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What if a bunch of dentists predicted that there would be a 50% increase in the enjoyment of root-canal surgery by 2015, would you believe them?
Or, telemarketers told us that there would be a 50% increase in the number of people looking forward to being called during dinner. Sound reasonable?
How about if politicians told us that we’d happily donate 50% more to their election campaigns because of an increase in trust?
No? Not buying any of that?
Then you’re likely not to believe Google when it predicts that…
Engagement rates across all display ads will increase by 50 percent. As ads become less cluttered, more relevant, more engaging and more attractive, we’ll see the rate at which people interact with display ads (such as watching videos or playing games) increase dramatically.
Display ads? Really?
Punching monkeys and laughing babies are going to change the face of banner ads, huh? We’re no longer going to view display ads as a necessary evil, but instead will enjoy engaging with them? I find that somewhat hard to believe, don’t you? Of course, Google has a vested interest in making that prediction. Just like dentists, telemarketers and politicians, Google needs to convince the world that future growth is limitless–just so long as you suspend the laws of commonsense. 
Not that it can’t happen, I just don’t see how display ads can get that much better in a 4-year period. 50%? The last time I heard such bold predictions, it was a shady SEO firm out of <insert third world country here> claiming in an email that they could increase my search engine traffic.
Anyway, that’s just one prediction out of 6 and, to be fair, the other 5 predictions are not so outrageous and actually quite reasonable. In fact, I suspect that if you head over to the Google blog post and read all of the predictions, you’ll feel 50% better off because of it! 
