Advertising is Fucked by Andrew Reed

As it sits, advertising is a major kink in user experience.

The way that advertising is currently utilized, it conforms too harshly to profits, and ignores user experience.

I sense a conflict coming on the web...Advertisements are annoying and something needs to change about them - and I don't mean simply blocking content when an adblocker is detected. There is a large population of people who hate advertisements. Enough to install an adblocker on their browser to keep these ads from displaying. Personally, I use AdBlock. It’s reliable and simple.

There is also a large population of businesses who rely on ads as a passive source of income. However, these businesses ignore how disruptive these ads are to the people who don't give a flying fuck about the newest games or products to buy -- especially if the user simply came to the website to read one article. It's the whole that adblockers exist in the first place.

It’s time to suck it up and face the fact: a huge portion of your users are there only to digest your content, and in a lot of cases no matter what you stick in front of them, they’re not buying. So when business owners began realizing that users felt this way, what did they do instead of putting money into finding different, more reliable revenue streams?

They put money into content-blocking adblock...blockers.

That was awkward to say...but yep...they cling so strongly to that passive ad-revenue that they are willing to force disruption onto their users by detecting whether or not an ad-blocker is being used. Then if an adblocker is being used, they hide the website from view and place a notice telling the user to turn it off in order to view the content. They'll sometimes offer a subscription option as well, that disables the ads. (wired.com has a perfect example of this.)

My reaction whenever that happens? "Fuck you." (among other things) Then I close the website and I make a mental note to avoid that website.

There are various reasons why I feel this way about “adblock-blockers”

First, As a collective, ads aren’t safe.

The more ads that you are exposed to, the higher the likelihood is that you will be inadvertently exposed to spyware and other forms of malware simply for visiting a website that has ads on it. I once paused my adblocker (silly me) for a moment, because I needed to access a client’s website for content that was behind an “adblock-blocker wall”. Within that few minutes of grabbing content, my antivirus program pinged me roughly 25 times, from various pages, telling me that something on the website was trying to install itself onto my computer.

For those who care, this is known as “malvertising.” It’s when advertisement service-provider’s campaign programs are infiltrated by third parties, who inject malicious code into their own ads, and then remove it before being detected. In the short time that the malicious code is in place, depending on the traffic volume, they have the opportunity to strike a very large number of users. The worst part is that the users do not even have to click on the advertisement, in order to be infected. Especially if they are not utilizing antivirus properly (and we all know that many, many people do not properly pay attention to their antivirus). Once the virus infiltrates the user, it is free to spread from that user to friends and family, and then so-on and so-forth.

Even if they were 100% safe, I don't like ads in the way that they are currently being utilized.

Chances are, I'm only on your website because a friend sent me a link to one specific article on your website. I've never heard of you before this encounter. So what makes you believe that I believe your content is worth me exposing myself to the ads, when you didn't even let me read one paragraph before blocking it? No matter how nicely you ask, I'm not disabling it for that one article, and I will just leave instead.

Okay...you have a subscription option, too.

And you’re using your “adblock-blocker” as an opportunity to call the user’s attention to it. That’s clever, but (again) this is the first time I've ever seen you, so why would I feel comfortable giving you my card information and/or subscribing to content when I have no idea what quality it (or the rest of your content) holds because you blocked it before I could even read the first paragraph.

I'm all for content writers getting what's due to them, but...

Content providers need to find a way that allows them to get that revenue without disrupting their users with irrelevant information. Maybe a system of advertisements that are 100% customizable by the user for what type of ads they see? Rather than having google try to to auto-display ads based on what data they've collected on the person, make it so that I (as a user) could literally go into a dashboard, and pick what type of ads I wouldn’t mind seeing. For example, I'd be 100% fine with ads if the only ads that I saw were ads related to Web Design and Development, certain types of music, home & living items such as furniture, pillows, sculptures etc. and maybe gardening/landscaping too -- because that stuff relevant to me and would actually contain products and services that I am interested in.

Facebook attempted this by allowing you to manage ad preferences. However, they stopped at the halfway point because their shareholders don't like the users having the control to do that. They're paying Facebook to target certain audiences for them, so they don't want those certain audiences to have the option to tune them out by joining other audiences.

The bottom line

I don’t know about you...but when I am "absorbing" information...whether it be learning by reading an article, or watching a movie on TV, I want to be able to submerse myself in it. It is annoying that we live in a world where businesses and corporations believe that we need to be interrupted every 5 seconds with irrelevant advertisements (commercials, website banners, etc) in order to buy their shit that 99.9% of us ignore anyway. Our time and attention is not theirs by default. It's why I stopped watching cable, too. It seems like 10 minutes of whatever show/movie, followed by 15 minutes of commercials.

Instead of marketing being all about "target audiences" that you force yourself onto, why not make it to where your "target audiences" have the option to target you instead? Allow them to have the option to put their personal preferences into play, rather than trying to auto-detect them via advanced algorithms that end up being irrelevant anyway.

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I’m curious.

How do you react to ads? This has all been based on my personal reaction, as well as how I’ve seen friends and family treat advertisements. I’ll hear a muttered “go away” when an advertisement pops up on a website that we’re viewing together, or I’ll hear a subtle groan when commercials begin while watching a television show. I'm curious as to how relevant those reactions are to people outside of my own circle. Let me know in the comments!