The Death of Advertising and Bifurcation of the Internet

The internet is sick. Over 90% of Facebook’s advertising revenue now comes from mobile, much of that from Instagram. We are the product.

We’ve never been more the product in a false attention economy where people are being used by big tech companies.

Google’s parent company Alphabet gets roughly 86 percent of its total revenue from advertising. The company booked more than $54 billion in ad revenue in the first half of 2018.

THE INTERNET IS BROKEN

Our data is being harvested and it’s out of control. The Ad-platform based internet has been corrupted.

Comcast’s $40 Billion deal for Sky is all about Netflix. The end of the TV era is near and the end of the social media era has already begun.

So what’s next? It’s something young consumers call streaming and decentralization. In the next era of advertising, interruptive Ads could die. The video and 5G internet is going to transform how human attention works online — and we’re already seeing the signs.

Lately consumers (we are people you know) have started their own revolution:

• Cutting Cable cords
• Using Ad-blockers
• Following Peers instead of brands
• Spending less time on mobile (for work-life balance reasons)
• Displaying shorter attention spans

THE ATTENTION ECONOMY IS CORRUPT

However legacy advertising hasn’t really adjusted very well to these consumer behavior changes.

Young people have been bombarded with so many thousands of Ads each year that we are, for all intents and purposes, advertising-immune. Mobile natives are also seeking more ethical ways of how the internet could work.

Trust in ad-platforms like Facebook, Google, Twitter and others is at an all-time low. This has resulted from a leadership and ethics crisis among the leaders in technology. Unfair practices, monopolies and a concentration of wealth that has caused disruption but also great harm.

Advertising is that industry that refuses to grow up. She’s that cash-cow that doesn’t know how to remain customer-centric. If money makes the world go around, Ad-platforms like Google and Facebook own the internet. But there’s a bifurcation of the internet going on, where China’s model of what the internet is, is starting to win.

Advertising as your business model makes you innovate less.

SILICON VALLEY CENTRALIZATION IS OUTDATED

Even as Google and Facebook make $Billions off people as products, their business models are already outdated. They are no longer in sync with the preferences of young consumers and more forward-looking users of the internet.

Public blockchains are promising more trustworthy ecosystems and architectures. Would a token economy share the wealth of our data more equally? Will cryptocurrencies redefine how we think of content, advertising, influence and attention online? Media companies and advertising giants need to keep up with the values of people who want more inclusion, social equality and economic equality online.

By the way, we’re tired of ads. We want an Ad-free internet.

THE ADVENT OF AN AD-FREE INTERNET IS NEAR

If the internet is sick, advertising is the virus, it’s the plague that’s leading to China’s version of the internet being more innovative, more user-centric and doing incredible O2O customer experiences. Since Google and Facebook make so much of their revenue automatically with Ads, they are no longer innovating in such a way that will allow the Western internet to keep up with the Chinese version. In 2018, this is what we are seeing and it could lead to the death of advertising as we know it.

Advertising kills the authenticity of how humans need to tell stories, share information and spread news — because they incentivize human attention and content engagement in an unethical manner. Apps such as Instagram are fundamentally flawed on a moral level that is irreversibly taking the Western internet in the wrong direction. Advertising is the devil of a trustworthy internet.

Brands that support Ad-platforms and their unregulated duopoly support the falsehood of a broken internet. It may be up to brands such as Amazon and Netflix to reinvent advertising — since we can basically be assured that Google and Facebook are happy with their lucrative (and user-abusive) paradigm of exploitation.

Amazon and Netflix > Google & Facebook

This is because Amazon and Netflix actually care about the user experience, and aren’t in bed with the drug that is data harvesting for profit. Alphabet and Facebook’s business model is corrupt; it’s against the values of younger consumers. This is why it’s destined to fail.

An Ad-free internet would mean wrong incentives and bad actors would no longer have a place in how we navigate all the noise, spam and deception that the world internet has become. Advertising needs a revolution.

The bottleneck to this occurring is ironically Google and Facebook. They are called the duopoly for a reason.

We made you guys rich but you failed in creating a trustworthy internet. A more decentralized internet would mean there’s no central authority that has too much power over how the internet works.

THE WORLD WOULD BE A BETTER PLACE WITHOUT ADVERTISING

In the future, Advertising and the greed of tech companies will no longer corrupt the internet. Can you even imagine such an internet? An internet without porn, vanity, search rankings, fake personas, misinformation, platforms that can be hacked, tech companies that fuel wealth inequality?

In 2018, it’s very hard to imagine such a world. The American web is failing. Advertising and its vicious cycles broke the internet. Companies that have too much influence need to be dissolved or broken into units; America needs to wake up to anti-trust. For too long the EU has been our conscience. The duopoly needs to be punished for their crimes against humanity. This is why I believe advertising needs to die. Clap many times and share this article if you agree with me.