https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/10/tim-wu/504623/
Is advertising ruining everything, asks Columbia University Professor Tim Wu. In an edited transcript of an interview conducted by Derek Thompson of the Atlantic, Tim Wu presents his thoughts on the history of advertising. Referring to his new book The Attention Merchants, Tim Wu compares the advertising industry to a classic industrial activity. Whereas classically the harvesting of crops was once the top economic industrial activity of the United States, Wu claims Facebook and Google are the modern day equivalent of that agricultural industry. “In this new industry the fields are media and entertainment, the harvesters are advertisers, and the crop is attention.”
As the infographic shows, advertising has long been in existence. Advertising has gone through many transformations and the article boils it down to a very unique comparison. If peanut butter and jelly are two unlikely combinations, Tim Wu compares modern day advertising to religious evangelism. What an unlikely pair, but according to Tim Wu, both advertising and religious evangelism do the same thing, they tell us what to do. Not necessarily a revelation, but it is true. Both advertising and religious evangelism have been directly guiding or misguiding our behavior. One tells us to buy, the other might tell us to condemn, both tell us to give money, and we come back and give praise.
The main point that Tim Wu is trying to drive at is that at one point, advertising was not an all encompassing and intrusive aspect to our daily life. Advertising was relegated to specific areas, like in newspaper as print ads. However, this no longer applies. Advertising has taken up real state everywhere, phones, television, billboards, and radio. More importantly advertising is directed specifically to get our attention and driving us towards a thing, a product, a service, etc. As evil as advertising is made out to be, Tim Wu also mentions that advertising was necessary to make information available to everyone. The idea of selling ad space is what made newspapers affordable for all, meaning easy and wide access to information and establishing the public as the audience. Wu mentions that the challenge of first, gaining an audience and secondly, keeping the audience is where advertising faces and ethical challenge. Advertising relies on attention, where does it draw the line on sensationalism and fabrication? We’re seeing it now. Advertising is pushing the boundaries on content, imagery, and presentation.
Content, imagery, and presentation, these elements of advertising will change and are relatively easy to deal with, but intrusion is the main problem. Tim Wu mentions that there has been a visible revolt against advertising. More and more viewers are turning to subscription based television like Netflix, where there’s no advertising. He also cites the decline in the Superbowl viewership rating as a sign that many people, especially younger people are running away from advertising. However, this same demographic are running directly towards advertising via phones and other mobile devices. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Google are the most prevalent ad based companies, and probably the two most heavily used media platforms. According to Tim Wu, unfortunately the aspects our daily lives that have still remained relatively untouched by advertising will be the prime real estate for advertisers. He mentions Youtube as an example. Youtube was popular long before it allowed advertising, but now think of how many thirty second ads do you have to see in a span of one hour viewing content? If advertising is going to continue to be seen as an unwanted intrusion, there’s a potential for the ad-sponsored business model to continue to decline and eventually fail.
-Netflix Subscription Ad-
The notion that ad-sponsored businesses will fail due to the increasing trend of the audience running way from heavy advertising content can only be considered a hypothesis. However, if this trend proves itself to be true think how many businesses that rely on advertising will disappear. Print based media has already taken a hit, it’s only inevitable that digital media will also suffer. Tim Wu is also quick to point out that subscription services like Netflix might provide a solution. Since more than enough people are willing to pay a premium in order to watch ad-free television, the same concept might be applied to other forms of media. Have people pay a premium for ad-free content, such as an ad-free digital subscription to a newspaper. However, Tim Wu mentions that if this should happen, it should happen sooner rather than later, before Facebook does it for them. Why Facebook? Think of what users share on Facebook. Facebook essentially runs on user generated content and the news that people will share will be the ones that are considered relevant to them and their social network. Tim Wu boils it down to the notion that ad-sponsored businesses allows everyone to have access to information, media, etc. If people are really sick and tired of advertising, clickbait, etc, then they should pay a premium. Free and good don’t necessarily go hand in hand. So if you really think advertising is ruining everything then pay up.
