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I feel like it's up to the consumer how much he wants to be influenced by ads. I use an ad blocker online. I never see ads. I rarely shop on Amazon because of

• llamataboot 6y ago
  Don't worry, there's ads for people that think they don't watch or care about ads as well...
  • mikeyouse 6y ago
    Right. It's amusing that people think they can just "opt out" of ads. Sure, you might miss the preroll commercial but just about every car, every cell phone, every drink, and every clothing choice that you see in media is a paid placement now. Some of it is more obvious than others, "I can't believe how great this Ford Fusion handles" but most of it is just a flash of a logo in the broader plot.
    • throwaway201103 6y ago
      Most product placement is pretty obvious. I don't think it influences me. And I don't really watch any popular media. I could not even name one popular sitcom showing today.
      • TFYS 6y ago
        Even if you somehow avoid being influenced by ads directly, you can still get influenced indirectly. You will see the product more, hear people talking about it and maybe a friend recommends it to you. You might not recognize it, but that's still the ad influencing you.
        • drdeca 6y ago
          If an ad campaign results in a company not going out of business before I ever hear of them, and I only ever hear about the company because I happen to walk by a store of theirs, and then seeing what they sell, purchase a product from them, then technically if not for the ad campaign I wouldn’t have bought the product from them, but obviously this sort of thing isn’t what people are concerned about when they are concerned about whether ads influenced them to buy a product.
          • Super_Jambo 6y ago
            They should be, if product success is determined by the skill and technology of advertisers then product _development_ is irrelevant and the only thing which matters is a companies ability to access advertising. In that world even people who never see an advert will have only a hollow choice of products from the 'market'.
            • drdeca 6y ago
              I don’t think that follows. It seems conceivable that advertising can both help, but does so much less than the quality of the product , but nonetheless can occasionally push things over the edge from “goes out of business” to “doesn’t”.
        • tartoran 6y ago
          But that is a bit different. What you see and hear directly from other people is already a filtered view. The ads that lead to bad products never influence you nor do they take your attention. Some stuff passes through but with some common sense it could all be avoided. I share the sentiment of the OP; i am shielded from ads and even if they come through some way or another it’d influence me personally very little: i rarely buy stuff and when I do I research extensively. Some brands that are overly advertised are also a red flag to me. But, I am aware I am in minority here. And those like us have a negligent impact at best. I think advertising does heavily influence the masses.
      • imtringued 6y ago
        Everything you see influences you more than the things you don't see. That's the entire point of advertising. It's all about brand recognition, i.e. avoiding the "I have never heard of this brand" moment in as many people as possible. A lot of startups post their whiny shutdown announcement on HN and then everyone is surprised that they have never heard of the startup.
• Ensorceled 6y ago
  As a meta note, I wish people reserved the throwawayXXXX accounts for "I work at <company of interest>, using a throwaway for obvious reasons". It's worse if it's just to brag about how advertising doesn't affect them, especially if the reason is that they have the technical chops to simply dodge the ads while everyone without those skills is deluged in AI targeted, psychologically optimized advertising they are ill equipped to avoid the effects of.
• deleted 6y ago
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