Digital Advertising is Broken. How Do We Fix It?
Today’s advertising constantly interrupts people from their intention
You’re watching a “10-minute ABS 🔥🔥🔥” workout video on Youtube. Three minutes in an ad suddenly pops up, allowing you to collapse and take a breather.
We’re willing to wager this is the only time you’ve been glad to see an advertisement.
In any other instance, advertisements are exasperating. They constantly force themselves upon us, trying to wedge in between our attention spans. Popular Chrome Extensions like AdBlock exist solely to prohibit advertisements from pestering us.
This is because usually, advertisements aren’t in context with what we’re looking for.
Digital advertising operates on the interruption-based ad model. You click on a video, and then you’re forced to watch something that has nothing to do with the content. In short: ads make money by blocking your intention.
In this scenario, everyone loses. A frustrated consumer is force fed something they didn’t ask for. The content creator begrudgingly relies on the process because they need to make money from ad-watch time. And in the end, everyone views advertisers as untrustworthy and annoyingly persistent.
It’s a broken system, but we don’t know how to digitally advertise in any other way.
Or do we?
What is the Interruption-Based Ad Model, and Why Doesn’t it Work?
The interruption-based ad model is everywhere in the digital landscape.
If we flip through Instagram stories, we’re hit with an ad. When we click on a Youtube video, we must endure a five-second clip before we can watch the content. When listening to a podcast, we fast-forward the sponsored segment.
Attention is a scarce asset. Advertisers know this, which is why they try to capitalize on the moment a viewer readily anticipates giving away their attention.
Interruption marketing is the traditional model of product awareness. The goal is to inject the ads’ information while a viewer is voluntarily listening.
The problem here is that advertisers don’t contribute any value. All they’re doing is stealing a viewer’s precious attention span while it’s readily available.
People Don’t Trust Ads That They Didn’t Ask For
Granted, there are upsides to this sort of marketing model. If a company’s goal is to only expose their message to as many people as possible, it’s a viable way to go about it. It can reach a mass audience and target new potential customers.
Yet, this doesn’t balance out the considerable downsides.
Let’s say you’re at a restaurant. You want to try the caesar salad, so you ask the waiter about it. They launch into their weekend plans and how stoked they are for their new Peloton bike. You’re irritated because well, you didn’t ask. You wanted to know about the salad, and instead you’re forced to listen about Peloton, which you wouldn’t wish upon your worst enemy.
Above all, do you trust your waiter? Probably not, because they aren’t listening to you. This applies to advertisements. Around 70% of people don’t trust a brand’s advertising, and less than 5% pay attention to an interruptive message.
People Still Want to Have Connections to the (Right) Brands
After these discouraging statistics, you’d think here’s the part in the article where we tell advertisers to give up.
Here’s the thing. People still want to connect to brands. In fact, 78% of people want brands to use social media to connect them together. The idea is to act as a connector first, and then sellers second.
Companies want to use advertisements to raise awareness about their product or service. We get that.
They’ve created something amazing and want the world to know about it. Yet, allocating a massive marketing budget to broadcast ads to as many people as possible isn’t sustainable. All they’re doing is annoying more people.
How Brands Can Add Value Rather Than Taking It
It goes without saying that when it comes to marketing strategy, the interruption-based ad model is the easy way out. All you need is a large marketing budget. Then, you can start throwing money at the problem.
However, adding value to consumers while advertising is far more difficult. Yet, trust us. It’s worth it.
Word-Of-Mouth Above Everything Else
Let’s say you’re a person with a brand, product, online course, whatever, and want to start raising awareness. How do you begin to spread the word?
Would you stand in Times Square yelling “look at this product!!” or go to your mom and tell her about what you’ve created?
The latter is the equivalent to word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing. WOM marketing is when a business encourages its consumers to bring up the product in everyday conversation. It’s completely free, and it’s also the easiest way to raise awareness. In fact, 64% of marketing executives believe it’s vital to a company’s strategy.
Customers do the hard work for you. They let people know about what you have to offer, and slowly expand the awareness circle. The best part? The product/service is brought up in a relevant context, meaning it’s a natural form of advertising that adds value.
We share things because they feel relevant, timely, and make us look good. This is why we retweet something, tell our friends about a new restaurant, or encourage others to sign up for an online course.
When we organically bring up a product/service in everyday conversation, it’s because we believe we’re providing value whilst promoting it.
Learning From An Audience
WOM marketing is a stellar way to organically raise awareness about a product or service. And learning from an audience is the most efficient way to understand it in more depth.
Audiences reveal thoughts on a product’s pricing, triggers, benefits, alternatives, expectations, etc. A reason why they get involved is because it’s gratifying to be a part of a company’s journey and grow alongside it.
You find this primarily in cult niche vertical communities for builders and entrepreneurs. Think websites like indiehackers.com and producthunt.com. People post their growth in the open, and outside encouragement saturates each announcement.
These ecosystems do not require someone to have already fully developed their product or service before going live. A reason for this is because communities tell founders if they believe in the product. They tell them if the “why” behind what the founders are creating is powerful enough.
Founders then must ask themselves: are they bringing value? Do people actually want this? Not paying attention to what an audience wants is an easy way to fail.
Consider Qibi, which crashed and burned in less than a year. There are a plethora of reasons why it crashed. Yet, it mainly had to do with the fact that Qibi prematurely concluded they were giving the people what they wanted, without asking beforehand.
Yeah, it doesn’t work that way.
People tell you what they want. Not the other way around.
What Does a World Without Digital Advertising Look Like?
For this new wave of digital advertising, brands must stop taking away value and instead contributing to it.
For brands to be introduced within a relevant context, they must utilize the power of word-of-mouth marketing. However, we don’t have the right digital landscape to leverage the power of WOM marketing.
People don’t trust ads. They trust other humans. This is why building in public and paying attention to an audience’s opinion is important. It shows that the company truly cares about adding value and connecting to people.
Yet, like WOM marketing, we’re lacking the ability to leverage learning from an audience.
While you can build in public with indiehackers.com and producthunt.com, companies can’t monetize on the site. If someone is on the page, they must click another link (like to their website or Shopify) to buy or learn more.
But at Officeparty, we’ll have a platform that will solve both of these issues. In the end, we’ll remove the “advertising” from digital advertising completely.
Founders and entrepreneurs will launch their own products, courses, or services and start building in public. Online communities who identify with their mission can rally behind them, and help them grow. They’ll provide feedback, ideas, and recommend the company to others. This will help kickstart WOM marketing. And eventually, it’ll make it scalable in a digital format and organically grow the company.
There’s a better way to advertise. There always has been. It was just a question of envisioning a future where consumers, creators, and advertisers all win.
It’s a bright future up ahead — and it starts now.
