While digital advertising is everyone’s favorite punching bag, have you ever given a thought to how your life would have panned out without it?

Winston Churchill said of democracy ‘ It is the worst form of government, except all others’. Today I say the same about digital advertising – ‘It is the worst form of monetization on the internet, except all others’

Over the last 20 years, it has subsidised enormous innovations in tech, made it possible for the internet to be freely accessed by billions, transferred value from the privileged to the needy more effectively than taxes, created millions of SMBs, improved marketing efficiency, reduced prices and improved productivity.

Let’s rewind to 2000. Without advertising, search would have been limited to a few paying users, mostly in the US and Europe. Imagine if Google search was limited to ~ 300 Mn users of the global north. There would have been no social media without the advertising model. No way for small businesses to scale infinitely. No startup ecosystem, and no SAAS models for VCs to fund.

As much as we would hate to admit it, digital advertising is the single most effective transfer of value from the privileged to the needy in the history of mankind.

There exists no other global capitalist system where 20% of the users sitting in the first world effectively subsidise an essential service for 3 Bn users in the developing world.