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Book a demoThe real problem with advertising is people looking at the wrong things
As adverts seemingly pay less attention than ever to what you are interested in, magazines seem to solve the issue by knowing what people want.
Advertising rarely sends me into raptures. In fact, it usually has the opposite effect. I am among those awful realists who would demand car adverts are filmed on the actual roads and in the actual traffic conditions the offered vehicles are most likely to find themselves. I would request that cleaning product adverts featuring babies sat on spotless kitchen floors carry an explanatory rider telling mothers it's OK to be imperfect and that babies are in fact remarkably resilient to many things the ads would try to convince you otherwise, including a few seconds of dirt on a floor.
Online display advertising is an even fouler pit to fall into. Right now, I see on my second monitor the front page of one of the UK's broadsheet newspapers, a pleasingly designed page with a good user experience. On it are displayed a number of stories of importance, and I am comfortable that the reporting and editing is of a high standard - that's why I pay for it. A high quality package, in other words, and distinctly not free.
Except that, right above the famed masthead, sits a large rectangular advert screaming at me that "What happened on UK TV last night was seen by millions", with an AI-generated image of two fake women in deep fake debate in an AI-generated fake TV studio. In a smaller font above the main text the word "GetDreamEgg" appears. No, me neither.
Other than coming across as pitiably anachronistic in how online and legacy TV media now interact, worse, the advert debases the entire page. Worse worse, clicking on it instantly springs into life my web protection app with the warning that it is likely a phishing page - on the website of one of the country's most respected and best known news titles!
Is it me who is doing this wrong now? Is this how ads are meant to be?
Maybe someone needs to explain something to me, but I don't think so. At least it's just a crappy advert - a recent example of the same poor inappropriate ad serving can be a lot more offensive, with The Guardian this week reporting on ads featuring blood-stained shirts appearing in articles about domestic violence, which a colleague coincidentally had appear for them next to an article about knife crime on the very site I was looking at, so it's not an Australia-only thing.
Back to my journey and a few clicks into the site, and I see evidence of my own deliberate attempt to make sure every advert I see is for something to do with bicycles, this achieved primarily by looking at bikes online, and adding a few extra clicks every time to make sure the clunky system understands that I do really like bikes.
I have no intention of buying one presently, but I at least find the presence of such advertising more soothing than some other options. Even here though, the advertising being served isn't very clever, being the last brand I looked at, rather than some more agile offering of similar bikes at similar price points from different manufacturers.
I can't help but think that the consumer market isn't being served well by the present arrangements. I realise we're only in a brief moment of serenity before the AI-orchestrated end of humanity, but they could surely do a better job in getting a chap's wallet to twitch.
It is at this point I shall quote Google's own AI Overviews: "Google generated over $300 billion in global advertising revenue for the full year 2025, accounting for roughly 75% to 77% of Alphabet's total consolidated income." For a company that likes to use the word "ecosystem" so much, it's odd how they allow so much scum to gather on their cash-generating pond.
Why such a rant? Magazines, that's why. I had a proper hobbyist publication placed into my hands this past week. A physical magazine!
In general, and happily, parts of the magazine market are in state of resurgence, across all formats, with new data from Hearst backing that up. The magazine in my case was one from the world of die cast models. Metal toys, or something more than toys, in other words. Vintage and modern. They're not my thing, other than in a sense of nostalgia for objects from childhood, but I can see why for some people they are a thing.
Other than reflecting on the concentrated and curated hit on a subject or area of interest a specialist magazine brings, I was struck by the advertising. A good proportion of the people who purchased this magazine want to buy stuff. The people advertising in this magazine want to sell it to them. It's a match made in heaven. Or a Matchbox, for British die cast aficionados. There's certainly no 'GetDreamEgg'.
Somehow though, this link is largely lost online. I accept that the example above is for a generalist publication - paid for, mind you - and Diecast Collector is a highly specialist one, but the argument still stands: most online ads are poorly targeted.
Obviously, it could be said the above comparison is unfair and doesn't take into account a lot of factors. That's true. Yet, the original internet deal was free content paid for by advertising.
I'm not so green as to suggest that situation will be coming back anytime soon, especially following the recent judgement against Google that only called for it to "relax its rules governing its online advertising auctions". I bet Google did relax after that.
It's still the case however that the online advertising market is one that, by and large, doesn't serve advertisers or consumers well. Surely we can change that before ads ruin everything.
