I met with a company today that’s doing some very cool work in digital ad optimization. They have a simple mission: to show ads that users like more often than ads they don’t like. Sounds like a pretty good idea, right?

Then why doesn’t every publisher out there already do the same thing?

Most publishers today prioritize their ads based on price sold. The higher the CPM, the higher the priority.  For all the campaigns sold in a similar price range, often the more targeted campaigns will receive a bumped-up priority.

So if you’re a user visiting your favorite app, you’ll probably see the highest-priced CPM ad campaigns first, followed by some lower-priced CPM campaigns that may be targeted to people like you, followed by lower-priced and integrated ads.

Now, not every publisher prioritizes the user’s ad experience like this. In fact, Google AdWords de-prioritzes price, gives added weight to targeting relevance and introduces a third metric which is how other users respond to the ad campaign. Likewise, Facebook prioritizes the ads displayed to a user based on predicted relevance and the engagement rates of the ad among similar users.

For Google and Facebook, ad pricing alone does not determine the ad experience shown to the user. On most other publishers, pricing is the leading factor of the ad experience.

Is it any coincidence that Google and Facebook continue to capture and increasing share of users’ attention and a majority percentage of each new ad dollar spent?

It’s time that publishers prioritize the user’s ad experience first (pricing second), stem the tide of ad blockers and watch the ad revenues grow faster from there.

What do you think? Share your thoughts below!