I'm not in Cannes this week, but I'm following the news and views from here on the rocky coast of Maine. Like this recap of the ad blocking panel led by IAB President and CEO Randall Rothenberg. I paid particular attention to this one because in the recent past I've admired Randy's full-throated call-out of ad blocking companies as pirates, parasites, extortionists and worse. In defense of publisher revenues and security, he goes full Heisenberg, and that's as it should be.
The Cannes panel -- "Block You: Why World Class Creativity Will Obliterate Ad Blocking" - focused not so much on the miscreants of ad blocking, but on how the Don Drapers of the world will begin rendering ads that are so targeted and creative and desirable that ad blocking will be rendered moot. The tipping point - highlighted in the article's headline - is the abomination that is the current state of mobile advertising. Whatever problems we had on the desktop will only get much worse as attention and time shift to the smallest screen.
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Two things can be true at the same time: yes, ad blockers are opportunistic d-bags and yes, we also need to do a better and more imaginative job of helping marketers engage consumers regardless of what screen they're glued to. But since we're doing all this truth-telling, let's add a couple more.
True thing number three is that ad blocking is just one of the many symptoms of a digital ad business built on the flawed premise of unlimited supply - the idea that more ads in more places is always part of the answer. As I posted in this space last October, we've had 20 years of infinite growth in page views, ad calls and impressions, and today none of it's all that impressive. Today's business is plagued by non-viewable impressions, fraud, ad blocking and the perception of agency sleight of hand that drove the recent ANA/K2 Transparency report. It might just be time for us to consider a business that leverages scarcity instead.
The final true thing is that the answer to too much advertising isn't just better advertising. I've argued that we're entering a fundamentally new era in which 'advertising' has become a low-value cost center - a commodity whose expense is to be managed by unsentimental procurement people. It's not time to fix advertising; it's time to reinvent our approach to creating value for marketers and consumers...to work with the entire palette of marketing disciplines and tools.
The day we all embrace post-advertising strategy and creativity is the day ad blocking becomes completely irrelevant.
