A new YouGov survey into the attitudes of consumers to digital advertising has revealed some alarming trends around how the explosion of digital marketing has jaded many consumers, and hinted that a shift in approach may be required by digital marketers.

Marketing Tech contributor Marco Veremis is president at UpStream, the digital response specialist that commissioned the research, and a front runner in mobile and digital advertising for over a decade. Speaking to him at Mobile World Congress last week, we questioned him about the interesting and alarming shift that’s taken place over the last five years as the numbers of digital ads being served every year rocketed from 150bn in 1996, to a staggering five trillion today.

The effect, as one might expect, has been general desensitisation and a decline in response rates. “This is the worrying part,” says Veremis, who says that driving up response is UpStream’s ‘bread and butter’.

“Response used to be a healthy 7%, but today it’s below 0.1%. And the reaction of advertisers over the last five years has been, ‘well, my response rates are declining, let’s do more, more, more’.

But more, more, more can be a risky strategy; not just because of the general apathy and ad-blindness it lays on the average consumer. As fast as response rates are declining, the number of consumers staying with a brand and not actively opting out of communications is on the decline also.

Perhaps more worryingly, disgruntled consumers have the power to wreak havoc and brand damage like never before. “If you’d asked people 40 years ago whether they were getting too much advertising, the answer may well have been the same as today,” says Veremis. “But today they have the ability to go online and be vocally negative about that brand. So the negative impact is there, there is such a thing as negative brand awareness.”

On the face of it, running less advertising in a more targeted way would seem the logical solution. “A lot of companies have caught wind of this, but many have fallen into another pitfall, personal data,” says Veremis. “How are you targeting?”

It’s a pitfall elegantly demonstrated by the oft-cited case of the US teenage girl, secretly searching Google for abortion information, whose family then learns of her pregnancy through targeted pregnancy ads.

Respondents to the research noted that the sensitivity increases depending on which digital device marketers are using, with mobiles and tablets significantly more personal, and therefore sensitive, than laptops and PCs.

“They’re very personal, and the invasion of privacy seems to be far more pronounced; the sense that privacy is being invaded,” says Veremis. “In a way, this makes it even more problematic if you’re trying to market through these devices, you need to be even more careful. You have different rules of engagement.”

“On the one hand you’ve got invasion of privacy, trying to be more targeted and advertising less,” says Veremis. “On the other hand you’ve got massive volume. Where’s the middle ground?”

Most companies these days try and figure out what stage of your life you’re at, whether you have kids, a dog. Ten years ago, people weren’t bothered about being targeted in this way, whereas these days, it seems, people are becoming more sensitive to it.

But what will people accept being targeted on? Interestingly, the YouGov study revealed a number of criteria that didn’t ruffle peoples’ feathers.

Hobbies and interests are okay because it’s something people are generally very public about anyway. Location is also acceptable, provided they’ve given consent, and again it’s not too personal. Just over a fifth said context, for instance if they’re surfing a particular website, people are targeting me that way. And finally timing, my interests change by the hour, so timing is important to me.

The interesting thing here is that none of these are traditional marketing segmentation metrics that companies use.

“Privacy has become more of an issue as people become more protective and more vocal when it is violated,” concludes Veremis. “Targeting criteria should change; one should look for the types of data that are perceived to be non-intrusive.”