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It's a shame the ads have to either be totally horrible or totally gone. There is nothing wrong with a bit of advertising, but those who do it these days make i

It's a shame the ads have to either be totally horrible or totally gone. There is nothing wrong with a bit of advertising, but those who do it these days make it so in-your-face and disruptive, that they have dug their own graves. They should have gone a more subtle route, and maybe no one would think ads were such a big problem, and they could still be there. Since moving to Holland, I've actually enjoyed the ads I see on TV and Youtube; compared to American or Asian standards, where I've previously lived, here they are little short films of creative art that always make me laugh with their wit. If all ads had something positive to offer other than "buy me right now", and they could tactfully get out of your face, everybody could be happy. But that's not what happened.

RodericDay 11y ago
Honestly, I think there's something wrong with "a bit of advertising".
- SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
  I don't understand the total allergy to advertising expressed above. I personally don't like commercial television (I hate interruptions in the middle of a show), or pop-ups that get in the way of me reading a page, or pages that are so plastered with ads that it's hard to find the content. But when I search on Google for a particular kind of product, and it shows me ads for a new instance of that product (that doesn't yet have the organic PageRank), I'm happy to click on the ad to find out about it. "A bit of advertising" that's well enough targeted and tastefully presented is absolutely a good thing. Every show in a TV series or movie is an advertisement for the next show or installment. Every book is an advertisement for its sequel. Every blog post is an advertisement for the next blog post. Every blog post, Facebook comment, video, or friend telling you about a product is an advertisement for that product. Many of those aren't paid advertisements, but many secretly are. Saying that "advertising" is blanket wrong is the same as saying "learning about new things is wrong." Because how could you find out about something new if it weren't advertised somehow? What exactly are you protesting?
  - roymurdock 11y ago
    Great point. People need to define which ads they are talking about during these sorts of arguments, as "ads" can be thought of as any sort of content that spreads information about a new product or idea as you point out.
    - copsarebastards 11y ago
      I don't think it's a great point, I think it's a point that shows no understanding of context. This thread is about ad blockers. Ad blockers don't block blog posts, books, or any of the things he brought up. If you know what "ads" means here, it's not because people need to define what ads they are talking about, it's because you're not paying attention.
      - SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
        Ad blockers absolutely block the ads at the top and of Google searches, which I specifically sited as useful.
        copsarebastards 11y ago
        Well, I don't agree. I don't find those useful. If it's what I am searching for, it should be the top search result, otherwise I don't want to see it. And for the record, I would pay for a search engine without ads (probably DuckDuckGo).
      - throwaway2048 11y ago
        puppies are basicly ads, you wouldnt brutally slaughter puppies would you????
  - RodericDay 11y ago
    Well, I don't have a magic machine that allows me to suss out the intent of someone when they make a recommendation. However, if the recommendation is not truly heartfelt or organic, if the purveyor of the recommendation is a specialist not in the domain of the product but in the domain of making recommendations, it's an "advertisement" and not just a casual recommendation. And I would prefer a life of haphazard discovery and missing out on a few good products, than a life of having to battle salesmen trying to butt into every aspect of my experience. Saying that "advertising" is blanket wrong is saying that becoming an expert on selling things regardless of what the things actually are is wrong. It may be a bit of an old-fashioned idea in our age of professional specialization and whatnot, but I stand by it.
radicalbyte 11y ago
I have such a hate of adverts that I don't have a television. I grew up watching and listening to the BBC, it was a culture shock moving to Holland. The last time I was on holiday in the US it seemed like the TV shows were just interludes between adverts for expensive brands of anti-depressants and weird painkillers (which turn out to be Paracetamol but for $10 per pack instead of E1).
- pdkl95 11y ago
  The movie "Fight Club" has an interesting line just after the narrator moves away from his "normal life" and into the derelict house: By the end of the first month, I didn't miss TV. I suspect most people don't understand how subtly addictive TV can be, as it takes at lest that month to break the habit. While I'm not sure if it's part of the same effect, there seems to be something similar for advertising: you don't realize the huge cognitive load it puts on you until you've been away from it for a significant amount of time. Running a firewall isn't free, yet the costs associated with recognizing that something is an ad which should be ignored are often assumed to be trivial.
- dudul 11y ago
  Agreed. I grew up in a European country where advertising is regulated, you can only have one interruption per movie or TV-show. Breaks are therefore slightly longer (something like 5 minutes), but it means that you can watch a 2 hour movie with only one 5 minute break for ads, and a 5 minute break means that you can actually walk away and do something useful in the mean time. Moving to the US was such a shock, I can't believe people here just put up with this shit, it is impossible to focus on what you're watching when it's interrupted literally every 5 minutes.
shrikant 11y ago
I thought the Adblock Plus approach to this was interesting, where unobtrusive (or "acceptable") ads were whitelisted by default, and they were quite clear about the criteria for this as well.[0] But the tech community lost their collective shit and threw around loaded terms like "extortion", "mafia" and "protection scheme" (I'm not exaggerating, search for those terms on this domain), which made any nuance impossible. [0] https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads#criteria https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads#criteria

RodericDay 11y ago

Honestly, I think there's something wrong with "a bit of advertising".

SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
I don't understand the total allergy to advertising expressed above. I personally don't like commercial television (I hate interruptions in the middle of a show), or pop-ups that get in the way of me reading a page, or pages that are so plastered with ads that it's hard to find the content. But when I search on Google for a particular kind of product, and it shows me ads for a new instance of that product (that doesn't yet have the organic PageRank), I'm happy to click on the ad to find out about it. "A bit of advertising" that's well enough targeted and tastefully presented is absolutely a good thing. Every show in a TV series or movie is an advertisement for the next show or installment. Every book is an advertisement for its sequel. Every blog post is an advertisement for the next blog post. Every blog post, Facebook comment, video, or friend telling you about a product is an advertisement for that product. Many of those aren't paid advertisements, but many secretly are. Saying that "advertising" is blanket wrong is the same as saying "learning about new things is wrong." Because how could you find out about something new if it weren't advertised somehow? What exactly are you protesting?
- roymurdock 11y ago
  Great point. People need to define which ads they are talking about during these sorts of arguments, as "ads" can be thought of as any sort of content that spreads information about a new product or idea as you point out.
  - copsarebastards 11y ago
    I don't think it's a great point, I think it's a point that shows no understanding of context. This thread is about ad blockers. Ad blockers don't block blog posts, books, or any of the things he brought up. If you know what "ads" means here, it's not because people need to define what ads they are talking about, it's because you're not paying attention.
    - SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
      Ad blockers absolutely block the ads at the top and of Google searches, which I specifically sited as useful.
      - copsarebastards 11y ago
        Well, I don't agree. I don't find those useful. If it's what I am searching for, it should be the top search result, otherwise I don't want to see it. And for the record, I would pay for a search engine without ads (probably DuckDuckGo).
    - throwaway2048 11y ago
      puppies are basicly ads, you wouldnt brutally slaughter puppies would you????
- RodericDay 11y ago
  Well, I don't have a magic machine that allows me to suss out the intent of someone when they make a recommendation. However, if the recommendation is not truly heartfelt or organic, if the purveyor of the recommendation is a specialist not in the domain of the product but in the domain of making recommendations, it's an "advertisement" and not just a casual recommendation. And I would prefer a life of haphazard discovery and missing out on a few good products, than a life of having to battle salesmen trying to butt into every aspect of my experience. Saying that "advertising" is blanket wrong is saying that becoming an expert on selling things regardless of what the things actually are is wrong. It may be a bit of an old-fashioned idea in our age of professional specialization and whatnot, but I stand by it.

radicalbyte 11y ago

I have such a hate of adverts that I don't have a television. I grew up watching and listening to the BBC, it was a culture shock moving to Holland. The last time I was on holiday in the US it seemed like the TV shows were just interludes between adverts for expensive brands of anti-depressants and weird painkillers (which turn out to be Paracetamol but for $10 per pack instead of E1).

pdkl95 11y ago
The movie "Fight Club" has an interesting line just after the narrator moves away from his "normal life" and into the derelict house: By the end of the first month, I didn't miss TV. I suspect most people don't understand how subtly addictive TV can be, as it takes at lest that month to break the habit. While I'm not sure if it's part of the same effect, there seems to be something similar for advertising: you don't realize the huge cognitive load it puts on you until you've been away from it for a significant amount of time. Running a firewall isn't free, yet the costs associated with recognizing that something is an ad which should be ignored are often assumed to be trivial.
dudul 11y ago
Agreed. I grew up in a European country where advertising is regulated, you can only have one interruption per movie or TV-show. Breaks are therefore slightly longer (something like 5 minutes), but it means that you can watch a 2 hour movie with only one 5 minute break for ads, and a 5 minute break means that you can actually walk away and do something useful in the mean time. Moving to the US was such a shock, I can't believe people here just put up with this shit, it is impossible to focus on what you're watching when it's interrupted literally every 5 minutes.

shrikant 11y ago

I thought the Adblock Plus approach to this was interesting, where unobtrusive (or "acceptable") ads were whitelisted by default, and they were quite clear about the criteria for this as well.[0] But the tech community lost their collective shit and threw around loaded terms like "extortion", "mafia" and "protection scheme" (I'm not exaggerating, search for those terms on this domain), which made any nuance impossible. [0] https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads#criteria https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads#criteria