IAB’s war on Adblock is stupid

Here’s the thing:

Ads are unnatural.

Ads are a vestigial remanent from a time where the only way to get attention was to interrupt the consumer. Magazines, TV, Radio, every content platform, on every single age before the Internet, had a way to interrupt the viewer into watching ads. We might even conclude that the content was placed there so people would watch more ads. You’re still basing your model on the current idea of Ads, just changing the motivation to watch them. Instead of content, consumers would watch them for money. This has nothing to do with the root of the problem.

Digital platforms are not “interruptive”, not by design. There is nothing to interrupt when browsing the web because users have control of their experience and even if we find a way to interrupt them, they have the tools, knowledge and communication skills to develop their own solutions not to be interrupted when consuming content. What is broken is the idea of Ads themselves. Ads are obsolete, are unnatural to the digital age.

People hate ads because people see absolutely no benefit to being interrupted while online, because they could just close the web page and do something else. They don’t think about it as a way to monetize or support the content they are consuming, they KNOW that they can just get that same content somewhere else. We’re inundated by content, saturated by it. There is not the slightest concern if a content provider goes out of business for not having ad revenue. Consumers have zero motivations to see ads, therefore Ads themselves are broken. And that’s good.

Why do we still need ads in an age where everyone is connected to everything? When every piece of relevant information is a search query away, when I want it, where I want it? Why do we still depend on an obsolete model when we KNOW that the best selling tools are creating awesome products, great experiences and having excellent customer service? Ads are dead, they have been dead for a very long time, users IGNORE ads even without AdBlock. AdBlock’s numbers just tell us the truth of how many users are actually so sick of ads that go to an extent of installing software to block them.

AdBlock is not the enemy, AdBlock is just a symptom of the disease, and that disease is advertising itself. Why do we insist on being ill? Why don’t we cure ourselves out of this fucking cancer that consumers hate, that WE made them hate it. Why don’t we stop to think for a second and realize that clients are sick of spending money on videos and Facebook posts that no one reads? Why do we have to keep pretending that someone out there actually looks at an ad, ever? Do we even look at them? Would we look at them if we weren’t advertisers?

Why don’t we help clients understand their customers? Why don’t we help them navigate the sea of tools available for them to reach their potential customers with relevant messages that might actually have some effect and might drive some business, improve their reputations or be useful to a consumer? Are we blind to the fact that we are dying out because of our own fault?

Honestly. I can’t think of an industry that is in more need of be put out of its misery…