Advertising is not a tax, but it should be less taxing.
When advertisers treat ads like a mandatory fee people just have to put up with, it lets them off the hook for making it better. But what if we started seeing ads as a cover charge, not a tax?
“What’s the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist only takes your skin.
Ah, Mark Twain - I could go through your quotes for hours.
Nowadays, I think advertising has become the tax collector. People feel like it’s taking too much - of their time, their data, their patience.
Even worse, as Scott Galloway - another soundbite maestro - puts it, advertising is a tax that only the poor will end up paying. With paywalls and subscriptions popping up everywhere, soon enough, the only ones left without a subscription will be the people who can’t afford it. They’re shut out from good information and entertainment when they need it most. The stuff they once paid for only with their attention.
So advertising? It’s not all bad. It could actually be a fair price for all this content that matters.
Right now, though, advertising feels like a tax because, well, most of it acts like one. When advertisers treat ads like a mandatory fee people just have to put up with, it lets them off the hook for making it better. But what if we started seeing ads as a cover charge, not a tax? That means:
1. Making them worth people’s time. Entertaining, memorable, anything but “meh.”
2. Respecting the currency. Attention - not personal data - is the real price of “free” content.
Advertising shouldn’t be the tax collector, squeezing every last drop it can. It should take just a sliver of people’s eyeballs, and if done well, maybe even a tiny, tiny piece of their heart. And they get to keep their skins.
