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Advertising: enough is enough (13)

 

Busking is a way of making money, but I’d be reluctant to call it a business plan.

In the opinion of computer pioneer Charles Babbage, it was an evil so great that he went to the trouble of lobbying Parliament to have it banned; and banned it remained in London till very recently indeed. It was a nuisance, he said. And most of us, if inflicted with a hurdy-gurdy grinder outside our home, would probably have supported the bill.

Parliament told the buskers: “Go away.”  And a lot of people who made an adequate living out of performing on street corners were suddenly out of work.

Similar fates await the advertising bubble, on computer desktops, and in public, if the marketing world can’t get reality into perspective. Yes, there’s money to be made in advertising. But it’s no substitute for having a real product that people want, when it comes to media.

Recently, a group of venture capitalists bemoaned the fact that most Internet startups, when asked where they thought their revenue would come from, said: “Advertising, of course!” And they spoke as people speak of a resource; something that was there like sunlight; and all you had to do was expose yourself to it.

But speaking purely as a consumer of advertising, I’ve had enough.

On my computer, recently, my Internet browser was using 98 percent of the available processing power. And it was all going to running programs I didn’t want to have running – advertising. The culprits: all the big news sources from the Wall Street Journal to Fox to the Telegraph to CNET and a host of others. Pouring data into my computer, they had flooded it. My only option was to get a much, much more powerful machine, or block the adverts. I chose the latter: I said: “Go away!”

The thing is, most advertising is not of interest to me. Like busking, it’s assembled to suit the tastes of the bulk of the market; but when I want music, I like to make my own choice. And when it comes to advertising, there are actually things I want to buy, about which I’d welcome more information. There are also things I don’t want to buy, will never buy, cannot use. How many tampon adverts is it worth showing me? What are the chances that I’ll be asked to advise on lipstick purchases? What on earth is the point of offering me cheaper car insurance when I already have the cheapest deal available? Go away.

Information announcements are equally insensitive. Having forked out a very tidy sum for DVD entertainment, I’m about ready to download every free video on the Net. Reason: I’m fed up of being preached to about how wicked it is of me to download free videos. Me, who just bent the credit card almost double pouring cash into their coffers! Go away!

Those who blithely assume that people will tolerate advertising, however much of it they are subjected to, may be wrong. I’m not the only angry one.

Adverts on TV are a good excuse to press pause on the digital video. It’s less easy to block out posters and screen media in supermarkets and conference halls, but I don’t think we can assume that this means we have a licence to cover the world with flickering images. As poet Ogden Nash put it, “I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree”.

The backlash will come. I don’t think people will tamely sit by and watch the world blotted out by excited marketing messages much longer; I’m pretty sure they will start demanding action to stop it.

And at that point, media which have loyal, paying subscribers who actually know what they want and spend money to get it will be able to continue. And free media which provides the public with exactly what they pay for will be squeezed a lot tighter than Babbage’s buskers.

No, I don’t think it’ll happen this year, but if we don’t become more intelligent in the way we target our commercial messages, it’s pretty much inevitable. 

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