A certain part of advertising will likely never die off. It’s the type that made the first bird tweet and show off its plumage to say to a prospective mate, “Hey, I’m over here!” That is the essence of advertising. We’re here. Take notice! But unlike the birds, we don’t know when to stop or even which species we are going after so we carpet bomb the world with ads and spam. We are approaching a time of diminishing returns for advertisers, where it can often cost more to run an ad than the the ad brings in revenue. We’ve already hit that point as most people who have tried to buy keywords on Google knows—rarely do you make more than Google made on you and that’s just nonsensical money down the toilet. Google thanks you for your bucks! But it goes well beyond the Google money pit. We’ve had enough! We are now bombarded by some estimates with 5,000 ads PER DAY! Essentially, ALL advertisements have become a form of spam, no matter how fancy and creative they may be. Even ads that are perfectly targeted to your demographic of one are annoying, if not for the fact that someone out there knows what you like and are interested in without you telling them. What they don’t know is how much I loathe their ads, how much money I have (to spend on their product) and my shopping mood so they just keep cramming the same ads into my eyes wherever I go, hoping I will relent. I won’t and it makes me only dislike your product the more you try to hard sell me. It’s like a million used car salesmen everywhere you look. But at least in that case it’s a real person trying instead of some cold algorithm stalking you around the Internet and apps. Ads are getting a bad reputation and we’re mostly not buying what you are selling, folks. So what do we do? We ignore them, we scroll by, we fast-forward our DVR’s past them, we delete the spams, anything but give them our precious time and attention. More than that, we do research when we are interested in something and try to find real users of a product who have real opinions. But even this simple task is clouded with lies and fake reviews. I recently bought bluetooth headphones that seemed to have great reviews and then when it arrived there was a card I could fill out for a $20 rebate if I left a 5-star review on Amazon. Paying me to cheat other potential customers! I felt duped. I was duped. It’s not even that the headphones are bad, it’s that they are cheating and perhaps kept me from looking for even better headphones. How many times have you clicked on one of those desperate series of sensational photos with the big NEXT button and each time you hit next you are served up a disgusting mishmash of ads that fill every void on the page like vermin. Of course just by looking I gave that website some revenues by boosting “impressions” a measure of when an ad is shown to some eyeballs. I make it a point to bail quickly from such pathetic attempts and I make a point to not click any of the ads and boost their revenues further with “clicks,” the next level above impressions. Hyperspam Photo Gallery example Every void in time and space has been filled with advertisements, be they repetitive TV ads, billboards, signs, banner ads, Social Media interruptions or Google keyword ads and more. It’s so pervasive that it must be running on a theory similar to the one used by spammers: if we put it up enough times some tiny percent of the audience is going to get suckered in and buy something like that one person who gave all their money to a Nigerian Prince somewhere out there and emboldened spammers to double down forever. The sad thing is so much of this is simply automated to fish for your clicks and attention. Algorithms and servers churn away and “tag” you with an identifier that follows you around the web because you gave it away at some point. Every time we relent, we reward this behavior and embolden advertisers to continue and to find new ways to invade our minds and eat away some of our time. It’s not healthy. In fact it’s sick behavior. Who would want to have someone over to your house who kept repeating themselves hour after hour, singing the same tune, saying the same words every few minutes? You’d kick them out and never invite them back but this is exactly what we are subjected to. Watch your favorite news show and you will see the same ads over and over with the sinister intent of burrowing into your mind so you can’t forget it. It’s an egregious invasion of the privacy of your thoughts. Such mindless repetition should be illegal. It only angers and gives one antipathy toward the product they are so desperately hocking. Yes, I will remember your product for my “Do Not Buy” list, my “Do Not Ask My Doctor About” list. But of course, I have brilliant friends in the ad business, and myself have been, and I’ve also been a business owner trying to get attention for my software products so I’m not actually opposed to the concept of advertising, only the methods employed. And those shows nee
