this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
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Many moons ago I worked briefly on an ad prototype that aimed to replace banner ads, particularly those that sit in content with a single bottom overlay that would "smartly" unobstruct the viewing experience of the page. I was able to reduce a full page of horrible ads into a single box at the bottom of the page that could be closed whenever.
The idea fell completely flat for various reasons, but some off the top of my head:
The sad stat that came out was that obtrusive ads, the kind that used popups or automatically opened apps to download were VERY effective. I could prove that my ads were several times more effective than "normal" banner ads and popups, but when you could sell 10x the ads it didn't matter if they were 10x more effective.
My brief stint in advertising made me feel that for many years people didn't care about those that blocked ads because there was always more shit to optimise or grow into. That has stagnated, so now the likes of Google are targeting "market share" by getting those that block ads to look at ads again. It won't work, at all, but it feels like they've now optimised themselves into a hole.
What they're "forgetting" is that those who block ads are more likely to say "fuck product X I'll never buy it because of this ad" if forced to see an ad. (Well, they don't care, they know, but they can still sell the "spot" so to speak because the advertisers themselves are dumb enough not know that it is just shooting themselves in the foot.)
This demographic is much, much smaller than you probably assume it is--I mean 'statistically insignificant' small.
It very well may be bigger than you think, there's a reason all the adblock users use adblock, and I know multiple people who do the same thing, and even more that while they may not say "fuck your ad I'll buy your competitor," they will only buy the product if they were already going to buy it through their own independent research or word of mouth from trusted friends.
Honestly, I'm not sure I've ever met anyone that bought something from a popup or ad in the middle of a news article, maybe the first few "sponsored links" on google when they google the product anyway and were already looking for that amazon link, but that's about it.
It's ironic, they depend on perpetual growth, which means the more efficient they get at growing, the faster they outgrow their effective markets and then end up in a position where they need to further optimize optimal positions.
Sure, there's probably smaller optimizations they could make, but they don't just depend on growth but a certain % of growth.
Cornering markets is the beginning of the end for businesses in our growth obsessed system.