What advertisers call “consumers” have become extremely wary of advertising. And the fault lies mostly on the advertisers themselves. For decades, ads were intended to manipulate people into buying things they didn’t need and content was created primarily to serve eyeballs to advertisers. Ads have been the bane of any entertainment experience, the Super Bowl not withstanding.
The age of ad blocking has arisen and now advertisers are beginning to feel its impact. Bots waste their revenue and their key demographics can now choose to make their ads invisible. Ideally, ads support the user experience, however that has not been anyone’s experience of late. Publishers are the ones who suffer most since their carefully created content is quickly becoming unsustainable if they continue to be so reliant on ads. George Simpson (@geosimpson) from Media Post describes this dynamic in greater detail.