can be added in on site. Things from store fronts to the vehicles in the scene are up for dynamic replacement.

I&#x27;m a Millenial and I have a hard time believing advertisers have gotten a positive return from what they&#x27;ve spent advertising to adult me. Clicking on an ad is always unintentional. Pop-ups are closed immediately and automatically, as are auto-playing videos. Other ads are scrolled past as quickly as possible to remove them from my field of view. And all this is when I don&#x27;t have an ad blocker running.<p>TV is almost unwatchable now because of ads. I can tolerate them for an hour or so, but past this I get anxiety and then frustration from seeing them if they aren&#x27;t muted. At some point I begin to feel irrational hostility to the brands on TV.<p>I struggle to remember the last time I saw an ad that triggered real curiosity or a desire to purchase something. Usually I&#x27;ll hear about things I want from personal channels, by seeking them out myself, or from mailing lists I&#x27;ve explicitly signed up for.<p>Of course, maybe I&#x27;m being influenced in ways I don&#x27;t realize or understand. But I kind of doubt the effect is very large. I compare products on ingredients, price, utility, etc. and make a decision from there. There are a handful of brands which have intrinsic value to me, but it&#x27;s because of good experiences and recommendations from people I trust, not ads.<p>I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;m atypical for my demographic, and there seem to be others who concur [0] [1]. Whether it&#x27;s the majority, I&#x27;m not sure, but a sizable chunk seem to have become averse&#x2F;resistant to traditional in-your-face, attention monopolizing ads. Influencers, sponsored content, and product placement may have better reach in the near future among these people. There&#x27;s also IoT purchasing interfaces like Amazon Echo and Google Home which stand to be a powerful gatekeeper to products.<p>It&#x27;ll be interesting to see how this turns out and whether the marginal influence of an ad increases or decreases over time as AI, surveillance, and micro-targeting improve and as society and culture respond.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;danielnewman&#x2F;2015&#x2F;04&#x2F;28&#x2F;research-shows-millennials-dont-respond-to-ads&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;danielnewman&#x2F;2015&#x2F;04&#x2F;28&#x2F;researc...</a><p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sfgate.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;article&#x2F;Millennials-really-hate-advertising-study-finds-7393642.php" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sfgate.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;article&#x2F;Millennials-really-ha...</a>

These valuations aren&#x27;t necessarily just a bet on advertising as we know or imagine it. At least for FB and Google, the assets that give them power to direct attention to ads can potentially be monetized in other ways if ads stop being the most lucrative.<p>And conversely, if you don&#x27;t own an asset that redirects a massive amount of attention, you can&#x27;t launch any kind of product without getting help from someone who does (whether you call that help advertising or not).

Many people scorn others for blocking ads. I&#x27;d be taking in content without paying back. But honestly I see it like this:<p>If I walk down the street and someone hands me a flyer that says: new shop open at X! Come now for discount.<p>I&#x27;d consider that fair advertising. But what happens on the internet nowadays is more like this:<p>&quot;Hello. Our cameras saw you stared into the windows at shop X, Y and Z. Our system also noticed you are walking slower than usual and your phone regularely turned on during the last 3 nights. Are you not sleeping well? Get a better bed! Come to this shop.&quot;<p>That is basically how intrusive online ads are. And I have absolutely 0,00 regret about taking meassures to block this 24&#x2F;7 subconscious priming from my life.<p>If content creators don&#x27;t like this they should find a different business model.

When cable TV was starting out in US, one of the advertised pros was no commercials on cable TV.

I find the best, most interesting ads to be podcast ads. I&#x27;ve bought or recommended a number of products based on them - Backblaze, Casper, Betterment, Hover, Squarespace, etc.<p>Others I&#x27;m very interested in trying - Warby Parker, Away Travel, Linode and Fracture come to mind.<p>I can&#x27;t think of a single podcast ad that I think is total rubbish.<p>On the same note, Marco Arment created his own podcast ad platform for his Overcast podcast player that is unobtrusive, informative and I actually consider it feature.<p>Podcast ads and the direct response model must be working because the same companies are represented in most of the popular tech podcasts year after year. They have metrics to know exactly which podcasts generate traffic.

Call me paranoid but y’all seem petty unfazed by the seriousness of what’s being presented here.<p>Google and Facebook are going to stop growing in the next ten years which means unless cars start driving themselves soon, the gravy train is coming to a screeching halt.<p>That’ll be a site to see.

Advertisers, save for big brands, would not spend money on ads if they did not convert eyeballs to customers. The entire marketing industry is built around measuring traffic and conversions, and setting bid prices accordingly. So clearly advertising is “working” in some capacity. It generates value by providing a growth engine. A new company today can use advertising to reach an audience greater than ever in the past. My intuition is that this has to be adding real value, somehow.

A lot of people have commented on native advertising being on the rise. Does the saturation of traditional ads mean we&#x27;ll see more native advertising or will we adapt and better recognize native advertising too? Will we get more skeptical and untrustworthy of content in general?

Public link anyone?

<p><pre><code> IMAGINE a world in which you are manipulated by intelligent advertisements from dusk until dawn. It may sound outlandish, but this dystopia is increasingly what stockmarket investors are banking on. </code></pre> Except ads don&#x27;t actually manipulate me. I know they don&#x27;t because I don&#x27;t even have the money to spend on the things advertisers show me. When I do have disposable money (a rare event) there are specific projects that I plan during the lean times. Those projects get well researched, and aren&#x27;t impulsive, emotional events.<p>Day-to-day spending also is not swayed by advertisements. There are real reasons behind the choices I make, and those ideas, opinions and motivations don&#x27;t source their information from advertisers. I&#x27;m not charmed by entreaties that pander to my niche demographic.<p>Advertising has one rare utility, in shedding light on things that are new. The cliche being that everything is &quot;new and improved&quot; if you believe what ads are trying to sell you.<p>The people that try new things are the targets, and learning who will try something new, and who will spread positive word-of-mouth endorsements, is the holy grail of advertising, but realistically most people do research and find real evidence, before parting with their money.<p>Ads can notify a person of presence, but in practice, people really do operate carefully before accepting invitations to buy, or R.S.V.P. with their wallets.