Has Advertising Lost Its Relevancy?

By Jason Lehmbeck, CEO and Co-Founder of DataPop

Of the 5.3 trillion impressions served in the United States, 3 of 10 were never even seen, according to a recent research report from comScore, titled: Digital Future in Focus report for 2013.

Clearly this is big concern for the ad world. The fact that of the 7 of 10 that were in-view is just the beginning of the issue. The data doesn’t account for how many ads in-view were actually looked at. 

The reality is there are plenty of eye-tracking studies that point to consumers completely ignoring the standard ad spots. While marketers can now easily make ads in different shapes, colors and sizes, these adjustments are merely window dressing. The internet’s impact on advertising can and should go beyond making superficial changes in ad presentation. Consumers don’t want more ads cluttering up their internet experience. They want content and tools that help them along the path they are on.

It seems as if the prevailing industry approach to addressing this issue is to fiddle around the edges. It’s as if all would be ok if we just had better tracking, less fraud and more ads in the path of the consumer. Each of these elements will help but miss the core problem to be solved … making advertisers relevant to consumers.

Given the vast sums of capital and intellectual firepower thrown at online advertising, we as an industry can do better than rendering a higher percentage of ads in-view. Above all else, the industry needs to enable marketers to determine what they have to offer that deserves the attention of the consumer.

What the industry really needs are semantic based advertisement solutions. Semantic advertising helps marketers build millions of ads per day that adjust, relate, and understand what the consumer wants. But in order to deliver on the true promise of Internet advertising, the whole industry needs to shift its focus. All of the heat right now seems directed toward finding and pricing targeted consumers and matching them like a stock exchange to advertisers. There is some usefulness in this technology but the industry has swung too hard in this direction.

The turn has been so sharp, in fact, that marketing is starting to feel more like another bad remake of Wall Street. While we all have more ads in more places at cheaper prices, consumers are ignoring those ads in larger numbers. It is time that the industry shifts the focus back from day trading to marketing. The promise of internet advertising is still in front of us. The industry needs to put all of its effort behind giving consumers ads that are meaningful and helping marketers get back to marketing.

Jason Lehmbeck is CEO and Co-Founder of DataPop, an online advertisement optimization company, which provides intuitive ad customization technology and services to international retail, travel and automotive brands. Prior to co-founding DataPop, Lehmbeck was VP of Emerging Ad Products at Overture Services and Yahoo!, where he and his team partnered with leading marketers to test new models for engaging consumers on video, mobile, targeting and social platforms. Before joining Yahoo!, he was Director of Business Development at DoubleClick, where he managed partner programs for its technology solutions division.