The Sounds of Silence: The Best Advertising in the Future May Be Invisible

Way back in 1905, Nobel Prize-winning bacteriologist Robert Koch presciently warned: “the day will come when man will have to fight noise as inexorably as cholera and the plague.” Little could he imagine the sheer volume of noise today’s world-weary citizens encounter every day - everything from the roar of passing jumbo jets to the sonic plague of Justin Bieber.

This noise comes in all shapes and forms, a veritable tsunami of daily sounds from that first ‘ping’ from your mobile phone when you wake up to the last notification before you go to bed.

No wonder people are looking for ways to reduce the daily noise, to filter and block anything intrusive, unwelcome, and irrelevant...including advertising. In the US, Americans are bombarded with an estimated 4,000 to 10,000 ads a day. In a desperate attempt to cut through all the noise, advertisers have conjured up every imaginable way…pop-ups, take-overs, non-skippables…to stop you in your tracks, whether you like it or not. 

Which is why it should be no surprise that ad blocking is growing by an estimated 41% year-on-year. At last count over 400 million people have downloaded some form of ad blocking technology and millions more will do the same in the near future. Why? Most people cite major load times and costly data usage, whilst others the poor quality of the actual ads. One theme runs across all: the value exchange between advertisers and people has broken down. Most people are willing to be exposed to some advertising in return for free content. However, the equilibrium of that value exchange is unbalanced once that advertising becomes annoying, intrusive and costly. It isn’t just what an advertiser says, but how they say it that also matters.

How should the industry respond? There are some simple and pragmatic measures, most notably embracing the IAB’s LEAN (Light, Encrypted, Ad choice supported and Non-invasive) principles, which attempts to address the four deadly sins of online advertising.

However, increasingly the answer may be less noise. In fact, it may be silence.

The third wave of digital disruption, the Internet of Things, is upon us and like previous disruptions it will bring new opportunities and challenges. One such opportunity comes from the flow of data that will emerge from the over 50 billion objects that will get connected to the Internet. Everything from houses and cars to your body. Many of these connected objects will be products such as Nike sneakers, Nespresso machines and Hellman’s mayonnaise jars. For the first time these products will be able to talk or send messages either explicitly or implicitly. The key question is what these products say and whether you even need to know they are saying it?

There are multiple use cases of silent data exchanges from products that will reduce your daily noise intake while still making your life easier.

For example, if your Hellman’s mayonnaise is about to expire, the physical product in your fridge could send a message to your Amazon shopping basket to re-order. Your Nespresso machine could count daily capsule usage and send caffeine consumption data to your fitness and diet application. Your Jaguar vehicle could turn off the house alarm once the car enters the driveway.

In each of these scenarios, there is no overt communication to the consumer, rather a silent value exchange between things. No noise, lots of value.

The most valued brands may be the ones that do the most for you without you ever having to see or hear anything. The best advertising in the future may be silent, and people wouldn’t want to block it given the invisible and uninterrupted value it provides. As Gordon Hempton, the founder of One Square Inch of Silence (the quietest place in the United States) once said: “silence is not the absence of something, but the presence of everything.” 

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