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Eye-Opener: Madison Avenue Futurist Predicts the Ability of Advertising to Reach Consumers Will Decline Significantly — You May Be Surprised to Learn His Main Reason

Feb 2, 2018  •  Post A Comment

Even as the digital revolution creates an explosion in the number of opportunities to expose consumers to advertising, one of the ad industry’s top futurists is predicting that the ability of advertising to reach consumers will decline by 20% to 30%, or more, over the next five years.

MediaPost reports that Publicis Groupe’s Rishad Tobaccowala made the prediction Thursday during the opening session of CIMM’s Cross-Platform Media Measurement & Data Summit in New York City. The report quotes Tobaccowala saying: “We will increasingly have less and less advertising.”

“That’s an ironic prediction for an ad executive whose title is chief growth officer,” MediaPost notes.

Tobaccowala’s reasoning may surprise some industry observers. While he cites a number of factors, his main one is that advertising is simply not a good experience for most people, MediaPost reports.

Noting the rapid adoption of ad-free content platforms such as Netflix, Tobaccowala is quoted saying: “We are so disrespecting people’s time that they are spending more and more time in advertising-free environments.” He added that the value the advertising industry places on consumers’ time is “less than minimum wage.”

“As a result, Tobaccowala said he doesn’t believe Netflix will adopt an ‘advertising model,’ because it is antithetical to the reason consumers are adopting it in the first place,” the report adds.

4 Comments

  1. I Think if you changed the Advertising Model and allowed more room for growth and creativity, like you see on platforms like Netflix ,Advertising could experience a second renaissance. If you Incorporate more creativity by using social Media content, and less of the old model that we currently see, i think more people would appreciate that and use their time to watch Ads. People have short attention spans now so you have to be creative and keep up with the current trends to get their attention.

  2. There is so much advertising everywhere I look, that I no longer see any of it. It’s become an easily ignorable blur that only rarely catches my attention, and absolutely never online. I even record the tv shows I watch so I can skip the 4 minute ad breaks, and hardly ever listen to commercial radio anymore. Where’s Stan Freeberg when you need him?

    • He’s on YouTube, under the pseudonym “Stan Freberg.”

  3. Answer to Scott G: if you don’t notice an advertising Ad, is because you are not the target group for that product. When you motice an ad, it is because it is targeted to you. Believe me.

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