Thread by @mikaelcho

Why digital advertising is broken and how we’re fixing it: (thread)

1/ Attention is a scarce asset. Yet, today’s advertising platforms are built on a model of interruption, forcing brands between you and your intention.

2/ Though ads are everywhere, people don’t trust them. Study after study shows, when you pay to reach people in an interruptive way, less than 5% pay attention.

3/ In today’s interruption-based ad model, the more money you spend, the more people you annoy. Advertisers are trying to solve this problem by spending more money and showing more ads but that only makes it worse.

4/ Ads interrupt us everywhere, leading to more people tuning them out. This is not a content problem. This is not a targeting problem. It’s a context problem.

5/ People don’t trust ads. People trust people. Brands don’t need more ads. They need more people sharing them in trusted contexts.

6/ By making images available for open use, Unsplash has become the primary source for visuals on the internet. Images on Unsplash are regularly seen more than the frontpage of The New York Times.

7/ Unsplash puts your content in the hands of people, the creators of the internet. They add context by sharing your visuals with their audiences as part of their content.

8/ When content is leveraged by choice and embedded in a trusted context, it is no longer tuned out.

9/ When your content is made available for use in a platform where all the creators go, reach compounds exponentially. Initially, you reach all the creators. Then, with their networks, you reach the entire internet.

10/ Through this mechanism, your content organically spreads across the internet reinforcing your message.

11/ The attention of devoted audiences can't be bought. It can only be earned by brands that stop trying to take value and start trying to add it instead.

more: unsplash.com/brands