7 ms·

Everyone thinks advertising doesn't work on them. And everyone is wrong.

• oiboabfljasbfo 9y ago
  My claim is that it does work. Astoundingly well. My further claim is that it is not in the public interest.
  • mozumder 9y ago
    No shit. The world isn't your personal charity for you. Advertisers don't owe you anything. But if you really want to get blown away, it actually does serve the public interest, because it increases commerce, and any sale is an increase in the GDP. Did you thank advertisers for growing the economy?
    • ionised 9y ago
      Do you think people owe advertisers a living?
      • thecrazyone 9y ago
        No you owe the content publishers a living if you're consuming their content else they go out of business. Ads is how content publishers make money. Advertisers in fact pay money for publishing their ads.
        • ionised 9y ago
          Show me the contract that states what you just did and I'll agree.
        • pbhjpbhj 9y ago
          Following your argument above, if the content publishers don't like it they should stop publishing content rather than enforcing your particular idea of an implicit contract. If not then your supposed liberalism is strongly biased against those who disprove of advertising.
    • apk-d 9y ago
      Would your spendings suffer a decrease if a magic virus wiped all ads from existence? Personally, I think I'd find stuff to buy all the time.
    • jiggunjer 9y ago
      So the only important thing is commerce? Let's deregulate everything then: drugs, sex, human trafficking, banks (shivers).
      • thecrazyone 9y ago
        Let's indeed deregulate everything. Picking from the items you've mentioned: drugs: if someone is putting substances in their own body, they don't need your permission and you don't have a say on what they can do with their body, they own it, its their property next, sex (say even prostitution): Two consenting adults having sex. What's your problem? Same as above, you should've no interest in what others are doing with their bodies. You don't own their bodies. Human Trafficking: Forced human trafficking is bad. Everyone should buy protection/insurance against this from private businesses (security agencies). Voluntary trafficking is none of your business. Banks: banks are over-regulated. Let them run like other businesses. Don't bail them out if they fail (not with tax dollars at least). Let them fail as other businesses do. Let better banks take the positions of the ones which can't serve customer interest I would appreciate/welcome any arguments against what I said
        • jiggunjer 9y ago
          Mentioning a single pro for each subject is naive. The arguments for and against each of those are less shallow than you make it appear. You completely ignore systematic detrimental effects on society.
  • fauigerzigerk 9y ago
    I think people will always try to influence others, and I don't think advertising is the worst form of doing it. If you say that it's not in the public interest you'd have to compare it to alternatives that are. That said, I think there should be restrictions put on the methods that advertisers are allowed to use. What currently happens in online advertising hurts everybody, including those who rely on ad funded business models. Another issue is aonymity. In a world without advertising, you'd have to pay for everything directly. Making anonymous payments is extremely difficult and easily outlawed entirely.
    • thecrazyone 9y ago
      I'm a libertarian. And putting/enforcing rules on someone who's not aggressing you because you don't like it seems like needing coercion. You're voluntarily consuming ad-based content, no one's forcing you. If you don't like their ad-supported content, shouldn't you use only content which paid for in different ways? Why should anyone be restricted in their actions because of your opinions?
      • pbhjpbhj 9y ago
        Ads are embroigled in to modern Western culture. Do you expect us to lock ourselves away in the woods? Why should we be restricted in our actions in order to allow product placement in every cultural artefact, advertising on your museum ticket, carefully placed concession stands in "free" public spaces, etc., etc.?
      • fauigerzigerk 9y ago
        >Why should anyone be restricted in their actions because of your opinions? Because the rights and protections under the law that advertisers rely on only exist because of my opinion and the opinion of other citizens. Without the law, the concept of private property would be largely undefined. Corporations would not exist. There would be no limited liability, no chapter 11, no enforceable contracts, no trademarks, no patents, no copyrights, no courts, no police, nothing of the sort. If we want to enjoy the protection that the rule of law affords us, we will have to accept that there needs to be some sort of social process that determines what our laws should be. It's a negotiation. And no, using ad-supported services is not voluntary in any realistic sense of the word. There are many essential necessities of modern life that are ad-supported and have no real alternatives. Also, voluntary is a rather ill defined term when it comes to things that most people cannot even know or understand.
• stale2002 9y ago
  Of course advertising works. And this is a very bad thing, not a good thing.
  • Cthulhu_ 9y ago
    Depends. How many products are you using which you first heard from via HN? That's a form of advertising too, albeit a lot less sleazy.
    • stale2002 9y ago
      Aggregation sites, that use crowd sourcing to bubble up interesting content and products is a fundamentally different beast than paid advertising.
      • icelancer 9y ago
        Is it? Can you easily differentiate fake "bubbled up" content? That is what the best advertising agencies have their hands around and have for some time.
      • Nition 9y ago
        It is until advertisers conspire to bubble their own content up.
  • fourneau 9y ago
    Can you explain why it's a bad thing? From my perspective, I've found various things via advertising that I would have never come across by other means. A lot of people argue that "you'll just search for what you want" except I'm tired of searching for "shirt" and then scrolling for days looking for something that may work. Every once in a while I'm hit with a really good ad, and I'll click it, and maybe even buy.
    • vanderZwan 9y ago
      > From my perspective, I've found various things via advertising that I would have never come across by other means. If you want to make a fair comparison, that should be compared to all the things you didn't find because useless ads took up your time and mental space. Also, whether or not you found something through an ad is not the point; one isn't not going to convince a smoker to quit smoking by trying to convince them that nicotine doesn't make them feel good - it's the other shit about it that is bad. In the case of advertising, there's a lot of cynical manipulation going on. The nagging factor in children's advertising comes to mind as one really evil example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi63rXnuWbw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi63rXnuWbw I've been TV- and ad-free since 2001 (yes, yes, I know: the "how do you know someone doesn't watch TV? They'll tell you"-smugness curse strikes again). In my case it was accidental however: I was living in a student appartment with no access to TV and Internet for over a year, having only books to read and rented movies to watch. Even when forced upon you you start noticing the difference pretty quickly, and wondering how you ever was capable of considering this normal. Nowadays ads just feel invasive, like strangers shouting at me on the street claiming they want to have a conversation while really they just want to get into my pockets.
• Ntrails 9y ago
  Eh, I think I've never clicked on an ad on the internet and bought a thing. The only times I've clicked on an ad that I can think of is mobile where I was trying to close something and got fucked. So, advertising models based on clickthroughs definitely haven't worked on me. (Admittedly uBlock has reduced my exposure somewhat) But the magazine style "increase awareness of product and hope that leads to eventual interest and purchase" probably works as well on me as anyone else.
  • posterboy 9y ago
    you might be surprised how many "articles" are "sponsored", hard to tell really.
  • pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    Lifestyle advertising is far stronger and more insidious as it doesn't appear to us as if it's advertising. When I was growing up all movies and USA television seemed to have Apple computers only, all the stars drank Coke with every meal, all the footballers wore Adidas boots. We almost always instinctively are attracted to the familiar, so just seeing a product before makes us value it higher, even if it's intrinsic value is less. That hard-wired instinct is hard to control.
• bryanrasmussen 9y ago
  Everyone thinks some specific types of advertising don't work on them, and dependent on their self-knowledge they can be right.
• enraged_camel 9y ago
  Advertising definitely works on me: it helps me decide what not to buy.
• ionised 9y ago
  Some clearly doesn't work as intended though. If I see an advert for Coca Cola, it doesn't make me want a Coke. I hate Coke and I understand that it is not at all good for me. No amount of advertising is going to make me buy one. Simply being aware of the brand in this case seems pointless, because I'm doing nothing with it. In other cases advertisements will merely lead me to avoid that brand or company out of spite, because I hated their advert (as I do most adverts).
  • manigandham 9y ago
    That's not the intention. They know it won't work on every single person, but as long as there is ROI then it works.
  • DanBC 9y ago
    It's a shame you got downvoted because you're making a reasonable point. I loathe Pepsi Max ads. I like Coke Zero add. But I never buy Coke, I only ever buy Pepsi Max.
• marssaxman 9y ago
  Of course advertising works - that's why I resent it so much and go to great lengths to protect myself from it.