There’s a well-documented phenomenon researchers call advertising skepticism, and surveys consistently show it’s been rising for decades. A few data points:
The scale of disillusionment
Studies routinely find that 70-80% of people distrust online ads. Ad blocker usage has grown dramatically — hundreds of millions of people now run them as a matter of course. “Banner blindness” was documented by researchers as far back as the late 1990s, and it’s only deepened. The brain literally learns to not see things it has tagged as noise.
Why advertising became what it is
The shift from informational to emotional/aspirational advertising accelerated in the mid-20th century as markets became saturated. When ten brands sell nearly identical products, you can’t differentiate on features alone — so you sell an identity or a feeling. That logic has now infected even products where it makes no sense. Combine that with digital advertising’s obsession with click-through rates, and you get a race to the most emotionally manipulative imagery and copy possible, because that’s what the metrics reward in the short term.
The self-defeating cycle
The industry is aware of the problem and largely can’t solve it, because the cure requires restraint that individual actors won’t exercise unilaterally. Every advertiser knows people are burned out, but each one figures their ad will be the exception. It won’t be. The result is escalating volume and aggression to break through the very skepticism the volume creates.
What people are doing about it
Practically speaking, most thoughtful consumers have arrived at some version of what you’re describing:
- Ad blockers at the browser level (uBlock Origin remains the gold standard)
- Avoiding ad-heavy sites and moving toward RSS, newsletters, or curated sources
- Actively preferring products that don’t advertise aggressively — there’s a certain trust signal in a company that relies on word of mouth
- Treating heavy advertising as a mild negative signal about a product (“if it were that good, would they need to shout this loudly?”)
The countercurrent
There is a small movement toward what gets called “honest advertising” — straightforward, even self-deprecating copy that respects the audience’s intelligence. Brands like Patagonia, some craft manufacturers, and a handful of direct-to-consumer companies have built loyalty precisely by doing the opposite of mainstream advertising. It works, but it requires actually having a good product and being willing to play a long game.
To simply disengage is arguably the most rational response available. The advertising industry has been predicting its own crisis for thirty years and kept going because attention, however degraded, still has some marginal value. But you can’t monetize someone who’s genuinely stopped looking.