I have lost track of how many I have read. Figuring out the reasons for ad blocking is not rocket science. Digital advertising is too irrelevant, irritating and intrusive. The “why” is the easy bit. Everyone is clear things need to change.

The problem is what and how. Fixing it is not easy, but it must start with the issue of relevance.

It is a conundrum at the heart of advertising, articulated a century ago by John Wanamaker in his famous aphorism “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.”

Advertising to the uninterested is wasted. Unfortunately, in the digital world, even though wasting advertisers’ money is a concern, wasting the time of the audience is damaging the medium itself.

Lack of relevance led to the attention arms race — the cause of much of the irritation of today’s ads. Advertisers went from static banners to ever more attention-­grabbing formats: animations, pop­ups, pop­-unders, interstitials etc. Each of these gave a temporary lift, but the underlying irrelevance meant the lift was temporary.

The end result is that consumers have been trained to ignore ads.

As I became aware of this phenomenon, I noticed how Pavlovian my own response has become. Ads are generally so irrelevant that I don’t give them even a cursory glance. As my screen darkens and an ad loads, I’m scanning the edges looking for the “x” that indicates the close button. It doesn’t matter what’s in the popup. I’m not even looking.

Direct marketers, especially digital direct marketers, have been dealing with the issue of relevance for years. When the consumer can easily opt out of your messaging relevance and timeliness become watchwords. Deliver relevant content in a timely manner or lose your audience.

We are seeing the early stages of a transition in advertising.

No doubt there will continue to be mass advertising. As long as the inventory is cheap enough and not too heavily blocked, it will continue. But premium inventory will increasingly be sold to marketers that are targeting effectively. That means direct marketers selecting customers and prospects based on a cross­channel, behaviorally targeted program built around individual customer journeys.

There are many challenges to this model.

Increased targeting means reduced volume. Such reduction must be accompanied by increased pricing which can only be achieved if there is a positive ROI. It also requires addressing consumers’ concerns about tracking and data privacy, no small task.

What history shows though is that if advertising is relevant and respectful consumers will accept it. They recognize that content is not free and a fair value exchange is in everyone’s interests. The million (billion?) dollar question is whether this will happen before the constantly empty food bowl of irrelevant ads has conditioned the audience to tune them out entirely.

The future belongs to direct marketers.