I miss the days of expensive advertising.

When you walk the Main Streets of the USA and High Streets of the UK, virtually without exception the largest, most grand and demonstrably expensive buildings are banks. 

This wasn't because Banks liked to throw away money, or that they had more than enough, it was because the architecture of solidity and trust was a vital brand asset to convey, it's all Banks had.  Granite doors, Roman Portico's, even battlements and iron grids became purposefully wasteful manifestations of confidence. This was a company with money, with conviction in their own future, this was a place worth leaving your money.

Old world advertising used to be the same, the very act of investing in TV, buying a premium billboard, taking an ad in Vogue, became brand building element but because of the cost, not despite. The general public doesn't know rate cards, but there was a tacit, enduring, innate feeling that companies' that advertised were companies of quality. In the words of McLuhan, the media became the message.  It was the limited supply that maintained attention, that kept prices high, that made advertising effective and thus allowed prices to be justified. 

What new media and new behavior has created is abundance and the entire industry has reacted in the worst possible way. We have a spiral of decline that threatens the very concept of brands and advertising. 

How did this happen?
I remember when I saw my first "digital" media plan, it was 2003, the media costs were tiny, it was a banner ad buy for £10,000. Since production costs were rarely to exceed 1/10th the media spend, we had around £1,000 to make these new ads.
It wasn't easy ( and in fact possible) getting time with creatives on this, to say they didn't care is was understatement, they wanted to make "films". So someone in the studio mocked up something and we were done.  The ad was tiny, the number of pixels small, so it was a headline with a product shot we found on some old server.

Then we got told that the ad needed to link somewhere, we had no idea what to do, but a few taps later I'd found that luckily for us there was a website we could link it to. We didn't think of why it should go there, we didn't have time to think, £1,000 doesn't buy the luxury of thought.

And thus around 2003 Agencies all over the world the world made their first terrible banner ads. The default place to link to became a website, the default call to action was to "click". We've now got 12 years and billions of dollars of ad money spend on the very foundations created by Account Executives and Junior art workers in the Studio, because nobody thought to care and we've never since challenged them.

Remarkably, crappy headlines and terrible product shots didn't set the world on fire,  remarkably "digital" ads never became something top creatives spent time on. We still don't get top talent for thinking and creativity in "digital" agencies. While people may openly discuss their favorite TV ads, while the nation talks about the best Superbowl ads, while we lovingly remember some iconic print ads, without fail the only "banner" ads we can remember is the Mac vs PC series. 

We created a massive spiral of decline.

• Online ads have simply never worked*  ( * new ad formats like Click to Download appear to work for a few months)
• The degree to which online ads have no worked is shown very accurately by an abundance of real time data only possible in digital media. 
• Inventory has always been virtually infinite, and unlike any other medium, the more time we spend online, the more inventory we create. 
• Thus online ads remain incredibly cheap, which keeps production investment down, which ensures that ads are produced cheaply, which ensures that online ads remain totally crap.
• Media owners,  frustrated by a massive shortfall in revenue and stubbornly low prices and the market expectations of all content being put online, became more desperate to monetize.
• Media Owners then created even more, even larger, and even more interuptive advertising to try to claw back lost ad money.
• People's attention became even more fragmented, scattered and elusive, the rise of ad blocking shot up, ads performed even worse.
• So facing the inefficiency of sales teams and human beings, vast amount of inventory was sold more cheaply and programmatically as remnant.
• Then the cost of media became so low, that even supplying actual ad copy became too inefficient, now some ads are just big words. 
• And the circle continues. 

This is the realty of today's advertising and internet experience and it's a disgrace.

• I search on Google and find myself on nasty sites like http://about.com or second tier media websites designed only around selling my eyeballs to advertisers. I feel violated.
• I visit the BBC News site and find myself unable to see any video news without being forced to waste 30 seconds watching a crudely cut down TV ad.
• Prerolls ads insert themselves mid way in articles.
• Mercedes vehicles are seen before to beheading videos, 
• Pages take forever to load swamped by cookies and content I don't need.
• I’m led to articles on websites where I’m “welcomed” by welcome screens and where pop ups increasingly barge their way past browser settings.

I genuinely find this situation unworkable.

We need to stop this cycle, it works for nobody, it's awful for brands who now need more than ever to connect with people online, but are massively aware that results are poor. It works terribly for media owners who see incredible content making less money than ever. And most of all its a disgrace for people who now face their attention being stolen, their data plans killed and their time wasted for things they don't want.

We've tens of billions of dollars flowing into ad tech, all based on serving ads to people with the most advanced technology we've ever seen, but hardly a cent is spent on making better online ads.

We've Native Advertising as the big hope for media owners and brands, yet I an many others see this as at best a slight of hand and at worst a total lie. 

We should also note that the "best performing" Native ads, are typically so subtle that the brand who paid for the exposure and who celebrates the results is normally so background and unconnected to the content, it does nothing for them.

I'd LOVE and I mean I would LOVE, for Media owners of the world to take this moment in time to run a mental thought experiment.

If you were to reduce online advertising to a tenth of the current inventory.

If you were to only sell premium spaces.

If you were to ensure that all ads met quality control.

If you employed creative people to reimagine what online ads could feel like and do for people.

How could that world look and feel?

What would the future look like?

Would brands love a chance to connect with people in richer, more premium, better targeted ways?

Would media owners thrive after showing audiences the respect they deserve but also using ads that work?

Would people browse more happily? enjoy far fewer, but rather good ads.

It's a fun way to think. 

* Please note this is not the opinion of my agency or anything other than a thought experiment *