More and more these days, there are stories about companies pulling out of online advertising or making stipulations very strict in order to maximize their profit. While it is still profitable to advertise online, in the next decade, we might see this slowly disappear. With websites like youtube going through the so called adpocolypse, where creators are seeing a fraction of what they used to make on ad revenue, they now rely primarily on donations or other services to earn an income.
So what might end up happening if ad revenue is unable to provide enough of an income for websites to run at a profit? It is very likely website subscription models will become much more common or donation models like what we see with patreon on reddit, being the norm. Both patreon and reddit offer, for a fee, extra content or certain areas you can only access as a subscriber, in order to counter act the lack of advertising space. It has been successful in both instances, because many times people in a community are willing to pay more than needed in order to keep a community going.
Up until this point online advertising has been efficient enough to at least run a website profitably, but another big part is that companies are questioning the effect advertising is really having on their sales. There is no doubt that it spreads brand awareness, but if you advertise primarily online, awareness might not always be worth paying an arm and a leg for.
The key to success in a company's mind is targeting specific people who might actually go and purchase the item, which is why advertising suppliers like google, facebook, ect are scrambling to create more effective algorithms to pair up advertisers and those looking to advertise. Google's biggest market by far is advertising and if that were to die, the company would be hit very hard. Google has been branching out, just like Facebook, because at this point they both realize that there could be a potential future where diversification is necessary to survive.
I dont think that at this moment in time online advertising will completely die, but I do think that if we dont want more intrusive ads or if we want to support creators we enjoy, we should probably not block ads on their sites. For years we have enjoyed all this free content and for now it works, but in the future, it might not be available. Just like television channels seem to be moving towards a pick and choose type subscription model, websites might do the same.
Calaber24p