Nobody likes ads (until they do)

Let’s be honest, when was the last time you eagerly anticipated a mid-scroll ad or sighed with relief when a banner ad popped up? Exactly.

We live in a world where every brand is vying for our attention. In the 1970s, the average person saw around 500 ads per day. Today, that number has ballooned to between 4,000 and 10,000.

Faced with this relentless onslaught, people have done the only rational thing, they’ve learned to tune out. The data is damning:

• 86% of us scroll past banner ads without even registering they exist*
• Half of all display ads are never actually seen by a human being**
• 96% people don’t trust the ads they see***

By default, nobody likes ads. They are an interruption, and often, a nuisance.

The Problem

The industry’s fatal flaw? We’ve been trying to solve this by buying more attention – getting louder, more repetitive, and more intrusive. We’ve turned it into a battle of volume rather than a battle of value.

Nobody hates the idea of advertising. People love the campaigns that make them laugh, think, or feel. We share them, we talk about them, and we remember them. We hate the execution, the YouTube ad we rush to skip, the retargeted shoe that follows us for three weeks after we’ve already bought it, the pop-up that blocks the content we came to read.

The Solution

Simple, do what we always did. Make advertising that matters to people.

Good advertising bridges the gap between marketing goals and people’s real interests. It’s about creating moments that get talked about, sparking genuine conversation; evoking a feeling, using humour, empathy, or awe to cut through the noise; to be remembered.

Advertising, when done right, is one of the most powerful creative advantages in business. But to grab attention, we have to understand what matters to people, so that you matter to people. That’s our job, always has been.

Nobody hates ads. They hate being interrupted by things that don’t matter.

*Banner blindness, Nielsen ** IAB / Meetrics viewability ***Edelman Trust Barometer