7 ms·

Are You Ready for the Nanoinfluencers?

54 points by NN88 8y ago

maxxxxx 8y ago
Sometimes I feel like throwing up when I hear more stories about advertising, advertising and more advertising. It's such a sad trend. Either people want to make money advertising things directly or our best engineers work for companies that provide advertising. There is so much potential lost with all the effort going into advertising instead of producing products that make the world better.
- GLjEI4YbnGD27LB 8y ago
  And yet we have already sacrificed those babies to Moloch, because if you don't somebody else will.
  - dougmwne 8y ago
    Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius!
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  > There is so much potential lost with all the effort going into advertising instead of producing products that make the world better. Devil's advocate / on the other hand: there's so much potential lost with all the effort going into producing products that make the world better, but which fall flat due to a lack of or poor advertising.
  - epicide 8y ago
    They fall flat because they aren't keeping up with poorly made products that have all their budgets put into advertising. We can keep flipping this as long as we want. At the end of the day, it sucks that companies get a bigger (short-term) reward by dumping more into advertising and marketing than into the product itself.
    - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
      I agree. I’m curious about all these world changing wonder products that just aren’t popular because a marketing agency wasn’t involved in manipulating... I mean educating the public.
    - dec0dedab0de 8y ago
      While advocating the use of Open Source software at a fairly large corporation I used to work at, a common refrain was "You get what you paid for" I eventually started replying to that with "So we get marketing, and lunches with sales teams?" It actually worked a bit.
  - dmwallin 8y ago
    I would suggest a minor adjustment, they fall flat due to a lack of visibility and public acceptance. Advertising is only one such way to achieve that. Unfortunately advertising is capital-driven and there is only partial overlap of products that make the world better and capital. There is also a significant amount of overlap between products that don't make the world better and capital. There are two ways to fix this problem, one is to find ways to drive more capital to products that make the world better, the other is to find better ways to drive visibility and acceptance that don't revolve around capital.
  - yeutterg 8y ago
    I think this is because people do what's comfortable for them. A lot of technical founders don't want to go outside of their comfort zone when that's exactly what they need to do to help their product succeed AND grow as a person. Edit: This regards all forms of product promotion, not just paid ads.
  - wu-ikkyu 8y ago
    That wouldn't be so much a problem if there wasn't already such an extreme level of advertising of shitty products to begin with. It's like how advertisers often claim "the internet wouldn't exist without advertising". What they really mean is all the sites (composing the majority of the internet now it seems) which have such little or negative instrinsic value that they must rely on click baiting, psychological manipulation, and selling out to advertisers would die out -- leaving only those sites which provide enough value that people care to pay for themselves, like it used to be in the "good old days"
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    This is actually another reason why advertising is bad. The reason why those hypothetical products would "fall flat due to a lack of or poor advertising" is because of the noise created by other advertisers. Cut that noise out, and suddenly very little would be needed to effectively communicate to people about new products.
- kurthr 8y ago
  Yeah, but I guess it could be worse... they could be working on "civilian control systems" in the "defense" industry. Now they just spy, FUD, astroturf, and Psyop for brands and corporations. Govts and lobbyists can hire them! It's probably best not to discuss crypto-coinage in this context.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    "Yeah, but I guess it could be worse... they could be working on "civilian control systems" in the "defense" industry. " They are working very hard on building up the infrastructure and technology needed for total population control. The needs of an advertising company and an authoritarian government are very similar.
- kakaorka 8y ago
  I think online advertising is mostly a hoax, with very few exceptions. I usually dismiss anything that remotely resembles an ad and just shut it off, even if it was really interesting. So I tend to think that the companies that pay for ads online are the ones paying for the cost of browsing the Internet for free, so I hate ads a bit less after that :)
  - greyfox 8y ago
    "browsing for free" >who's browsing for free?
    - alehul 8y ago
      Facebook and Google users, for instance.
  - QuantumGood 8y ago
    I know this isn't what you mean to emphasize, but this reads a bit as "only products and services no one on the internet hears about are not a hoax". Of course you know it's more nuanced than that, but your comment makes your worldview seem narrower than you probably intended.
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    >I usually dismiss anything that remotely resembles an ad And if the targeted advertising isn’t detected? Isn’t the whole topic here to advertise in a way that doesn’t seem like a website banner ad?
- deanCommie 8y ago
  Counterpoint: How much innovation has been incentivized due to so many internet services being free while being subsidized by ads. It's definitely a nuisance, and left unchecked can become a Black Mirror or Maniac-esque nightmare. But in it's current format it still feels like a worthwhile exchange.
  - Q6T46nT668w6i3m 8y ago
    I don’t know. It would be difficult to quantify. But, personally, I don’t think, for example, the web has improved much in the Web 2.0 era. It might be worse.
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      I think so too. MySpace and Friendster already connected people and since the first version I don't think Gmail has improved much. Most current changes seem to be more about making products more addictive but not necessarily more useful.
  - esotericn 8y ago
    It's very hard to unpick this. The internet services themselves are almost completely nonsense that we could do without. It's difficult for me to think of a single ad-based website or application that serves a purpose outside of its' own self propagation. The knock-on effects of circulating money for development work into new languages/libraries/frameworks might well be.
    - PJDK 8y ago
      Well I personally owe an entire career to the fact I could learn to code for free thanks to add supported services. I'm rather glad I could skype my brother in Japan even when I couldn't afford international call rates. And so on...
      - wu-ikkyu 8y ago
        >Well I personally owe an entire career to the fact I could learn to code for free thanks to add supported services. In my experience the sites which you pay a small monthly fee ($5-10) to are far superior
- QuantumGood 8y ago
  I know a lot of people working to make the world better, that have had to move onto other things because they lack an understanding of advertising. In fact most people I meet who strongly desire to serve others almost completely misunderstand how advertising works. Working to make the world better shouldn't be mutually exclusive to understanding advertising, but often seems to be.
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    >And I know a lot of people working to make the world better, that have had to move onto other things because they lack an understanding of advertising. Such as? I can’t seem to think of any examples.
    - QuantumGood 8y ago
      It would be fair to say this is tied pretty tightly to lack of business skills. I think most of us expect that on the "Most Admired/Least Admired Scale" marketers clump towards the bottom, not the top. There are plenty of failed KickStarters/GoFundMe's to peruse, but this is endemic among non-profits. While many do NOT offer services that could be self-supporting, many others could be, but there is insufficient business or advertising understanding to pursue being successfully self-supporting. Among inventors, many pursue licensing or finding large partners (a reasonable idea, as far as it goes), but I've seen some pretty ridiculous advertising attempts. But the real gold mine is from the files of marketing consultants working with teachers/service providers. Only some clients are in the "trying to make the world a better place" category, but many overlap that. Here's where you really find the greatest numbers of admirable folks very out of their depth at marketing.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    > Working to make the world better shouldn't be mutually exclusive to understanding advertising, but often seems to be. From what I've observed, working to make the world better isn't mutually exclusive with understanding advertising, but is strongly anticorrelated with wanting to do it. People who think about making the world better tend to understand that advertising is a cancer on society.
- sh33mp 8y ago
  To put a futurist spin on it: advertising is the commercialization around the information bottleneck in the information age.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Advertising is actively creating and perpetuating the information bottleneck.
gaius 8y ago
You see this alot on FB, “tag 10 friends in this ad to enter a draw” kind of thing. It is one of the reasons that social media is poisonous to genuine human relationships.
- XorNot 8y ago
  I have this vague suspicion that social media will die out with our generation because of this. It came along when we were all high school/college or so, and this big platform to refind old contacts was a surprising new experience. Then all of collectively went into the workforce and suddenly had public images to manage and so the whole thing very quickly became yet another advertising channel via tragedy of the commons.
  - epicide 8y ago
    You are way more optimistic than I am. Reconnecting with old acquaintances is just one (outdated, as you mention) use case of social media. They have become much more subversive (and profitable) as media/advertising engines. They'll survive as long as companies are willing to put money into advertising and enough people are influenced by (not even "suckered by") the ads. So basically forever.
- kakaorka 8y ago
  If someone is really close to me, I don't mind them tagging me in stuff like that. But if we're just acquaintances, I hate it.
  - gaius 8y ago
    What really hurt was knowing people thought I was the sort of guy who would be interested in blatantly fake Raybans and suchlike...
    - zimpenfish 8y ago
      From what I've seen, the fake Raybans tagging thing is almost always due to someone's account being hijacked.
CryoLogic 8y ago
It’s kinda perverted how dishonest the internet has become thanks to advertising. Children will go online looking for toy or game reviews not knowing even their friends have sold them out for a couple bucks.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- xiphias2 8y ago
  Actually this isn't something new. Smart children in their young age coupd take advantage of others not being able to count. Still, strength is probably more important as a child.
jobigoud 8y ago
So nanoinfluencers are people with small following on social media that are given free products in return of advertisement. Reminds me a type of sponsorship in sports and hobbies. The brands or shops select some individuals and give them access to their collection at advantageous price (say -30% of retail price, but not free), in exchange of simply wearing or using the stuff. Similar idea of "influencers" as advertisement platforms. Next step: startup providing an API for influencers as a service.
- michaelbuckbee 8y ago
  These exist already at all levels from big -> small influencers. The much maligned "Klout" was an early form of this but cratered for dumb reasons.
- QuantumGood 8y ago
  Some ad networks are already providing what is effectively IaaS.
CPLX 8y ago
One day this war is going to end. There has to be a point of saturation where the culture as a whole turns back to some version of authenticity. Clearly it's not going to be the millennials, perhaps the next generation will figure it out.
- fredley 8y ago
  I think in every generation there are those who turn their back on it all. This has been going on since at least the 60's with the Hippie movement. Counterculture has been a thing since (psychological[1]) advertising has been a thing. There will be no point at which society as a whole flips against it - the sad truth is that advertising works, really well, and most people happily sign up to this lifestyle. The war for your headspace is a hell of a lot better than the wars that came before it. The 'woke' (or whatever term you'd prefer) generation is never coming - but there will be people within every generation that turn their back on advertising and the promises it makes. 1: As in advertising that targets our desire to be happy/powerful etc. rather than merely describing the product. Watch Century of the Self documentary for more information on how this form of advertising came to be.
- QuantumGood 8y ago
  The trend to authenticity is in full force, but has long been hijacked by entertainment media, going back to not long after movies became "talkies".
swanson 8y ago
If anyone is looking for a "picoinfluencer" opportunity, my fantasy football team is seeking a new sponsor. There are 9 other 24-32 year old tech workers in the league and my team is currently 8-2.
- atom-morgan 8y ago
  Is this a joke or have you actually had sponsors in the past?
  - swanson 8y ago
    It is a joke, but one that I take very seriously. https://i.imgur.com/wmjrQV8.png https://i.imgur.com/wmjrQV8.png
Rjevski 8y ago
I’m really concerned that I never heard of those brands before. Besides the obvious annoyance caused by these ads, is there any guarantee those no-name products (as far as I’m aware none of them are a household brand at least not in the UK) are safe? I can see shady fly-by-night operations using these “influencers” to shill their dangerous & non-compliant shit and possibly get people hurt. Sure, they can also be buying conventional ads but (I hope) most people are wise enough not to fall for them or at least carry out due diligence where as it being posted by a “friend” (I’d say anyone that sells out their followers isn’t really a friend) inherently gives it legitimacy. We’ve already got this situation with multi-level marketing schemes using social media to shill their garbage (most is crap, and some is outright dangerous with multiple reports of nasty side-effects) and con new victims, I’d rather not see this expand even more.
- tomgp 8y ago
  Clinique is not a no name product by any stretch of the imagination. They've been going since the sixties and their products are available on pretty much any UK high-street. I guess you're not the target market for mid-high end skin care products?
  - Rjevski 8y ago
    > I guess you're not the target market for mid-high end skin care products? Agreed, but the rest of my point still stands. I feel there’s a lot of potential for abuse here.
voidhorse 8y ago
It's crazy how advertising has evolved. First, advertisers were somewhat honest about their products, generally relying on Smith's little theory that buyers are rational and can thus be convinced by a strong argument about the qualities of the product. Then at some point (w/ the dawn of Western snakeoil/ cure-alls?) advertisers figured out purchasers aren't so rational after all and are better convinced by psychological manipulation--targeting their weaknesses, showing them images that associate the product with happy families, etc. Now advertisers go a level deeper. Instead of suggesting some general association between happiness and their product, they can target you at the personal level and have your friends and relations (often the closest people to you psychologically speaking) serve as manipulation relays. No need to figure out some general fear or desire in the populace that you can target--just make it seem like the product is already embedded in the buyer's world. Like his friends are the direct representatives of its efficacy and the happiness it will bring. It's wild.
- QuantumGood 8y ago
  It's moved onto dopamine triggers of course, but even simple website "stickiness" I think may be an example of the kind of embedding you mention. Engage long enough and when the brain says "I engage with this site" it becomes self-fulfilling and engagement has no set end point.
- leesec 8y ago
  From what I've heard the "some point" was primarily a result of one man Edward Louis Bernays, who lead the charge towards these somewhat predatory practices, effectively inventing modern public relations and advertising. There was a really interesting ( and comical ) podcast about it from the folks at Stuff You Should Know: https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/live-in-chicago-how-public-relations-works.htm https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/live-in-chicago-...
- malvosenior 8y ago
  > targeting their weaknesses, showing them images that associate the product with happy families, etc. This part is explored really well in The Century of Self documentary. It describes how Madison Avenue used new psychology concepts and Baby Boomer individualism to invent modern advertising. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
thisjustinm 8y ago
First Thought: Noticed that the NYT is listed as a client on Obviously's site, the main influencer marketing agency mentioned in the piece and can't help but wonder if there is a behind the scenes PR play going on here. There's certainly some journalist merit to the article but without any disclosure that the paper and the company have / do work together it just doesn't feel 100% above board to me. Second thought: At the risk of falling down a slippery slope, what is the end result of the advertisification of everything? If everyone with any sort of social presence is now a billboard that's going to erode what little "trust" there is in social networks even further. At some point this is going to take down the "review economy" - the Yelps, Foursquare, etc of the world because you won't know who's leaving a review and who's a local nano-influencer posting to get their monthly free meal. Reminds me of the "ad buddies" from the Netflix show Maniac except instead of seeking them out they seek you out.
- keiferski 8y ago
  There is no firm difference between “advertising” and “the media” and there never has been. Only varying levels of forthcomingness regarding intent. Burger King is trying to sell you hamburgers - no confusion there. A newspaper? Less clear of what they’re trying to sell you, but don’t doubt it for a second - they’re selling you something. The NY Times in particular has tried to portray themselves as independent and unbiased, when they’ve been anything but for essentially their entire history.
  - CPLX 8y ago
    This is obviously and painfully false. There is a fundamental difference between journalism and advertising. When you see people advancing this point of view it's always worth pausing to notice and reflect on who benefits from efforts to erode this distinction.
    - keiferski 8y ago
      You think media organizations aren’t trying to push a particular narrative? They’ve been doing this since yellow journalism, Hearst and Pulitzer over a hundred years ago. Every side of the political spectrum does this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_controversies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_controver... > When you see people advancing this point of view... This is an ad hominem and not an argument.
egypturnash 8y ago
People are blocking more and more ads, so ad money is looking for new avenues. I really can’t decide if this is better or worse.
pmcpinto 8y ago
Probably nowadays Instagram is the medium that shows more "ads", considering the number of users that publish "promoted" content. It reminds me those fashion magazines that show like 130 pages of ads in 150 pages. It's kinda sad to see people promoting stuff in exchange for some free samples, just so they can call themselves "influencers". I'm wondering if people are not getting tired of all of this fakeness.
QuantumGood 8y ago
Humans are strongly wired to evaluate differences between humans, and advertisers are skilled at creating the signals that humans use to evaluate. But they don't have to work too hard. "Influencers" can be created virtually out of thin air. Simply say "this is an influencer", and in the absence of contrary signals many people will treat them as such. (We've all heard of a NOT famous person hiring friends to pretend to be paparazzi when they go out somewhere, fooling people who see them, being introduced to someone "famous" that we've never heard of, etc., etc.)
Paul-ish 8y ago
I wonder if having sponsors also lends legitimacy to these influencers. Before they were just someone with some followers, but now they have corporate recognition.
temp-dude-87844 8y ago
This is not that different from the people who are told to post on Insta and FB after they've received a service: styling at a hair salon, nails, makeup; it's not even that far from posting on their own accord after they've been to a restaurant or concert. The meaningful difference is in the former case, the revealed preferences are swayed by the exchange of money and may not authentically reflect the person's true opinion, whereas in the latter case the revealed preferences are swayed solely by social convention (and may not authentically reflect the person's true opinion).
Mc_Big_G 8y ago
Cool, maybe this will kill Instagram.
scrutinizer21 8y ago
This group at Princeton conducted a study into whether influencers disclose their relationships with advertisers to users. Turns out the vast majority do not. Interesting read. https://medium.com/acm-cscw/was-this-an-ad-an-investigation-of-paid-social-media-endorsements-3ab12231d3d8 https://medium.com/acm-cscw/was-this-an-ad-an-investigation-...

54 points by NN88 8y ago

Sometimes I feel like throwing up when I hear more stories about advertising, advertising and more advertising. It's such a sad trend. Either people want to make money advertising things directly or our best engineers work for companies that provide advertising. There is so much potential lost with all the effort going into advertising instead of producing products that make the world better.

GLjEI4YbnGD27LB 8y ago
And yet we have already sacrificed those babies to Moloch, because if you don't somebody else will.
- dougmwne 8y ago
  Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius!
Cthulhu_ 8y ago
> There is so much potential lost with all the effort going into advertising instead of producing products that make the world better. Devil's advocate / on the other hand: there's so much potential lost with all the effort going into producing products that make the world better, but which fall flat due to a lack of or poor advertising.
- epicide 8y ago
  They fall flat because they aren't keeping up with poorly made products that have all their budgets put into advertising. We can keep flipping this as long as we want. At the end of the day, it sucks that companies get a bigger (short-term) reward by dumping more into advertising and marketing than into the product itself.
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    I agree. I’m curious about all these world changing wonder products that just aren’t popular because a marketing agency wasn’t involved in manipulating... I mean educating the public.
  - dec0dedab0de 8y ago
    While advocating the use of Open Source software at a fairly large corporation I used to work at, a common refrain was "You get what you paid for" I eventually started replying to that with "So we get marketing, and lunches with sales teams?" It actually worked a bit.
- dmwallin 8y ago
  I would suggest a minor adjustment, they fall flat due to a lack of visibility and public acceptance. Advertising is only one such way to achieve that. Unfortunately advertising is capital-driven and there is only partial overlap of products that make the world better and capital. There is also a significant amount of overlap between products that don't make the world better and capital. There are two ways to fix this problem, one is to find ways to drive more capital to products that make the world better, the other is to find better ways to drive visibility and acceptance that don't revolve around capital.
- yeutterg 8y ago
  I think this is because people do what's comfortable for them. A lot of technical founders don't want to go outside of their comfort zone when that's exactly what they need to do to help their product succeed AND grow as a person. Edit: This regards all forms of product promotion, not just paid ads.
- wu-ikkyu 8y ago
  That wouldn't be so much a problem if there wasn't already such an extreme level of advertising of shitty products to begin with. It's like how advertisers often claim "the internet wouldn't exist without advertising". What they really mean is all the sites (composing the majority of the internet now it seems) which have such little or negative instrinsic value that they must rely on click baiting, psychological manipulation, and selling out to advertisers would die out -- leaving only those sites which provide enough value that people care to pay for themselves, like it used to be in the "good old days"
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  This is actually another reason why advertising is bad. The reason why those hypothetical products would "fall flat due to a lack of or poor advertising" is because of the noise created by other advertisers. Cut that noise out, and suddenly very little would be needed to effectively communicate to people about new products.
kurthr 8y ago
Yeah, but I guess it could be worse... they could be working on "civilian control systems" in the "defense" industry. Now they just spy, FUD, astroturf, and Psyop for brands and corporations. Govts and lobbyists can hire them! It's probably best not to discuss crypto-coinage in this context.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  "Yeah, but I guess it could be worse... they could be working on "civilian control systems" in the "defense" industry. " They are working very hard on building up the infrastructure and technology needed for total population control. The needs of an advertising company and an authoritarian government are very similar.
kakaorka 8y ago
I think online advertising is mostly a hoax, with very few exceptions. I usually dismiss anything that remotely resembles an ad and just shut it off, even if it was really interesting. So I tend to think that the companies that pay for ads online are the ones paying for the cost of browsing the Internet for free, so I hate ads a bit less after that :)
- greyfox 8y ago
  "browsing for free" >who's browsing for free?
  - alehul 8y ago
    Facebook and Google users, for instance.
- QuantumGood 8y ago
  I know this isn't what you mean to emphasize, but this reads a bit as "only products and services no one on the internet hears about are not a hoax". Of course you know it's more nuanced than that, but your comment makes your worldview seem narrower than you probably intended.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  >I usually dismiss anything that remotely resembles an ad And if the targeted advertising isn’t detected? Isn’t the whole topic here to advertise in a way that doesn’t seem like a website banner ad?
deanCommie 8y ago
Counterpoint: How much innovation has been incentivized due to so many internet services being free while being subsidized by ads. It's definitely a nuisance, and left unchecked can become a Black Mirror or Maniac-esque nightmare. But in it's current format it still feels like a worthwhile exchange.
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 8y ago
  I don’t know. It would be difficult to quantify. But, personally, I don’t think, for example, the web has improved much in the Web 2.0 era. It might be worse.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    I think so too. MySpace and Friendster already connected people and since the first version I don't think Gmail has improved much. Most current changes seem to be more about making products more addictive but not necessarily more useful.
- esotericn 8y ago
  It's very hard to unpick this. The internet services themselves are almost completely nonsense that we could do without. It's difficult for me to think of a single ad-based website or application that serves a purpose outside of its' own self propagation. The knock-on effects of circulating money for development work into new languages/libraries/frameworks might well be.
  - PJDK 8y ago
    Well I personally owe an entire career to the fact I could learn to code for free thanks to add supported services. I'm rather glad I could skype my brother in Japan even when I couldn't afford international call rates. And so on...
    - wu-ikkyu 8y ago
      >Well I personally owe an entire career to the fact I could learn to code for free thanks to add supported services. In my experience the sites which you pay a small monthly fee ($5-10) to are far superior
QuantumGood 8y ago
I know a lot of people working to make the world better, that have had to move onto other things because they lack an understanding of advertising. In fact most people I meet who strongly desire to serve others almost completely misunderstand how advertising works. Working to make the world better shouldn't be mutually exclusive to understanding advertising, but often seems to be.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  >And I know a lot of people working to make the world better, that have had to move onto other things because they lack an understanding of advertising. Such as? I can’t seem to think of any examples.
  - QuantumGood 8y ago
    It would be fair to say this is tied pretty tightly to lack of business skills. I think most of us expect that on the "Most Admired/Least Admired Scale" marketers clump towards the bottom, not the top. There are plenty of failed KickStarters/GoFundMe's to peruse, but this is endemic among non-profits. While many do NOT offer services that could be self-supporting, many others could be, but there is insufficient business or advertising understanding to pursue being successfully self-supporting. Among inventors, many pursue licensing or finding large partners (a reasonable idea, as far as it goes), but I've seen some pretty ridiculous advertising attempts. But the real gold mine is from the files of marketing consultants working with teachers/service providers. Only some clients are in the "trying to make the world a better place" category, but many overlap that. Here's where you really find the greatest numbers of admirable folks very out of their depth at marketing.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > Working to make the world better shouldn't be mutually exclusive to understanding advertising, but often seems to be. From what I've observed, working to make the world better isn't mutually exclusive with understanding advertising, but is strongly anticorrelated with wanting to do it. People who think about making the world better tend to understand that advertising is a cancer on society.
sh33mp 8y ago
To put a futurist spin on it: advertising is the commercialization around the information bottleneck in the information age.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Advertising is actively creating and perpetuating the information bottleneck.

gaius 8y ago

You see this alot on FB, “tag 10 friends in this ad to enter a draw” kind of thing. It is one of the reasons that social media is poisonous to genuine human relationships.

XorNot 8y ago
I have this vague suspicion that social media will die out with our generation because of this. It came along when we were all high school/college or so, and this big platform to refind old contacts was a surprising new experience. Then all of collectively went into the workforce and suddenly had public images to manage and so the whole thing very quickly became yet another advertising channel via tragedy of the commons.
- epicide 8y ago
  You are way more optimistic than I am. Reconnecting with old acquaintances is just one (outdated, as you mention) use case of social media. They have become much more subversive (and profitable) as media/advertising engines. They'll survive as long as companies are willing to put money into advertising and enough people are influenced by (not even "suckered by") the ads. So basically forever.
kakaorka 8y ago
If someone is really close to me, I don't mind them tagging me in stuff like that. But if we're just acquaintances, I hate it.
- gaius 8y ago
  What really hurt was knowing people thought I was the sort of guy who would be interested in blatantly fake Raybans and suchlike...
  - zimpenfish 8y ago
    From what I've seen, the fake Raybans tagging thing is almost always due to someone's account being hijacked.

CryoLogic 8y ago

It’s kinda perverted how dishonest the internet has become thanks to advertising. Children will go online looking for toy or game reviews not knowing even their friends have sold them out for a couple bucks.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
xiphias2 8y ago
Actually this isn't something new. Smart children in their young age coupd take advantage of others not being able to count. Still, strength is probably more important as a child.

jobigoud 8y ago

So nanoinfluencers are people with small following on social media that are given free products in return of advertisement. Reminds me a type of sponsorship in sports and hobbies. The brands or shops select some individuals and give them access to their collection at advantageous price (say -30% of retail price, but not free), in exchange of simply wearing or using the stuff. Similar idea of "influencers" as advertisement platforms. Next step: startup providing an API for influencers as a service.

michaelbuckbee 8y ago
These exist already at all levels from big -> small influencers. The much maligned "Klout" was an early form of this but cratered for dumb reasons.
QuantumGood 8y ago
Some ad networks are already providing what is effectively IaaS.

CPLX 8y ago

One day this war is going to end. There has to be a point of saturation where the culture as a whole turns back to some version of authenticity. Clearly it's not going to be the millennials, perhaps the next generation will figure it out.

fredley 8y ago
I think in every generation there are those who turn their back on it all. This has been going on since at least the 60's with the Hippie movement. Counterculture has been a thing since (psychological[1]) advertising has been a thing. There will be no point at which society as a whole flips against it - the sad truth is that advertising works, really well, and most people happily sign up to this lifestyle. The war for your headspace is a hell of a lot better than the wars that came before it. The 'woke' (or whatever term you'd prefer) generation is never coming - but there will be people within every generation that turn their back on advertising and the promises it makes. 1: As in advertising that targets our desire to be happy/powerful etc. rather than merely describing the product. Watch Century of the Self documentary for more information on how this form of advertising came to be.
QuantumGood 8y ago
The trend to authenticity is in full force, but has long been hijacked by entertainment media, going back to not long after movies became "talkies".

swanson 8y ago

If anyone is looking for a "picoinfluencer" opportunity, my fantasy football team is seeking a new sponsor. There are 9 other 24-32 year old tech workers in the league and my team is currently 8-2.

atom-morgan 8y ago
Is this a joke or have you actually had sponsors in the past?
- swanson 8y ago
  It is a joke, but one that I take very seriously. https://i.imgur.com/wmjrQV8.png https://i.imgur.com/wmjrQV8.png

Rjevski 8y ago

I’m really concerned that I never heard of those brands before. Besides the obvious annoyance caused by these ads, is there any guarantee those no-name products (as far as I’m aware none of them are a household brand at least not in the UK) are safe? I can see shady fly-by-night operations using these “influencers” to shill their dangerous & non-compliant shit and possibly get people hurt. Sure, they can also be buying conventional ads but (I hope) most people are wise enough not to fall for them or at least carry out due diligence where as it being posted by a “friend” (I’d say anyone that sells out their followers isn’t really a friend) inherently gives it legitimacy. We’ve already got this situation with multi-level marketing schemes using social media to shill their garbage (most is crap, and some is outright dangerous with multiple reports of nasty side-effects) and con new victims, I’d rather not see this expand even more.

tomgp 8y ago
Clinique is not a no name product by any stretch of the imagination. They've been going since the sixties and their products are available on pretty much any UK high-street. I guess you're not the target market for mid-high end skin care products?
- Rjevski 8y ago
  > I guess you're not the target market for mid-high end skin care products? Agreed, but the rest of my point still stands. I feel there’s a lot of potential for abuse here.

voidhorse 8y ago

It's crazy how advertising has evolved. First, advertisers were somewhat honest about their products, generally relying on Smith's little theory that buyers are rational and can thus be convinced by a strong argument about the qualities of the product. Then at some point (w/ the dawn of Western snakeoil/ cure-alls?) advertisers figured out purchasers aren't so rational after all and are better convinced by psychological manipulation--targeting their weaknesses, showing them images that associate the product with happy families, etc. Now advertisers go a level deeper. Instead of suggesting some general association between happiness and their product, they can target you at the personal level and have your friends and relations (often the closest people to you psychologically speaking) serve as manipulation relays. No need to figure out some general fear or desire in the populace that you can target--just make it seem like the product is already embedded in the buyer's world. Like his friends are the direct representatives of its efficacy and the happiness it will bring. It's wild.

QuantumGood 8y ago
It's moved onto dopamine triggers of course, but even simple website "stickiness" I think may be an example of the kind of embedding you mention. Engage long enough and when the brain says "I engage with this site" it becomes self-fulfilling and engagement has no set end point.
leesec 8y ago
From what I've heard the "some point" was primarily a result of one man Edward Louis Bernays, who lead the charge towards these somewhat predatory practices, effectively inventing modern public relations and advertising. There was a really interesting ( and comical ) podcast about it from the folks at Stuff You Should Know: https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/live-in-chicago-how-public-relations-works.htm https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/live-in-chicago-...
malvosenior 8y ago
> targeting their weaknesses, showing them images that associate the product with happy families, etc. This part is explored really well in The Century of Self documentary. It describes how Madison Avenue used new psychology concepts and Baby Boomer individualism to invent modern advertising. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self

thisjustinm 8y ago

First Thought: Noticed that the NYT is listed as a client on Obviously's site, the main influencer marketing agency mentioned in the piece and can't help but wonder if there is a behind the scenes PR play going on here. There's certainly some journalist merit to the article but without any disclosure that the paper and the company have / do work together it just doesn't feel 100% above board to me. Second thought: At the risk of falling down a slippery slope, what is the end result of the advertisification of everything? If everyone with any sort of social presence is now a billboard that's going to erode what little "trust" there is in social networks even further. At some point this is going to take down the "review economy" - the Yelps, Foursquare, etc of the world because you won't know who's leaving a review and who's a local nano-influencer posting to get their monthly free meal. Reminds me of the "ad buddies" from the Netflix show Maniac except instead of seeking them out they seek you out.

keiferski 8y ago
There is no firm difference between “advertising” and “the media” and there never has been. Only varying levels of forthcomingness regarding intent. Burger King is trying to sell you hamburgers - no confusion there. A newspaper? Less clear of what they’re trying to sell you, but don’t doubt it for a second - they’re selling you something. The NY Times in particular has tried to portray themselves as independent and unbiased, when they’ve been anything but for essentially their entire history.
- CPLX 8y ago
  This is obviously and painfully false. There is a fundamental difference between journalism and advertising. When you see people advancing this point of view it's always worth pausing to notice and reflect on who benefits from efforts to erode this distinction.
  - keiferski 8y ago
    You think media organizations aren’t trying to push a particular narrative? They’ve been doing this since yellow journalism, Hearst and Pulitzer over a hundred years ago. Every side of the political spectrum does this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_controversies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_controver... > When you see people advancing this point of view... This is an ad hominem and not an argument.

egypturnash 8y ago

People are blocking more and more ads, so ad money is looking for new avenues. I really can’t decide if this is better or worse.

pmcpinto 8y ago

Probably nowadays Instagram is the medium that shows more "ads", considering the number of users that publish "promoted" content. It reminds me those fashion magazines that show like 130 pages of ads in 150 pages. It's kinda sad to see people promoting stuff in exchange for some free samples, just so they can call themselves "influencers". I'm wondering if people are not getting tired of all of this fakeness.

QuantumGood 8y ago

Humans are strongly wired to evaluate differences between humans, and advertisers are skilled at creating the signals that humans use to evaluate. But they don't have to work too hard. "Influencers" can be created virtually out of thin air. Simply say "this is an influencer", and in the absence of contrary signals many people will treat them as such. (We've all heard of a NOT famous person hiring friends to pretend to be paparazzi when they go out somewhere, fooling people who see them, being introduced to someone "famous" that we've never heard of, etc., etc.)

Paul-ish 8y ago

I wonder if having sponsors also lends legitimacy to these influencers. Before they were just someone with some followers, but now they have corporate recognition.

temp-dude-87844 8y ago

This is not that different from the people who are told to post on Insta and FB after they've received a service: styling at a hair salon, nails, makeup; it's not even that far from posting on their own accord after they've been to a restaurant or concert. The meaningful difference is in the former case, the revealed preferences are swayed by the exchange of money and may not authentically reflect the person's true opinion, whereas in the latter case the revealed preferences are swayed solely by social convention (and may not authentically reflect the person's true opinion).

Mc_Big_G 8y ago

Cool, maybe this will kill Instagram.

scrutinizer21 8y ago

This group at Princeton conducted a study into whether influencers disclose their relationships with advertisers to users. Turns out the vast majority do not. Interesting read. https://medium.com/acm-cscw/was-this-an-ad-an-investigation-of-paid-social-media-endorsements-3ab12231d3d8 https://medium.com/acm-cscw/was-this-an-ad-an-investigation-...