Disabling Ads: Devious Yet Possibly Hopeful

          A part of advertising I have long thought unconventional and captivating is the ability, on some platforms, to pay to disable advertisements. This has become an especially amplified topic to me as I spend more and more of my time listening to music on the app Spotify. While there are definitely many other platforms that also offer upgraded versions of their application that remove ads at a monthly cost, Spotify adds another way of ad disablement to the media world, and it is this method that really grabs my attention. For people that have not used Spotify before, a common occurrence for those without Spotify Premium is the interruption of your music streaming to present the screen display and audio pictured above. Rather than just bombarding you with commercials, you have the option to watch what they call a "short video" in order to get 30 minutes of ad-free music streaming. While I am not going to delve into it in this blog post, it is interesting to note that when you do opt to watch the video, Spotify does not seem to grant you a full 30 minutes of ad-free listening, which is quite a frustrating annoyance. This topic, especially when it comes to Spotify and their unique approach to it, is quite hilarious, although a complete nuisance, because of how ironic it is. What they're doing is basically presenting to their consumers the choice of ads or ads. The "short video" is just another advertisement, but it is how Spotify presents it, like an opportunity to rid yourself of pesky commercials, that traps listeners. It is very easy to say that this method is just a continuation of the method of advertising on television or radio, using inescapable and continuous advertisements, because this option we are given doesn't really seem like one. However, I think that this idea of letting the consumer at least have some choice in their exposure to advertising is quite a large step in the right direction.
         The most common method of advertising is the constant stream of videos and audio messages and billboards that we can't ever seem to avoid, but the introduction in modern platforms to escape this is a breakthrough against the advertisement industry. In "The Persuaders" the idea of a neverending clutter of ads that is impossible to break through is introduced, but this new ability on some platforms to dodge the exposure to all the negative media is, in my opinion, revolutionary. While it is very infuriating that we've come to a time when society is so filled with advertising that the only way to escape it is through paying money, it is comforting to know that in recent years companies have taken the time to acknowledge the importance of ad removal.
        While the purchase of ad-free platforms and the sneaky methods companies use to persuade you to "dodge" ads can be received in many different ways, I believe that the underlying idea of consumption of media without the ceaseless exposure to advertising is a step in the right direction towards breaking through the clutter, even though the process is a nuisance.