Ad-clog agonistes

Two and a half years ago I wrote this post about the growing plague of ever-more intrusive and distracting (and numerous) ads on the internet.  Since then the problem has, if anything, gotten worse.  Besides the pop-ups, autoplaying videos, ads that shove the text you're reading sideways as they push in from one side, etc., there are now ads that expand into existence from nowhere right in the middle of the column of text, video ads where the pause button doesn't do anything, pop-up ads with no X to close them (or at least none that I can discover), YouTube ads that interrupt the video in the middle instead of just at the beginning, and in the case of one site, video ads that actually forcibly scroll you up or down the page to where the ad is, snatching you away from what you were reading, and keep on doing so again and again when you try to scroll back.  And the sheer quantity of ads, the overall visual clutter, is overwhelming on some sites.

Now comes a consummation supposedly surprising but in fact entirely predictable -- it turns out there's considerable evidence that online ads don't work and are even counterproductive.

The linked post (by writer Charles Hugh Smith) focuses on "data-mining", the practice of using information collected from internet behavior to tailor ads to a particular individual.  We've all seen this.  If your browsing suggests any interest in something commercial, whether by googling a product or service, visiting a vendor's website, or actually buying something online, you'll be barraged with ads for the same or related things wherever you go.  This is supposed to be good for sales because it targets you with ads for things you've already shown an interest in.

But much of that data is, from the advertiser's viewpoint, wrong or misleading.  In many cases, once you buy something, you won't need to buy another one for a long time, or ever.  Somebody who goes to the trouble of researching something they're thinking of buying probably won't be swayed to an impulse purchase by seeing an ad.  An established habit, like going to a particular restaurant or gas station regularly, doesn't need to be reinforced with ads, and if the customer loses interest, a barrage of targeted ads won't help.

(Tip:  With all the concerns about Google collecting information on people, I now mostly use DuckDuckGo instead.  It claims not to track users at all, and appears to be on-the-level.)

But to me the real meat of the matter is something Smith mentions only in passing:

What this tired narrative never includes is my dismissal of the advert as a matter of habit, and the possibility the advert alienates me in longlasting ways. Most of us never look at ads, and the more you make them intrusive, the more we hate the website, the advertiser and whatever product/service is being pitched. Advertisers may have unwittingly poisoned themselves and their product/service. The net result of the data-mined, contextual, statistically targeted advert may well be a consumer who blacklists the pizza shop from then on. This alienation is of course completely opaque to the data-mining software: there are no data traces left by blacklists/alienation.

How in Hell's name is it possible that the people who design these intrusive and aggravating ads didn't anticipate this reaction?  Who are these people who set out to make themselves the internet equivalent of the neighbor blasting loud music, the mosquito buzzing around your head that you can't ignore and can't swat, the door-to-door evangelical pest -- and didn't realize this was going to make people actively reject and avoid whatever they're pushing?

At best such ads must be utterly ineffective. My only reaction to them is to go for the X or pause button to stop them or get rid of them. It's practically an automatic reflex now. I almost never even notice what's being advertised. If the ads are too persistent I'll just abandon trying to read the site and go somewhere else. I can't imagine anyone reacting to the current level of internet ad-clog by actually wanting to buy something that was being thrown at them that way.  And yes, in cases when an ad is so intrusive and annoying that I can't help noticing what it's selling, it does evoke in me an antipathy to that brand or whatever.  To the extent that I remember the ad, it kills any chance that I would ever buy anything from the advertiser.

All this isn't just my opinion.  As Smith points out, Proctor and Gamble recently made deep cuts in its online advertising -- and the effect on sales was zero.  This makes sense only if those ads weren't generating sales in the first place.  Others will take note.  Spending on online ads runs to tens of billions per year nationally.  Once companies realize they can cut or eliminate this expense without negative consequences (and, indeed, with the positive consequence that they are no longer annoying the shit out of potential customers), they will, especially since older forms of advertising with a proven track record of results still exist.  Ad creators will have to earn their paychecks by making ads that people actually find appealing and want to see instead of just getting in your face over and over.

So hang in there.  Companies are starting to realize that online advertising is a Potemkin village built of hype with no substance to it, and in many cases is actively damaging their interests.  The free market will work its magic and the siege of ads that make reading some of your favorite sites so exasperating will abate.  We will be avenged upon our tormentors.