One of my favorite scenes in “Jerry Maguire” is when Tom Cruise’s character awakens in the middle of the night with an epiphany that would eventually birth his famed Mission Statement for a new kind of sports management agency. In “The Things We Think And Do Not Say,” Jerry furiously types into the night, laying out a stream of consciousness-style vision for the future of the business that revolves around quality, not quantity. “More honesty, more focus, fewer clients, but eventually the revenues will be the same,” he writes. Video advertising expenditures have grown 67 percent since 2015 with no signs of slowing down. Publishers are creating more content than ever before and racing to find ways to monetize audiences around what’s proven to be the most emotive and engaging content format for most demographics. The response from consumers? A growing distaste for online advertising and the rise of ad-blockers. In a recent survey more than 60 percent of consumers said they abandon online video due to the inundation of ads within the experience. Per an IAB study, 25 percent of desktop users and 15 percent of mobile users employ ad-blocking technology to avoid ads.
