A World Without Advertising

We’ve heard it all before, the world of marketing will never go away or be completely replaced by computers. It’s people focused, we learn and we evolve for where the world of marketing is going, a direction that sometimes can’t be predicted or put into an equation (the limit does not exist). 

So let’s play a game. In our world that gives you the options of TiVo, skip buttons, and ad blockers, what would happen if advertising just didn’t exist at all?

Our friends at Teads did some imagining about the world without advertising, it’s a little Utopian to imagine but entirely honest. 

So let’s break that down a little:

63% of US Adults believe society would be worse off without free or low-cost access to premium content. So without advertising we would be left paying for sites like YouTube and Facebook and there would be no such thing as Public Access, don’t even let us get started on the Internet as a whole.

63% of newspaper revenue is generated from advertising. Imagine no Wall Street Journal, no Sunday morning comics, and a world without the Watergate scandal or TMZ.

In 2015, publishers are projected to lose $22 billion in revenue due to ad blocker Adaptation 3 (check out the story here). Ad blocker is a really great idea in theory until you factor in a loss of profits, jobs, and enthusiasm for great content (Advertisers motivate the creation of great content just as much as viewer numbers). 

Want to get rid of all your commercials when watching Scandal? Without advertising you can count on a 50% larger bill and a lot less channels.

Facebook is our addiction we love to hate. If you want Mark Zuckerberg to kick advertisers off, you’ll be paying $12 a year, and active members would be disappearing at rate of 75% a month.

And last but definitely worse, a world without advertising means a world without Buzzfeed. That’s a real travesty for everyone.