Ads suck. But being in the maturity of the internet, we may have forgotten the benefits digital ads – as we know hindsight is 20-20. The main pro of an ad-supported web is that it allowed the adoption and growth of the internet to be as quick as it is. Ads enabled companies to reach users with a value proposition that didn’t need the users to cough up money. It is why a lot of the world now has 5 Billion people connected to the internet. On a side note, while ads are notorious for being the bane of privacy nowadays, some has stated that an ad-supported internet should be able to protect your real world identity better than a transaction supported one. Services like Visa and Mastercard connect your online and real-world identitity, which could be a slippery slope compared to the anonymity of the ad-supported web.
The cons of the ad-supported web – is plentiful. Of course, advertisers are very much interested in digital ads because they’re now able to identify who is viewing them. But they want more – they want to know every little detail and profile of the target, which is why Facebook has ‘liked things’, which is why LinkedIn has ‘job titles’, which is why Youtube has ‘recently viewed tags’. The aim of the game is to identify exactly who would potentially watch their ads and purchase their products – which is a scary form of surveillance. Further more, the system has led to the rise of personalized content – to improve ad performance – at the cost of a more polarized society (because people are in their own ad-supported bubbles).
