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I think human nature is to ignore advertising, and block it out. Quick: What's the last ad you saw before going to this website? I think most won't be able to r

I think human nature is to ignore advertising, and block it out. Quick: What's the last ad you saw before going to this website? I think most won't be able to recall. Targeted or not, viewers are blocking ads from their sensory inputs as a matter of course. The problem is that companies don't want to accept this and continue to beat the dead horse of advertising, despite mountains of evidence it doesn't work, and consumers hate it.

darpa_escapee 11y ago
Unfortunately, nobody is above the psychological mechanisms that advertising exploits. It is manipulation that sidesteps rationality and hijacks a supposedly 'free actor'. This is why it must be eliminated.
- Theo59 10y ago
  If it weren't for a Facebook ad I probably wouldn't have had a skin condition checked out that turned out to be incurable without medication. This is the opposite of exploitation. After this experience I began to trust this form of targeting but still think 'retargetting' is annoying (I publicly stumped one of the execs at Adroll when I asked 'why do we need retargetting?')
dragonwriter 11y ago
> I think human nature is to ignore advertising, and block it out. If that was the case, advertising wouldn't work, and companies that engaged in more advertising would be burning money without improving their competitive position. Advertising would be a net harm to the business doing it, and businesses would soon learn that not advertising was an easy way to slim down costs without hurting revenue, leading to the rapid and inevitable demise of the advertising industry in all media. That this has not occurred suggests to me that human nature is not to block out advertising, whether or not it is consciously noticed and easily subject to intentional recall. > Quick: What's the last ad you saw before going to this website? An online ad for Civ 6; I remember clearly because it made me recall the speculation I've been making recently that there is a mechanism recently that is overtargeting ads (both personally and temporally), because rather than getting ads for things that I might be interested in, I'm seeing a lot of ads for things I've just thoroughly explored.

darpa_escapee 11y ago

Unfortunately, nobody is above the psychological mechanisms that advertising exploits. It is manipulation that sidesteps rationality and hijacks a supposedly 'free actor'. This is why it must be eliminated.

Theo59 10y ago
If it weren't for a Facebook ad I probably wouldn't have had a skin condition checked out that turned out to be incurable without medication. This is the opposite of exploitation. After this experience I began to trust this form of targeting but still think 'retargetting' is annoying (I publicly stumped one of the execs at Adroll when I asked 'why do we need retargetting?')

dragonwriter 11y ago

> I think human nature is to ignore advertising, and block it out. If that was the case, advertising wouldn't work, and companies that engaged in more advertising would be burning money without improving their competitive position. Advertising would be a net harm to the business doing it, and businesses would soon learn that not advertising was an easy way to slim down costs without hurting revenue, leading to the rapid and inevitable demise of the advertising industry in all media. That this has not occurred suggests to me that human nature is not to block out advertising, whether or not it is consciously noticed and easily subject to intentional recall. > Quick: What's the last ad you saw before going to this website? An online ad for Civ 6; I remember clearly because it made me recall the speculation I've been making recently that there is a mechanism recently that is overtargeting ads (both personally and temporally), because rather than getting ads for things that I might be interested in, I'm seeing a lot of ads for things I've just thoroughly explored.