I may have been here before, but I was reminded of the scourge that is Internet-based advertising when a letter dropped into my real, physical, mailbox inviting me to join the Nextdoor app. Being the introvert that I am, the idea of joining some social media corral filled with neighbours immediately put me on the defensive. I didn’t think “What is this?”, I thought “Who’s making money from this?”.

Nextdoor, as the blurb goes, is a way of using social media to connect with your neighbours. It’s not like a Facebook group in that it’s limited to a set range of people, most of whom have been invited. They touted one of the benefits as “Finding lost pets”, which to me seems a bit of low priority, even for pet owners. Anyway, back to the meat of it. I Googled it, of course, and once I’d sifted through the glowing testimonies (sorry, no “free” app is that good), I came to what I wanted to find, that is who is making money from it.

Of course, revenue is derived from advertising, broad-based and local.

The thing is, no matter how many pets I want finding, I think I already get far more advertisements through my computer than I need, and I take significant steps to prevent them, too. The Nextdoor app is Android (or Apple) based and therefore not as well shielded from advertisements as things on my PC, so should I wish to avail myself of the app to find my lost pet, I’m going to have to suffer an onslaught of advertising.

Yes, I’m aware that much of the good stuff on the Internet is funded by advertising, and I’m sure lots of people get lots of good information from commercials. I’ve even responded to one or two Internet ads myself, but it’s their volume and their relative intrusiveness that bothers me. A few fewer ads, sorry many fewer ads, and I might feel differently, but there are apps out there that are virtually unusable thanks to the advertising overkill. Less is more, people.

I also understand that living in North America now that there’s a different culture around advertising, and by that I mean people are far more tolerant of it. I mean, seriously, how can anyone get excited by advertisements at the Super Bowl? Some will tune in to the game just for the commercials. It’s madness. I went to a summer soccer match in Ohio between two teams from the English Premier League, and they were even sponsoring the damned corner kicks! I know that’s not Internet advertising, but I am pointing out that North Americans clearly have a higher advertisement threshold.

Anyway, I won’t be using the Nextdoor app, mostly because I get too many ads already and I genuinely don’t need any more. As I said in an earlier paragraph, perhaps instead of chasing revenue with higher volumes, which in my case have a negative effect, they could do fewer but make them less intrusive and more interesting. Did I say interesting? Given that North America is the home of modern advertising, I really think ad agencies should be looking at quality before quantity, because right now it’s all quantity and no quality.