Image taken from http://mariashriver.com/

This post is written by Darren Herman, the VP of Content Services at Mozilla. While not skiing with his family or on cross-country flights to Mountain View (CA), Herman thinks about the future of content and it’s convergence with Madison Avenue. This post is his thinking and not one that is reflective of his employer.

We’ve got a conundrum on our hands: a big one… a hundred billion dollar big. The most widely used content monetization model is coming under threat. The model is advertising and the threat are people.

Sounds weird and crazy, doesn’t it?

Content exists because people consume it*. You’d think that people would like advertising because of how directly linked it is to content. I’d argue that some of the best advertisements are really good pieces of content.

People + Content + Advertisements = Monetization model

People ❤ Content

Therefore, People should love Advertisements**.

But do they?

If you look at some of the latest numbers of ad block downloads, you’ll see an increased of usage. New entrants of ad blocking technologies are entering the world almost monthly and the latest I’ve seen is uBlock.

Publishers (content owners) don’t love ad blockers as it hurts their revenue numbers. If publishers cannot generate enough revenue they need to trim costs or find other ways to monetize or fold up their shingle.

But users like ad blockers because they don’t see advertisements, they erase their online footsteps, and/or speed up their web browsing a bit.

There is a tension between what users want and what publishers are offering.

Recently , publishers have gone so far as to sue an ad block company in court (in Germany) and the ruling actually sided for the Internet user. The ruling is lengthy but the short version is that users retain the right to what is shown on their screens.

I’m not going to argue whether or not this is the right judgement as that’s a debate that could go on for a long time and with many typed words…

What I will say however is that maybe advertisements as we know them are not the answer to the web in 2015 and the next decade or two?

Maybe it’s cliche to say the famous saying, “the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again expecting different results” but it’s super apropos here.

Users have told us that they want to be in control of their web experience thru their explicit actions online.

How can Madison Avenue meet users where they ultimately want to be… ? That’s what is exciting to me for the next decade. It’s not about disrupting ad tech. It’s about disrupting the current ad model… and that is MUCH, much bigger.

One of my sports idols, Wayne Gretzky has a saying “skate where the puck is going, not where it’s been.” I actually don’t think this is right for the disruption the industry needs. We need to change the game.

* Because people consume content, it gets monetized in some capacity.

** Hopefully this is not too much of a stretch