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This is a good thing. Advertising is one of the most effective ways companies have to let people know about their products - I'd say they're essential in free m

This is a good thing. Advertising is one of the most effective ways companies have to let people know about their products - I'd say they're essential in free market economies. But having ads is one thing and completely disrupting the user experience is another. Finding a balance is a better approach than blocking all ads.

wyager 9y ago
Ads are almost never how informed purchasers make decisions. In the age of the Internet, review systems (whether collaborative or curated) are infinitely better sources of product information than ads. They are also vulnerable to manipulation from would-be advertisers, but less so (and any influence can be mitigated by trusted reviewers).
- akvadrako 9y ago
  Ads do tell you something about a company though. Like, do they waste a lot of money on marketing? Have a good sense of humour? Target my in-group as a customer? Pay attention to detail?
pbhjpbhj 9y ago
Advertising is very seldom information based. Advertising is primarily about making you buy a product from a particular company, whether it's a good product or not, whether it's right for you or not. If it were about letting people know your products then 'Nide' would have "if you want these for cross-training the best show are 'Reebob' Cross2" on the advert for their training shoes. Advertising is almost orthogonal to informative disclosure.
- carlosrg 9y ago
  >Advertising is primarily about making you buy a product from a particular company, whether it's a good product or not, whether it's right for you or not. That a pretty simplistic view. I never said ads are 100% true and want the best for you. Ads are informational as they inform you of the existence of a product and their basic characteristics. Small, well-targeted ads can be the only way someone that's just starting could have to let people know about the existence of their product. They don't hold a gun at you to force you to buy a product, they don't remove competition between companies, they don't prevent third-party review sites from existing. Buying or not buying them is up to each individual.
- skybrian 9y ago
  There are also what I call reminder ads. They don't tell you anything new or convince anyone to change their mind about whether they like a product, but they remind people of products they already like. (Movie theater ads about buying food and drinks, for example. Or milk ads.) Advertisers want to make sure their customers don't forget to buy their stuff. This is much easier than actually convincing non-customers to do something new.
  - mrguyorama 9y ago
    And is equally disgusting. I am a grown-ass adult. I can make choices in my life about habits, desires, and expenditures without any of your bullshit "reminders". I am not a toddler who needs to be set on a schedule for "feeding time". Don't let advertising companies fool you. Your entire purpose to them is to be just as valuable as the average slaughterhouse cow
SllX 9y ago
Two things about ads. They don't seek to inform you so much as they seek to inform you that something exists whilst manipulating your emotions to get a particular reaction out of you and millions of other people. This is particularly blatant in AV ads. The other thing, mainly regarding software ads, is they don't seek to inform you so much as manipulate you whilst tracking your every move to guarantee that the ad was effective. This is particularly blatant with the Google and Facebook ad networks, but pretty much almost any 2-bit ad company you've heard of on the web at least tries to do something similar. So in the end, advertising has at least two major problems with trying to either 1. manipulate you directly through your emotions or 2. manipulating your computer bandwidth and CPU time to violate your privacy and oftentimes, security. Regarding #1, there are always going to be people that think they're smart enough, intelligent enough, or logical enough that they will never fall prey to this vector of advertising, and almost universally they are wrong. I don't doubt some few exceptions exist, I just don't think I've ever actually met someone who is an exception, nor am I under any illusions that I am. Your best defense is to cut ads out of your life to greatest extent possible. You'll probably never cut bus ads out of your life, if you at all enjoy city living, but you don't have to let advertisers into your home either. How do you find out about things after that point? If you are at all social, read any kinds of news sites, invest any money into markets, have any kind of skin in some kind of game, or engage in any kind of recreational activities, you'll have other channels of information. Generally the signal will be of a much higher quality than if you were personally bombarded with advertisements intentionally seeking to cut out a large slice of your overall attention bandwidth every single day.
- hyperdimension 9y ago
  Just curious--when you say "AV ads," do you mean antivirus ads or audio/visual ads?
  - SllX 9y ago
    Apologies, I was using the acronym for Audio/Video and assumed it would be understood from context, but I could have been more clear.
- 9y ago
Splines 9y ago
As long as there is even one single instance of bad advertising on the web I have zero qualms about running an ad blocker and noscript.
eps 9y ago
If I don't want to see ads, I expect not to see them. There's no "better approach".
Broken_Hippo 9y ago
What percentage of ads do you learn from compared to the number of ads that make you pissed off at both the company and the content that allowed the ads? Come on, now, be honest. For me, that first number is very, very low. I consume just like a lot of other folks, but its mostly art stuff. I have money in my account mostly because I don't have much I actually want that doesn't take some saving for. Mostly, I think these people just want my information or want me to pass on their advertisements. Clothing wants me to advertise for them with products splattered with their logo. They can go diddle themselves. Want me to watch ads? Pay me. Have actual ad standards. Stop trying to trick me with "information". Stop trying to trick me with popups. And so on. Until then, back to the diddling.
Feniks 9y ago
Still buying stuff and I've been using ublock origin for years.

wyager 9y ago

Ads are almost never how informed purchasers make decisions. In the age of the Internet, review systems (whether collaborative or curated) are infinitely better sources of product information than ads. They are also vulnerable to manipulation from would-be advertisers, but less so (and any influence can be mitigated by trusted reviewers).

akvadrako 9y ago
Ads do tell you something about a company though. Like, do they waste a lot of money on marketing? Have a good sense of humour? Target my in-group as a customer? Pay attention to detail?

pbhjpbhj 9y ago

Advertising is very seldom information based. Advertising is primarily about making you buy a product from a particular company, whether it's a good product or not, whether it's right for you or not. If it were about letting people know your products then 'Nide' would have "if you want these for cross-training the best show are 'Reebob' Cross2" on the advert for their training shoes. Advertising is almost orthogonal to informative disclosure.

carlosrg 9y ago
>Advertising is primarily about making you buy a product from a particular company, whether it's a good product or not, whether it's right for you or not. That a pretty simplistic view. I never said ads are 100% true and want the best for you. Ads are informational as they inform you of the existence of a product and their basic characteristics. Small, well-targeted ads can be the only way someone that's just starting could have to let people know about the existence of their product. They don't hold a gun at you to force you to buy a product, they don't remove competition between companies, they don't prevent third-party review sites from existing. Buying or not buying them is up to each individual.
skybrian 9y ago
There are also what I call reminder ads. They don't tell you anything new or convince anyone to change their mind about whether they like a product, but they remind people of products they already like. (Movie theater ads about buying food and drinks, for example. Or milk ads.) Advertisers want to make sure their customers don't forget to buy their stuff. This is much easier than actually convincing non-customers to do something new.
- mrguyorama 9y ago
  And is equally disgusting. I am a grown-ass adult. I can make choices in my life about habits, desires, and expenditures without any of your bullshit "reminders". I am not a toddler who needs to be set on a schedule for "feeding time". Don't let advertising companies fool you. Your entire purpose to them is to be just as valuable as the average slaughterhouse cow

SllX 9y ago

Two things about ads. They don't seek to inform you so much as they seek to inform you that something exists whilst manipulating your emotions to get a particular reaction out of you and millions of other people. This is particularly blatant in AV ads. The other thing, mainly regarding software ads, is they don't seek to inform you so much as manipulate you whilst tracking your every move to guarantee that the ad was effective. This is particularly blatant with the Google and Facebook ad networks, but pretty much almost any 2-bit ad company you've heard of on the web at least tries to do something similar. So in the end, advertising has at least two major problems with trying to either 1. manipulate you directly through your emotions or 2. manipulating your computer bandwidth and CPU time to violate your privacy and oftentimes, security. Regarding #1, there are always going to be people that think they're smart enough, intelligent enough, or logical enough that they will never fall prey to this vector of advertising, and almost universally they are wrong. I don't doubt some few exceptions exist, I just don't think I've ever actually met someone who is an exception, nor am I under any illusions that I am. Your best defense is to cut ads out of your life to greatest extent possible. You'll probably never cut bus ads out of your life, if you at all enjoy city living, but you don't have to let advertisers into your home either. How do you find out about things after that point? If you are at all social, read any kinds of news sites, invest any money into markets, have any kind of skin in some kind of game, or engage in any kind of recreational activities, you'll have other channels of information. Generally the signal will be of a much higher quality than if you were personally bombarded with advertisements intentionally seeking to cut out a large slice of your overall attention bandwidth every single day.

hyperdimension 9y ago
Just curious--when you say "AV ads," do you mean antivirus ads or audio/visual ads?
- SllX 9y ago
  Apologies, I was using the acronym for Audio/Video and assumed it would be understood from context, but I could have been more clear.
9y ago

Splines 9y ago

As long as there is even one single instance of bad advertising on the web I have zero qualms about running an ad blocker and noscript.

eps 9y ago

If I don't want to see ads, I expect not to see them. There's no "better approach".

Broken_Hippo 9y ago

What percentage of ads do you learn from compared to the number of ads that make you pissed off at both the company and the content that allowed the ads? Come on, now, be honest. For me, that first number is very, very low. I consume just like a lot of other folks, but its mostly art stuff. I have money in my account mostly because I don't have much I actually want that doesn't take some saving for. Mostly, I think these people just want my information or want me to pass on their advertisements. Clothing wants me to advertise for them with products splattered with their logo. They can go diddle themselves. Want me to watch ads? Pay me. Have actual ad standards. Stop trying to trick me with "information". Stop trying to trick me with popups. And so on. Until then, back to the diddling.

Feniks 9y ago

Still buying stuff and I've been using ublock origin for years.