The biggest petition ever is against bad advertising - and no one seems to be listening
Only two petitions on Change.org have ever surpassed the mark of 7 million signatures.
Only two petitions on Change.org have ever surpassed the mark of 7 million signatures.
We are nearing the milestone of 1 billion active ad-blocking users.
Let that sink in.
Can you imagine if this were a petition for better advertising?
And, mind you, installing and handling an ad blocker is far more difficult than signing your name.
But here’s the kicker: We aren’t working toward better advertising. We’re making it worse, and the current solutions are completely misguided.
Personalization at scale won’t fix it.
Tracking won’t fix it.
Programmatic won’t fix it.
These tools are flawed , delivering shallow metrics that create a false sense of effectiveness, mere chicken flights* for advertisers.
If you haven’t, please read’s Preston Rutherford masterful dissection of how ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is a flawed metric (link in comments).
They expose companies to fraud: sketchy data, bots, click farms. Just ask experts like Bob Hoffman and Augustine Fou.
They degrade the user experience , the leading cause of ad-blocking, according to users.
More than that, they make brands and agencies lazy or, worse, destitute when it comes to captivating and entertaining people.
Lazy because campaign objectives aren’t aligned with creating likable, memorable, and entertaining ads - the hard stuff.
Think of Goodhart’s Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” In other words, when metrics become the sole focus, we forget about everything else. When one creates for a click-centric, erroneously tracking, programmatically delivered ad, to be judged by an ROAS report, do you think they will care for the impression being made? How likable was it? How memorable? How trust building?
Destitute because ad spend flows into the murky abyss of middlemen and convoluted platforms, rather than into the things that actually make ads effective: craft, research, and magic.
And that’s how we end up with dull performance assets that radiate the charm of a wet sock.
That’s how we end up with the biggest petition in history against something.
If we really want to give people what they want, maybe we should start by ensuring we aren’t giving them what they don’t want.
References:
1. Change.org’s Biggest Petitions Ever:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change.org
2. Facts and numbers on Ad-Blocking Users:
https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users
3. Preston Rutherford on ROAS:
4. Bob Hoffman’s Inside the Black Box: How Marketers Waste Billions of Dollars in Online Advertising
https://dl.bookfunnel.com/6kwmi0qlsq
5. Augustine Fou on Advertising Fraud and Programmatic Ineffectiveness:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/fraud-also-correct-dr-augustine-fou-jiqre
6. Goodhart’s Law:
