Today, digital advertising is expected to grow to an annual spend over $335 billion by 2020. The industry is booming, taking over search ad spend at #1 in 2016. However, with constant increases in ad volume and spend, what’s happening to returns?

The average clickthrough rate of display ads across all formats and placements is a miniscule fraction of a percent: 0.06%. Even of this small amount, over half of mobile ad clicks are reportedly accidental—and that’s if you can reach the user in the first place.

Conversely, ad blocking tools are growing explosively, with usage up 41% on the year globally. The number is even higher among younger [...]

Facebook users who are the most news-obsessed are also the most likely to interact with a small number of news sources, new research finds.

The study is a look at the architecture of social media polarization — essentially, how people are so effective at sorting themselves into opposing groups and filtering out alternative opinions. Though Facebook has algorithms that feed users content they’re likely to enjoy, previous research has found that people’s own choices on the social network are a stronger influence on the sorts of opinions those individuals see. (Politics conversations on Twitter aren’t much different.)

The new research, published today [...]