The Problem Called Web Ads

In an annual report on the online advertising market, consultancy firm Deloitte mentioned that web based ads will face growing antipathy in the coming year.

It is fact that ads more often than not are a nuisance to the online experience. Flashy banner ads that seek to sell air tickets to mp3 players just eat up a lot of space. But the question is whether the online user is taking too much for granted?

The Internet has been this superhighway of information solely because it reduces the barrier to sell content. From blogs and other media there is a deluge of opinion out there which is perhaps the most gigantic scale of global interaction in the history of mankind.

Ads are essential for firms to sustain businesses. It is the debate on the fundamentals of the attention economy. Making content publishing lucrative holds good for good quality content will get posted online. With out a monetary incentive it is hard to sustain content generation (There are exceptions ofcourse).

And while this argument holds, there is the case of privacy breach when it comes to too intrusive marketing.

So where does one draw the line? Perhaps this is the reason why the approach of Google in using intent based advertising that just walks the line of targeted advertising is the way ahead. But even at that front the search engine has come under fire for storing too much information on user’s online session.

The only solution to go totally ad-free does exist - Pay for the service.

Arun on February 16, 2008 Subscribe to our RSS Feed