3.3 Attack of the Ads

So how can an advertiser respond effectively to client queries about decreasing ad performance and CTR (Click Through Rate) if engagement is consistent and followers have increased?

Clients are more aware than ever of the problem that the advertisers are facing.

Successfully running ads does not inherently determine the authenticity of views, readers, watchers or engagement.

If Meta deleted 2.2 billion fake accounts, how does this impact the salience of metrics given by advertisers to clients?

Advertisers waste billions of dollars per year across the industry, buying pay per click and pay per view ads that are not necessarily reaching the intended human users they were designed for.

According to the Association of National Advertisers $7.2 Billion was wasted by advertisers advertising to bots. In the US alone. (17)

Advertisers also face the problem of fake and malicious ads using their client’s brands, or similar look alike brands to target easily accessed audiences with malicious code or ransomware.

A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention

The publishing industry is rapidly declining whilst Web3 is emerging. As we saw in late 2021 the crypto market hit $3 trillion dollars. (18)

Social pollution and consistent infringement of user privacy pushes users further and further into decentralized options with much more lucrative offerings.

This is creating pressure for optimized clicks and a frantic grab for attention, as short-form content and the ‘story’ format are increasingly pervasive across prominent platforms such as Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn leaving users overwhelmed by poorly made content. This may be causing a disappearance of long form qualitative publishing in favor of reductive opinion pieces with enthusiastically sensational headlines.

Meanwhile the gradual exodus from Web2 giants such as Google’s Youtube & Meta’s Facebook practically control the entire digital marketing arena. Google claiming 73% of online digital ad revenue (19) and Google, Meta and Amazon on track to absorb more than 50% of all ad money (20)

Content creators are giving attention to publishers for information they value. Unfortunately the majority of social media consumers are steered towards fear-based, or sexualised content aiming to harvest attention by tapping into the more primal nature of the human brain, specifically aiming to capitalize on dopamine release.

Platforms are aware of this and are cultivating a corrupt online culture, as publishers are paid for attention and not necessarily engagement.

From the perspective of a publisher, the world is a binary exchange, where one performs the necessary action to hold a user's attention for as long as possible. This incentivises the trade of sex and shock, as we see with content featured on TikTok. An example is alternative forms of educational and nationalistic content for Eastern and Western users.

Users suffering from overstimulated minds leading to mental health issues are never far from the news cycle and self esteem challenges. Suicide rates are quietly on the rise and increasingly linked to increased screen time in young adolecents (21), therefore paying to be exploited by rising data costs, spurred by inefficient data usage due to the ad barrage, let alone increased threats to security and privacy.

Younger users are becoming averse to ads in general, aiming not to to see the ads and when they do, leaving negative engagement for advertisers and their clients. Unfortunately, this is causing advertisers to suggest to clients that bad press is better than no press, inspiring more attempts to go viral through controversial and confrontational behavior.