Advertising's biggest problem, nothing is working.

The biggest problem in advertising goes unchallenged, it sits as the biggest, best funded elephant in the room- we're spending more and more time on the very worst channels for advertising. Yet we've declared "the age of interruption dead" - so what’s next?

Yet another newspaper redesign, another move to larger advertising units, the relentless need to secure online advertising money in the face of plummeting revenue. But it wasn’t supposed to be this way.

The years from 2007 onwards we saw the ever louder proclamation that “interruption was dead”. We collectively envisioned a world of “permission marketing” or “the age of engagement”, we endlessly celebrated the Pepsi Refresh project, fell in love with the Oreo Super Bowl tweet, and we set our sights on Facebook as a way to “ have conversations with consumers”. Advertising set sail for new waters.

Each year SXSW would host ever younger, more connected prophets of the future taking the stage to announce that "TV is dead" , "interruption is dead" and that "social media" or "social content", or "conversation marketing" or any other newly minted term was the way forward and the only answer in the face of empowered modern, connected consumers.

Yet, if we stop to think in 2014 advertising has never been more interruptive and less engaging. We see fewer skippable pre-rolls and more guaranteed view video pre-roll ads. We see more and more content posted on Facebook, but ever dwindling interaction. We see promoted tweets triggering some conversations on Twitter, but normally it’s merely promoting anger. We see “viral” hits on YouTube but aided vastly by paid guaranteed views. My web viewing becomes increasingly unbearable. I'd cut a cheque now for $1000 per year to view a slicker web with no video ads. I am serious. And I'm someone that likes advertising.

The disappointment that people seemingly have better things to do that share butter adverts on YouTube has hit home. I don't want to tell a household bleach brand that I've had a lovely Friday. I won't retweet an image of a can of soda wearing a Halloween advert or share a story about a sneeze I just did. When did a call to action migrate from " buy this, it's good" to "share your story on X".

What's more these newly coined distribution networks have real time, always-on, "big data"* powered metrics to shine light on how poorly they are doing. At least bad TV ads in the past would be judged only by the CMO's wife, not a dashboard.

* I don't get why we call it big data, in 2005 we just called it "data"

So if engagement isn’t the answer- what is?

As our lives morph to spending increasing time getting closer and closer, to ever smaller, more connected screens, from TV’s to Desktop, to Tablets and Mobile, we’ve become horrified that we’re progressing towards contexts and screens that have been demonstrably terrible for advertising.

The move to digital media is a tale of two powerful emotions, the cocktail of huge excitement with the size of the checks being written, the ever growing audiences and ever richer ways to connect, combined with the growing horror that nothing done on digital seems to work,ever, and that it’s a deflationary marketplace of inefficiencies, fraud and a myriad of dubious practices that few want to investigate.

It’s a lethal cocktail, we’re pinning hopes and dreams and vast sums of cash into a platform that’s by any and all measures, not working for anyone, Media owners, brand or consumers.

We’ve seen two approaches to finding this solution:

Native advertising ( a technique so exciting we’ve forgotten to define it), for me is the contextual placement of advertorial type content that tries to gain attention and credibility through trickery. We can see early signs that it’s working, with high click through rates but unless this powerful mechanism is adopted slowly and sensibly, I see huge consumer backlash and news brands destroying their credibility overnight - if they don’t stand for trust, what’s the point of them?

Interruption. The favored alternative option, a web of autoplay video ads, of larger mobile ad units, or non skippable pre-rolls, of ever more dynamic banners and the worst of all, the come back of the pop up.

This makes me worry, the more time I spend online the more it becomes unbearable. So what is the solution to the issue- some thought starters.

Premium Ads.

One of the worst things about online it’s cheap, as a result to make money media owners place more and more ads in them, making ads even less noticeable. A move to make ads limited in number, more expensive and focus on better, more expensively produced ads, could actually work well for viewers, brands and media owners.

Personal Ads.

One of the benefits of online is the rich data that is collected, but we've assumed that’s only to be used for targeting and never creative. The work of companies like StarGreetz shows what’s possible with simple Facebook Data overlaid and the viewer gets ads personalized, by name, location, time of day, recent behavior and more. These are the sort of ads that will work.

But maybe online advertising is destined to fail. Few people have realized how different the consumption context is. When watching TV we are sitting back, relaxed, waiting to be entertained, in this context, well produced, entertaining ads fit rather well with the expectations and wants of the viewer. Print is the same. Online we are rarely as such, we are in control, getting things done, finding our entertainment, ads get in the way.

Maybe online will never work for ads, maybe we were wrong to think the internet should be ad funded, maybe micro payments will be the solution to media owners and the crappy advertising experience. Maybe if this happens advertising becomes more about adding value. Maybe the future of advertising is building better products, telling us about things when we need them.

Perhaps the age if interruption is dead, perhaps the solution is providing value.