Thanks for the article! This reinforces many of the trends I have been watching for a few years now. Adblockers, habitual and automatic cookie deletion, diminishing returns, inconsistent customer profiles because of gaps or incorrect data etc.
I think writing off ads on the safe network is silly. They will be around and you can’t stop it entering in the network in various forms. There will no doubt be solutions to limit ads sneaking into your visual periphery and stealing some of the valuable cognitive resources devoted to attention and decision making. I think relevant ads that are context driven and opt in have a place. Give users the control and power in the relationship.
There were various debates on this in the Synereo thread and some valid points made from the members of the Synereo team. It depends on what you consider an advertisement really.
Micropayments for media and content consumption were not really feasible in the past and there was not much incentive for companies in the space to move towards a different monetization model. Whereas now it seems like the most likely solution to monetize content.