The wealthy pay to have commercials removed, so advertisers look elsewhere for their audience's attention.
Check out what's wrapped under the Christmas tree by logging onto Facebook. Because the social network keeps such close tabs on user behavior, it can personalize advertisements with an accuracy that occasionally borders on mind-reading. This time of year, its newsfeed is overflowing with advertisements, which represents the great trade-off that comes with using the internet: users get free services but have to put up with a constant barrage of ads from businesses that track who has been nice or bad.
However, customers with sufficient funds are increasingly being given the opportunity to avoid the online advertisements. Facebook's parent company, Meta, started charging €9.99 ($10.85) a month for ad-free subscriptions to Facebook and its sister network, Instagram, in Europe last month. X, the former Twitter, introduced an ad-free option in October. The rapidly expanding Chinese-owned video app TikTok revealed that it was testing an ad-free subscription in the same month. Another rival social media platform, Snapchat, announced the following month that it was following suit.
Without advertising, how would the internet look?
Ever wonder what the internet would be like if there were no advertisements? Over the past 27 years, online advertising has undergone significant change, becoming more sophisticated and customized than before. However, why do we own it? Without it, how would the internet feel and look?
When I say "the internet," I mostly mean the open, free web, where we spend a lot of time searching, reading, and chatting with each other. An ad-free internet experience may seem perfect to the typical internet user. No annoying advertisements to obstruct the content, no internet tracking, no worries about data privacy! However, this fantastical rendition of the internet is predicated on the idea that everything else would stay the same and just the advertisements would vanish. The internet would actually be very different—and not in a good way.
An internet devoid of content in place of free content
The internet would offer less variety of content if it weren't funded by advertising. News would be more limited in scope and cover fewer local areas; there would be less availability of educational materials and blogging platforms with their recipes, do-it-yourself projects, and book reviews. We would no longer just browse the internet to get ideas for organizing a client event, reading the most recent tech news, or searching for visual inspiration. Without them, none of the small time-savers, learning tools, or entertainment options we take for granted would be accessible with just a click. We could still be able to access all of this information online, but it would be locked behind a walled garden and require payment.
The money that runs the free and public internet is advertising. The average internet user does not comprehend the value exchange that underpins the operation of the internet ecosystem, so that message has been lost. Information, entertainment, news, education, and much more are readily available to over 5 billion people globally, but this content is made possible by advertising, which also keeps it free. Online users benefit from the viewpoint, ideas, and creativity that content creators offer, but they also expect and deserve compensation for their efforts. These original content producers—journalists, bloggers, graphic designers, and educators, among others—are compensated by advertising, which also makes their incredible free online content available to all.
Ads that aren't relevant pop up instead of
Relevant information about goods or services is another useful and valuable type of content that advertising can offer to customers. Ads were admittedly not always very relevant in the early days of the internet. Customers were grouped into broad categories; pop-ups and banner ads should be ignored because they are obtrusive and distracting.
However, modern AI and machine learning methods—like those employed by the Quantcast Platform—allow marketers to reach consumers at scale with relevant advertising, enabling them to create effective campaigns and boost performance. Customers receive relevant, tailored advertisements that present them with a good or service they genuinely desire, improving—rather than diminishing—their entire online experience.
