Display Advertising is Failing. What’s Next in Digital Marketing?

Recent trends have not been kind to disruptive advertising tactics such as banner, display, and PPC ads. It’s been well documented that display ads and PPC are becoming the bane of people’s online existence and ineffectual. The elements that have been the backbone to digital marketing practices are beginning to show their age and according to Unbounce, 98% of advertisers are wasting money on ads.

Is traditional advertising dead?

Traditional advertising might be dead. Marketers have been talking about the “death” of traditional advertising as early as the late 1990s, when it became obvious that the Internet was here to stay and the digital revolution was upon us. But despite various claims of traditional advertising going away forever, it’s still managed to stick around as a viable marketing medium, and there are even proponents who argue that traditional advertising will never go away.

I won’t claim to settle this debate once and for all in this article (because nobody, despite what they might tell you, can accurately predict the future). Instead, I want to explore some critical considerations for the state and future of traditional advertising, including what a “death” might actually entail, and reasons for and against the possibility for traditional advertising’s true death. Then, I’ll come to the most objective conclusion I can, regardless of whether or not it’s a singularly definitive answer.