edithhopegardenjournal

Advertisers are significantly concerned about the value of digital advertising and that concern is leading them to question whether and the extent to which digital advertising will remain in the marketing and advertising mix of their companies. 3 factors are central to the discontent: suspicions about the effectiveness of digital advertising, large amounts of fake traffic, and concerns about the returns on advertising investments. Media companies, platforms, and others providing digital advertising must address these issues if digital advertising is to remain viable. Much of the concern about poor effectiveness of digital advertising is due to poor ad formats, lack of audience attention to ads, and high rates of ad blocking—currently about 40% in U.S. on computers and tablets. Such concerns have forced digital advertising prices downward for the past decade because those factors have reduced demand and because there has been a dramatic increase in advertising inventory that is making...

It is increasingly being argued that the Internet provides “digital surplus” to consumers and that this surplus is a means of understanding the value of the Internet to users and society. Measuring the surplus presents a host of challenges, however. First, the Internet does not produce content. Private enterprises, public entities, and individuals create content with different motives and compensation demands. These are offered under varying business strategies that determine how and how often the content is available on the internet. Secondly, Internet gateways—ISPs, search engines, and aggregators—have a significant influence on consumers’ content choices. Consumers use relatively few gateway services, but they access content from multiple providers. The nature and sources of that content are highly influenced by the gateways, their preferred content providers, and the algorithms they employ in filtering content. Determining whether consumers obtain value for money in terms of pr...