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Most people don’t get mad when they see a coke bottle or an Apple product placed in a scene of a movie or tv show. People do get mad when they are trying to wat

by wil421 8y ago

Most people don’t get mad when they see a coke bottle or an Apple product placed in a scene of a movie or tv show. People do get mad when they are trying to watch TV and they keep being forced to watch a commercial.

gricardo99 8y ago
I couldn't agree more. The new age of "cloud DVRs" is infuriating. I used to have a DVR that worked fine, I could skip over whatever I wanted. Now with the "cloud DVRs" we're back to being forced into watching commercials.
- wil421 8y ago
  Well I guess I’ll notice the pain when I use DirecTV Now Cloud DVR. I noticed a few years ago Comcast started to even restrict On Demand content. They forced users to watch ads and even disabled fast forward!
move-on-by 8y ago
Product placements also aren't targeted beyond the general target audience of the show. Privacy issues are at the heart of targeted ads. Advertisement mediums that cannot dynamically target the individuals are at less risk of violating your privacy. Of course now advertisers are looking to ultrasonic beacons to get around the lack of targeting and data collection, but for the most part product placements aren't the malicious and disruptive advertisements we've become victims of.
kbenson 8y ago
General advertising is not a problem. Individually targeted advertising is. General advertising includes the sign on the door or exterior of the brick and mirter storefront, as well as billboards, magazine/newspaper ads, and product placement in media. It ranges from almost entirely informative (on the storefront) to annoying and off-putting (some billboards, poorly done product placement). This advertising is passive. Individually targeted ads use extra information about the individual to cater the ad, and thus have an incentive to collect this information. This advertising is active, in that it is bidirectional. Passive advertising not only still provides some benefit for much less harm, it's also hard to distinguish from purely informational materials in some cases. It's worth distinguishing these to prevent bike-shedding over details that can be safely ignored when we formulate our arguments accurately. Edit: s/targeted/individually targeted/ to make it more specific and accurate. That is the theme of the comment, after all...
- blang 8y ago
  All advertising is targeted. Billboard ads change based on the neighborhood you are in. Magazine/Newspaper ads are different from magazine demographic to magazine demographic. TV ads vary dramatically based on channel, time of day, and program.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    Well, yes, but I'm using "targeted" in the context of "personally targeted". Group targeting is less of a problem because then they are working on averages and predominant group characteristics, which does not mean any one individual does correspond to those. For example, a billboard may target an area with a message mainly meant for LGBT people, or for Hispanic people, but living or frequenting that area foes not mean you are LGBT or Hispanic respectively. There is still a level of anonymity there that protects privacy. I've updated my original comment to make this more clear, so thanks for calling out the ambiguity.
- yesenadam 8y ago
  General advertising is not a problem. I'm not sure why you would say that. e.g. There's a old silo building overlooking a bay near where I live, opposite a park, which has a huge billboard ad atop it the length of the building, which dominates the skyline. Calling that passive seems odd. It's aggressive, incredibly tasteless, and a symptom of a huge failure of civilization. edit: And well, this is Sydney. Last night there was a rally at the Sydney Opera House to protest recent events: The head of the Opera House had refused to allow horse-racing ads (!) to be projected onto the sails of the Opera House. A well-known right-wing radio shock-jock got involved, and abusively insisted the ads be shown. Then, incredibly, the Premier of NSW (i.e. the leader of the state) forced the Opera House to back down, and show the ads. There's been widespread incredulity and outrage here about that! So, yeah, it is a problem.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    It's passive because you have to be around it to see it, and you have to look that direction, and it isn't tracking how you respond to it. They are annoying (but that's not inherent, it's entirely possible for someone to buy a billbaord and put up a great work of art or something), but they aren't a problem in the same class as the individually targeted advertisements that incentivize massive data collection and correlation projects and privacy violations. > Then, incredibly, the Premier of NSW (i.e. the leader of the state) forced the Opera House to back down, and show the ads. There's been widespread incredulity and outrage here about that! So, yeah, it is a problem. I think that's (possibly) a problem, but in a way entirely divorced from the problem of advertising. It depends entirely on the reason. If it was forced because the Opera house if funded with government money, maybe that plays into whether they can/should reject certain ads. I imagine that would play into the discussion in the U.S. (where whether you accept government money affects whether you can legally exclude certain classes of people, to my knowledge).

by wil421 8y ago

gricardo99 8y ago

I couldn't agree more. The new age of "cloud DVRs" is infuriating. I used to have a DVR that worked fine, I could skip over whatever I wanted. Now with the "cloud DVRs" we're back to being forced into watching commercials.

wil421 8y ago
Well I guess I’ll notice the pain when I use DirecTV Now Cloud DVR. I noticed a few years ago Comcast started to even restrict On Demand content. They forced users to watch ads and even disabled fast forward!

move-on-by 8y ago

Product placements also aren't targeted beyond the general target audience of the show. Privacy issues are at the heart of targeted ads. Advertisement mediums that cannot dynamically target the individuals are at less risk of violating your privacy. Of course now advertisers are looking to ultrasonic beacons to get around the lack of targeting and data collection, but for the most part product placements aren't the malicious and disruptive advertisements we've become victims of.

kbenson 8y ago

General advertising is not a problem. Individually targeted advertising is. General advertising includes the sign on the door or exterior of the brick and mirter storefront, as well as billboards, magazine/newspaper ads, and product placement in media. It ranges from almost entirely informative (on the storefront) to annoying and off-putting (some billboards, poorly done product placement). This advertising is passive. Individually targeted ads use extra information about the individual to cater the ad, and thus have an incentive to collect this information. This advertising is active, in that it is bidirectional. Passive advertising not only still provides some benefit for much less harm, it's also hard to distinguish from purely informational materials in some cases. It's worth distinguishing these to prevent bike-shedding over details that can be safely ignored when we formulate our arguments accurately. Edit: s/targeted/individually targeted/ to make it more specific and accurate. That is the theme of the comment, after all...

blang 8y ago
All advertising is targeted. Billboard ads change based on the neighborhood you are in. Magazine/Newspaper ads are different from magazine demographic to magazine demographic. TV ads vary dramatically based on channel, time of day, and program.
- kbenson 8y ago
  Well, yes, but I'm using "targeted" in the context of "personally targeted". Group targeting is less of a problem because then they are working on averages and predominant group characteristics, which does not mean any one individual does correspond to those. For example, a billboard may target an area with a message mainly meant for LGBT people, or for Hispanic people, but living or frequenting that area foes not mean you are LGBT or Hispanic respectively. There is still a level of anonymity there that protects privacy. I've updated my original comment to make this more clear, so thanks for calling out the ambiguity.
yesenadam 8y ago
General advertising is not a problem. I'm not sure why you would say that. e.g. There's a old silo building overlooking a bay near where I live, opposite a park, which has a huge billboard ad atop it the length of the building, which dominates the skyline. Calling that passive seems odd. It's aggressive, incredibly tasteless, and a symptom of a huge failure of civilization. edit: And well, this is Sydney. Last night there was a rally at the Sydney Opera House to protest recent events: The head of the Opera House had refused to allow horse-racing ads (!) to be projected onto the sails of the Opera House. A well-known right-wing radio shock-jock got involved, and abusively insisted the ads be shown. Then, incredibly, the Premier of NSW (i.e. the leader of the state) forced the Opera House to back down, and show the ads. There's been widespread incredulity and outrage here about that! So, yeah, it is a problem.
- kbenson 8y ago
  It's passive because you have to be around it to see it, and you have to look that direction, and it isn't tracking how you respond to it. They are annoying (but that's not inherent, it's entirely possible for someone to buy a billbaord and put up a great work of art or something), but they aren't a problem in the same class as the individually targeted advertisements that incentivize massive data collection and correlation projects and privacy violations. > Then, incredibly, the Premier of NSW (i.e. the leader of the state) forced the Opera House to back down, and show the ads. There's been widespread incredulity and outrage here about that! So, yeah, it is a problem. I think that's (possibly) a problem, but in a way entirely divorced from the problem of advertising. It depends entirely on the reason. If it was forced because the Opera house if funded with government money, maybe that plays into whether they can/should reject certain ads. I imagine that would play into the discussion in the U.S. (where whether you accept government money affects whether you can legally exclude certain classes of people, to my knowledge).