AP’s ethnographic studies look for solutions to news and ad “fatigue”

A new study by the Associated Press has come to the conclusion that consumers are “tired, even annoyed, by the current experience of advertising,” and that, as a result, they don’t trust very much of it. But at the same time, AP found, consumers do want information relevant to their needs, as well as ways to socialize that information.

Although it tends to move cautiously and deliberately, AP has been subtly and quietly introducing tools aimed at improving relevance and socialization, and may have plans for an ad-supported aggregation business that applies what it has been learning.

I spoke about the study with Jim Kennedy, AP’s vice-president for strategic planning, about how the study’s findings will impact AP’s strategic thinking. “The future of information delivery needs to be quite different from current practices and quite different from the old packaged practices that we’ve had offline and online so far,” Kennedy said. “That’s the big deal for us now. You can’t figure all that out in a minute or even a year.”

Continue reading this post at Nieman Journalism Lab.