Advertising Offset Credits: Calculating the Cost of Ad Pollution (Episode 116)

If we look at advertising like pollution, could we make the worst offenders pay a price for making us suffer bad ads? In this week's episode, I explore the concept of Advertising Offset Credits and the cost of aggressive, self-serving advertising.
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Advertising is like pollution. It’s noxious, obtrusive, and seemingly ever-present. Sure, there are exceptions no one minds an ad that is creative, clever, or genuinely entertaining. But consumers have learned to ignore, bypass, and tune out ads. The admen have countered with even more aggressive techniques, interrupting everything we do to talk about themselves. Is that really the way to get me to know, like, and trust you and your brand?

If we look at advertising like pollution, then here’s a parallel concept to explore: Advertising Offset Credits. In the terrestrial world, environmental polluters can purchase Carbon Offset Credits to compensate for the damage they’ve incurred. What if we did the same thing for the most annoying advertisers? Would that make a difference?

I explore this thought experiment here in Episode 116. Listen here or in your favorite pod player.

Show Notes

This episode was inspired by a quote from Andrew Essex’s Ten Principles for Better Advertising:

Measure what actually matters: How about calculating the real damage incurred by being annoying? Traditional ROI metrics put us in this predicament, so let’s fundamentally redefine ROI. It’s time for the industry to toss out our old reporting techniques and invent an entirely new measurement system rooted in hearts and minds and humanity. No one actually pays a price for making bad ads. Imagine if we could precisely calculate the long-term cost of your irritating people.

SOURCE: The End of Advertising: Why It Had to Die, and the Creative Resurrection to Come (affiliate link) by Andrew Essex, pp. 205-8. Published by Spiegel & Grau, 2017.

When companies have a “not-for-profit” arm, doesn't it contribute to profit in some way? Are these charitable programs and foundations legit, or are they just a form of Corporate Offset Credit? Wouldn't it be better if the corporation just did some lasting good instead of being exploitative and then “covering” for it? I wrote a song to see if this concept would carry and I use it as background music in this podcast from time to time.

As I mentioned in the episode, I can teach you the soft-touch techniques that I teach to my clients:

Free help in my podcast and blog.
Inexpensive help in my online course.
Exclusive access with one-on-one training.

Published November 27, 2017 by Michael Boezi.

The post Advertising Offset Credits: Calculating the Cost of Ad Pollution appeared first on Control Mouse Media, LLC.