If the ad experience fundamentally changed you would still not want to be exposed to them? Can I ask, honestly, whether you feel annoyed when you see advertising on billboards, buses, Piccadilly Circus etc. whilst out and about? How about in newspapers and magazines? Or is your negative perception of advertising specifically aimed towards digital?
I don't want my answers to your questions to detract from my points about digital ads, so I'm going to set out my main complaints with digital ads first.
- Ads cost performance, hugely. Like many here I paid a premium for a good internet connection and hardware and I want to control what uses my expensive resources, this is even more important on mobile, which is the growing device segment. I'm also partly answering this as a developer highly concerned with performance professionally. Imagine a car designer makes a super safe car, only to see someone else selling a car without seat belts. Ads as they stand are a major reputation hit for my profession.
- Ads take up screen real-estate. Main complaints are pixels on the screen or time in videos, but it can be more subtle than that. Again, as a developer, usability is very important to me, content should be presented in the most accessible and usable way, and ads always break that. This shouldn't be overlooked, it's a legal requirement not to discriminate against disabled people.
- Ads are abused. This is a general point about security and privacy which doesn't require explanation. The underlying point is one of human nature, there'll always be someone looking to take advantage of this sort of opportunity. It's my responsibility to protect me, it isn't reasonable to 'trust' someone else to do that on my behalf.
- Ads impact content. Sites competing for clicks and hits take steps which make their content worse but result in more traffic, e.g. clickbait. I think we all have a duty to block ads to make that business model not profitable. Ads are so prolific because most people don't block them.
Q: If the ad experience fundamentally changed you would still not want to be exposed to them?
A: I would still not want to be exposed to them. I think whichever way the experience changed, the issues I set out above would still be present to a large degree.
Q: Can I ask, honestly, whether you feel annoyed when you see advertising on billboards, buses, Piccadilly Circus etc. whilst out and about?
A: I'm not paying for the billboard, I'm not trying to use the billboard for something else, so it's not nearly as annoying as digital advertising.
Q: How about in newspapers and magazines?
A: Similar to junk mail, there's a special place in hell for people who cut down trees to produce paper to print something on it that most people immediately put in the recycle bin.
Q: Or is your negative perception of advertising specifically aimed towards digital?
A: More broadly, the entire point of advertising is to generate demand. To make you spend money on something you otherwise wouldn't have spent money on. Advertising is psychological warfare. It is a direct attack on me which exploits the flaws in my brain, and so the correct response is to protect myself and to fight back.
