We built digital advertising on the wrong metrics.

It was supposed to reward great content. Instead, we optimised for clicks, impressions, and CPMs.

And now? Everyone’s paying the price.

In the early days of the internet, publishers like Time Inc. planned to charge users a small subscription fee to access content online.

But Madison Avenue had a different idea.

Ad buyers were so enthralled by this new digital medium, that they showed up at the doors, eager to buy banner ads. Money flowed in. Demand soared. And everything changed.

Publishers were ecstatic. "Thus we and other journalism enterprises decided that it was best to make our content free and garner as many eyeballs as possible for eager advertisers.”

What felt like innovation at the time ended up reshaping the entire web.

It worked... at first.

But as more websites launched, ad space became infinite, while ad budgets didn’t.

Rates dropped. Quality suffered.

And something even more dangerous happened. Publishers started writing for advertisers instead of readers. The incentives shifted.

Clicks became more valuable than credibility. Eyeballs more important than impact.

The system was flawed, but rather than fix it, we scaled it.

Pop-ups. Outstream. Instream. Display banners. Retargeting.

Not just one or two ads... but entire pages flooded with them.

We optimised for CPMs instead of impact.

And here’s the kicker: only 44% of advertiser spend even reaches the publisher.

The rest? Swallowed by middlemen... that often add complexity, not value.

Everyone loses.

Consumers, are overwhelmed by clutter and interrupted by ads they never asked for.

Advertisers, find it harder to drive real ROI in a system built on proxies.

Publishers, struggle to survive as quality journalism gets squeezed.

This breaks the value exchange at the heart of advertising, and that’s not sustainable.

We treat advertising like a vending machine. Put money in, get impressions and clicks out.

But that’s not how brands are built.

We must stop measuring value by volume and start measuring it by impact.

Quality content should be funded properly. Publishers should be paid fairly. And advertising should earn attention, not just buy reach.

It’s been nearly 30 years since banner ads first took over the web.

Maybe it’s time we asked what we traded in return.