The argument for the need for advertising is a weak one. There are plenty of businesses that have shown that people are willing to pay for content if it is packaged such that they can easily see value for money.
Netflix and Hulu are examples of services that people are prepared to pay for in exchange for both the content and it being advertising free. In fact, many companies see the annoyance that customers feel with ads as a way of driving them to pay for versions of their apps that get rid of them.
The Ad Wars Will Continue
The war on advertising is far from over. Google, Apple and others are still going to provide ads in the protected environments of their apps, and in Google’s case, its videos.
Advertisers will continue to sell ads to clients who will, in turn, hope that they can get their ads in front of the remaining people who don’t use ad blocking software.
What the enormous popularity of ad blocking software has shown is that, if there is an “implied contract” for access to content in return for viewing ads, the public clearly is not willing to agree to it.
This leaves content providers with a clear message that they will need to find alternative ways of supporting the provision of that content like many other businesses do, without the use of advertising.
David Glance is director of the Centre for Software Practice at the University of Western Australia. This article was originally published on The Conversation.
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