Because, in the golden days of ads, your metrics were bullshit. You had a print ad and someone said that they sold this many issues and, because of the papers totally not biased market research the told you that for every paper sold, x more people saw your ad. Same with TV and Radio, most numbers around viewers or listeners are basically made up with some fancy statistics.
With the Internet, suddenly you had hard data - your ad has been requested x times. But, that data was always below the fancy print/tv/radio numbers, so the companies had to either push more or reduce prices. That’s how they designed more and more intrusive ads like the ones with the shitty hidden close icon. The longer you need to close it, the longer is the “ad viewed” metric. The more you click on fake X buttons, the higher is the click rate or click through rate. Ad metrics have always been a scam and no one wants to change it.
Because, in the golden days of ads, your metrics were bullshit. You had a print ad and someone said that they sold this many issues and, because of the papers totally not biased market research the told you that for every paper sold, x more people saw your ad. Same with TV and Radio, most numbers around viewers or listeners are basically made up with some fancy statistics.
With the Internet, suddenly you had hard data - your ad has been requested x times. But, that data was always below the fancy print/tv/radio numbers, so the companies had to either push more or reduce prices. That’s how they designed more and more intrusive ads like the ones with the shitty hidden close icon. The longer you need to close it, the longer is the “ad viewed” metric. The more you click on fake X buttons, the higher is the click rate or click through rate. Ad metrics have always been a scam and no one wants to change it.