Stubbornness or desperation?

It appears that most advertisers look like they are missing the boat on the precipitous decline of the value of advertising due to over-saturation. 

The problem is not that we are shown irrelevant ads, which of course we are.

But rather it's that the overabundance of advertising has taught us to block out all of them. 

Besides, in a world with so much product information.

Direct comparisons.

Professional reviews.

User reviews.

Friend recommendations, etc

All being one click away, one has no need for additional, clearly biased, information.

It used to be that if you did not advertise, there would be no way for anyone to find out about your product or service. 

This is not true anymore. 

Look at how all of the new tech companies have grown without much advertising themselves. 

This works even at the smaller scale – consider the success of something like the Pebble watch on Kickstarter, which raised $10M+ with nothing more than a good idea and a compelling video of the prototype.

Marketers are trying to offset their looming irrelevance through increased targeting. 

Since such privacy invasion tends to really piss people off.

What they are actually accomplishing is speeding up their decline, rather than preventing it.

This of course is my own subjective point of view.

Time will show where we go from here.