For the past decade or more, online publishers have primarily relied on fixed advertising real estate to drive revenue. Additionally, as scale, automation and growth in the sheer number of ads have evolved, things are not working out as planned.
The effects of ad blindness and blocking.
The value of these fixed placements has gone down with ad blindness, ad blocking, and other factors, making this just a grueling race to the bottom.
The general response to these trends has only served to make things worse. On the one hand, publishers, advertisers, and ad networks have deployed ever-more annoying and invasive creative, trying to counteract consumer tendency to ignore the ads. On the other, they are using sophisticated technology to try and make the ads more relevant to consumers – and therefore more valuable to them.
