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> But are you saying that ads never influence decisions or actions? That seems.... impossible. Ads must work sometimes. The degree to which they may or may not,

by gwern 7y ago

> But are you saying that ads never influence decisions or actions? That seems.... impossible. Ads must work sometimes. The degree to which they may or may not, however, is extremely hard to figure out, as you note. The study that this HN thread is about doesn't shed much light either, other than saying that "people can sometimes have their decisions influenced." Same as always. Nobody is saying that ads have literally 0.00000% effect. (I would strongly disagree with such a claim: https://www.gwern.net/Everything https://www.gwern.net/Everything ) What I am disagreeing with is the claim that they are so powerful and so obviously pass a cost-benefit test that they are known to work and further, that the mere fact that people buy ads is sufficient to prove that they are highly effective and worth buying. ("Isn't it obvious? If political ads didn't swing votes, no one would run them.") All of these claims are quite likely to be wrong: the best evidence is that the average effect is minute (and one can't rule out even negative effects the opposite of desired), they probably do not pass a cost-benefit test because much commercial advertising does not, it is easy to be mistaken about their value, and given how 'obvious' it is that they work and which casual analysis would support such interpretations ('candidates who spend more on ads win more! isn't it obvious that ads work?!') we should not be surprised if people buy advertising even when the true effects are unknown, unknowable within reasonable possible experiments, and probably minute.

shay_ker 7y ago
That's totally fair. I was being a bit flippant in my original comment. I was reacting to the idea that, a candidate spreading their message will impact what decision people make at the voting booth, and that in and of itself is obvious. If candidates said nothing, no one would vote for them, because no one would know anything about them. Surely that much is obvious. Yes, it's probably very difficult to prove the cost-benefit analysis of ads. At best, people hope that attack ads will reveal some information to people that will sway their decision (I perused through the papers you linked, but didn't see much about scandals). I also imagine ads are meant to generate buzz in the media, which can push a message to would-be voters, who can then keep spreading the message. The effect is likely over time, and extremely difficult to predict & prove due to many different ways people can interact with each other. Although that paper you linked on gullibility was..... odd. I don't know why the distinction of "content-based" gullibility vs. "source-based" gullibility is important or interesting. The authors are saying that.... fake news works? That also implies that advertising can work if it's delivered in a medium appearing as an authority, i.e. a media organization or research group. In other words, bad advertising doesn't work, but good advertising will. Surprise?

by gwern 7y ago

shay_ker 7y ago

That's totally fair. I was being a bit flippant in my original comment. I was reacting to the idea that, a candidate spreading their message will impact what decision people make at the voting booth, and that in and of itself is obvious. If candidates said nothing, no one would vote for them, because no one would know anything about them. Surely that much is obvious. Yes, it's probably very difficult to prove the cost-benefit analysis of ads. At best, people hope that attack ads will reveal some information to people that will sway their decision (I perused through the papers you linked, but didn't see much about scandals). I also imagine ads are meant to generate buzz in the media, which can push a message to would-be voters, who can then keep spreading the message. The effect is likely over time, and extremely difficult to predict & prove due to many different ways people can interact with each other. Although that paper you linked on gullibility was..... odd. I don't know why the distinction of "content-based" gullibility vs. "source-based" gullibility is important or interesting. The authors are saying that.... fake news works? That also implies that advertising can work if it's delivered in a medium appearing as an authority, i.e. a media organization or research group. In other words, bad advertising doesn't work, but good advertising will. Surprise?