How often have you been enjoying a movie, a post, or a blog, only to be interrupted by a flashing pop-up or an overly eager voiceover demanding your attention?
These ads shout at you to buy this, watch that, or act now, usually promoting garbage that has absolutely nothing to do with what you’re watching or reading. How often have you listened to one of these intrusive ads and rushed off to buy the product? I would bet my last dollar that you’ve never done so!
Let’s face it: as business owners, we all need to find ways to promote our products. But demanding that consumers buy something immediately? Come on, that’s just not going to happen.
As a viewer, I am simply sick to death of adverts infecting every corner of my life. I drive down the road and am bombarded by billboards while being shouted at from the radio. I watch a sporting event, and not only is every bit of usable space covered in advertising graffiti, but the event is punctuated by up to 60% (ESPN) ad breaks. Of the remaining time, even the commentators use ads as punctuation.
I go on YouTube, and no sooner have I skipped the “Paid Advertising” than the YouTuber starts spewing ads—again, generally for something totally unrelated to the video. The content, the thing I’m actually interested in, becomes nothing more than background noise.
If we were so in love with ads, there would be channels dedicated solely to them. The reason they don’t exist—apart from QVC—is that we’re simply not interested.
Sky TV makes me sick. I used to pay exorbitant amounts of money for a premium service that was supposed to be ad-free. Yet here I am, as a premium subscriber, being bombarded with ads and interrupted by promotions for other shows that are themselves vandalized by pointless advertisements for other shows!
And it gets worse. I use an ad blocker to try and gain some semblance of peace and as an indicator that I DO NOT WANT TO SEE THIS CRAP. But corporations are simply looking to circumvent it. Why? Because they don’t care about what I want! YouTube recently tried to ban me for using an ad blocker—the irony being that there would be no YouTube without viewers like me watching videos.
Yes, I am truly sick and tired of it all. And it’s only getting worse.
As ad revenues decline—clearly signaling that we’re all fed up with them—the response is to add more ads! My Facebook feed is literally 70% sponsored content—total and utter nonsense.
I go on my feed because it’s supposed to be social media; I want to see what my friends are up to. But these days, there is no social media. My friends’ posts rarely come up. If I post about what I’ve been doing, hardly anyone sees it. If I share a link to my business page on Facebook, they throttle it. How dare you try to advertise for free! You will pay the Facebook gatekeepers in ads.
And it would ease the pain if I thought the likes of Zuckerberg and the Google crew even needed the money or did something good and rewarding with it —but they don’t!
The sickening part is that there is a better way for businesses to advertise.
What is it?
Simply give people something they might actually be interested in!
There’s a simple system I try to live by: turn visitors into friends and friends into buyers. This process begins with giving the reader or viewer something in return for their time—a free gift, a sample, or some valuable content. Imagine how surprised you’d be if you were watching a program about a specific recipe and an ad subtly popped up offering a free sample of a complementary sauce! That would be engaging!
In contrast, you might be watching a program on better painting techniques only to have some arrogant teen interrupt you shouting: “Look at me! I’ve made a gazillion dollars on crypto! Stop what you’re doing right now and buy my system!” After enduring that nonsense, the presenter then goes on to awkwardly shoehorn in their own sponsored section about a VPN as well.
It’s so ignorant and frustrating.
Advertising has become cancerous; it affects every part of my life to the point where I feel anxious when trying to do anything online.
At this point, I have refused to pay for Premium YouTube because it offers no value other than potentially removing those cancerous ads. If they remove the ads, then that subscription revenue fills Google’s coffers entirely because content creators lose their paid promotion revenue share.
What kind of dumb arse business model forces users to pay for Premium that offers literally no upsell benefits? The only way Google get’s away with it is their market dominance and therefore we are FORCED to endure it. Their latest message is: Fewer ad breaks for this long ad break!!! Really! How fucking moronic!
They know we don’t want this shit and propose this as a fix! We, the viewers and content creators built YouTube; Google has hijacked it and turned it into its own goldmine.
So what’s the answer?
Companies like Google need to stop rewarding content creators for destroying their own content and find more mature ways to generate revenue.
I propose contextual advertising—providing sidebar or subtle ways to offer products ‘in context’ so if we’re watching something, we might see an ad for a related product we actually want! These are some of the world’s richest companies; it can’t be that hard for them to figure out!
If you run an ad on YouTube as a business owner, surely you want your product in front of an audience that cares about it. You should be able to set up your ad targeting specific demographics related to your product, which you can do. So why is this process so flawed? Rarely do I see an ad related to what I’m watching—and that’s criminal! As a business owner myself, I want my products properly placed; irrelevant product listings just burn through my budget.
But let’s take this further: business owners need to stop the aggressive tactics—the scroll stoppers—the shouting demands to buy now. Start treating our time with respect and recognize us as individuals capable of free thought.
In closing, while this may read like a rant—and perhaps it is—I am under no illusion that this situation will only get worse until intrusive ads stop working altogether. In the meantime, I’ll continue fighting back with my weapons of choice: ad blockers and the skip button on my remote!
We deserve better than this relentless bombardment of irrelevant advertising. It’s time for businesses—and advertisers—to rethink their strategies and focus on genuine engagement rather than mere intrusion.
