The advertising business is first and foremost about grabbing attention.
Whether on- or off-line, this has some downsides for the products concerned.
Ads which are plastered everywhere lose their impact and I sense that people are beginning to dislike the fact that their environment is choked with maximum-colour, maximum-contrast, maximum-area selling messages.
Today’s invention is an advertisement which is designed to be unobtrusive and even calming. Billboards would simply be empty or blank frames. Online banners would be frames containing the page background colour.
Such an ad would say, in smallish letters on the frame, “This ad has been created by XYZ Corp and is intended show respect for our customers by not defacing their visual surroundings.”