The Internet's Next Victim

Make a guess...

"Everyone agrees that advertising on the Internet is broken."

That's Till Faida, CEO of AdBlock Plus, the most popular ad-blocking software on the Web.

See if this sounds familiar: Ads aren't generating enough revenue, so more and more are added to make the aggressive profit numbers the station/medium/site must have.

It should sound familiar because it's what radio's been doing since consolidation changed the economic dynamic of a really healthy business.

On the Internet, it has led to a maddening flood of pop-up ads, blinking banners, fake X clicks that take you to a different ad, and my least favorite, the auto-playing spot before I can get whatever I came to the site to get.

As we're seeing in radio, more ads -- more badly produced, uninteresting ads for products I don't want or need -- leads to even shorter listening (viewing) spans, which leads to even more ads and on and on.

The proverbial vicious circle.

The solution Faida has come up with is interesting. You can read it here.

I think radio needs a similar initiative, a real commitment to controlling advertising, which we know beyond doubt drives listeners away to less over-commercialized alternatives (Pandora, Spotify, etc.) and, at the same time, to creating better, more entertaining, more effective advertising.

The creatives are out here waiting --writers, voice actors, producers. We have the people who can fix this.

This is only a matter of will and expense.

But if you look at great ads as both an attractant and as more effective, that expense turns into a boost in revenue.

It's worth a try because we already know where the other road leads...