Great advertising is fearless. Yet COVID-19 has torn up the advertising strategy playbook, with many brands rushing to hit pause on all advertising.

The future of online advertising has to involve creating and delivering high-quality, non-intrusive ads that strongly appeal to a specific user community, because this is a fair exchange that the vast majority of users are more than willing to accept.

Users’ data has rapidly become the most important web asset for countless participants in the online economy.

Looking back on the last decade of online advertising, one trend becomes clear: as online ads became bigger, flashier, and more invasive, the popularity of installing ad blockers soared.

Did you know the fortune cookie doesn’t actually originate from China? It was brought to the US by the Japanese!

The marks of this unexpected and tragic force have moved like a wave through society, altering not only our way of life, but also our jobs and revenues, especially for those who work in online advertising.

Back in the day, ad blocking meant one thing. Blocking all ads. Easy, eh? By design these tools were absolutely rigid; no gray areas, no room for maneuver. But over time that approach has softened. So why is that?