Recent potential innovations include YouTube Advertising (where’s that?) and Facebook Advertising (canceled within a month of launch and now the same as all other ad models). Neither have materialized. So, we at ProWebSurfer think the world needs a Personal Ad Server for these reasons:

1. Web Culture. Millions of users now create and format their own content. Why can’t they control which ads they see?
2. Common Sense. Millions of users tune out the ads they see in their browser – why not admit defeat and recognize that online advertising does not work.
3. The Bubble. Online advertising has seen five years of growth. When the economy downturns (i.e. now), the ad economy will turn nasty and look for ways to evolve.
4. Economic. Improved (behavioral) targeting requires vast data mining and increased invasions of privacy. The alternative approach is opt-in (permission-based) advertising and this requires a Personal Ad Server approach.

More to follow. Keep thinking.

While this generational shift in capabilities and expectations has taken place, advertising has struggled to adapt. Strategies such as behavioral targeting involve increased knowledge of user activity to improve targeting of ads to consumers, but such methods have hardlimits and push against boundaries such as privacy and regulatory concerns.

This blog, created by the people at ProWebSurfer, offers an alternative model, where consumers can implement their own “Personal Ad Server” to decide what advertising is delivered to them as well as when and how this is delivered. As well as obvious benefits to consumers, advertisers should embrace this model as targeting is improved leading to better yields, improved metrics and more sales.

What do you think?