4 ms·

I strictly prefer irrelevant ads less likely to influence me. I really have enough projects, TODO lists, interesting things to buy to last for lifetime of 250

I strictly prefer irrelevant ads less likely to influence me. I really have enough projects, TODO lists, interesting things to buy to last for lifetime of 250 years. Why I would want ads likely to influence me? There is basically no chance that ad will show me useful, worth using object or service to buy that I would not discover anyway. It would be just another scam more effectively targeting me.

avree 6y ago
There are plenty of good products that only get discovered because of advertisement. People aren’t constantly searching for every single one of their pain points at once. One day, you may have a need for a product, and someone who previously solved your need can’t afford to make the product anymore because only a small percentage of people realized it was a solved problem.
petters 6y ago
This has not been true for me. I have discovered interesting things in Facebook ads that I would not have discovered and bought otherwise. (They were obscure Kickstarter projects)
- matkoniecz 6y ago
  I agree that there is some chance that some products will be genuinely useful. But overall risk of getting persuaded to buy worthless products or scammy "investments" seems to not be worth discovering real gems. Overall I would prefer both scams and genuine offers to be as far as away from my interests as possible. Obviously, I would prefer actually useful offers to be close to my interests and to have no scams/worthless trash/malware/porno in my ads, but it appears to not be an available option.
- rainforest 6y ago
  Most Kickstarter campaigns I get shown on FB are from third party services that just upload the Kickstarter breach list (my email is in it). Could that have happened to you?
- craftinator 6y ago
  > I have discovered interesting things in Facebook ads that I would not have discovered and bought otherwise. I've never had this experience, between Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Every "targeted" ad I've been exposed to has either been for something I already have, or for something that's insufficient to my needs. Because of this, and because I dislike the invasiveness and anti-privacy of modern advertising, I started keeping a log of all of the ads I can remember. Then before I make a purchase, I lookup the product on that list and pick a different company to buy from. If you, as a company, use invasive advertising, I will not be your customer.
  - catlifeonmars 6y ago
    That seems counterproductive. You will be worse off by using irrelevant data in evaluating the choice of a particular product, and the company that paid for the advertisement likely won’t even miss your sale.
    - craftinator 6y ago
      > You will be worse off by using irrelevant data in evaluating the choice of a particular product What do you mean irrelevant data? I am much better at choosing a product that suits my needs than Google and friends are. The only irrelevant data is the one provided by the ad companies. > the company that paid for the advertisement likely won’t even miss your sale. If that's true, then why do you think they advertised to me? Why would they possibly choose to advertise to people who they weren't interested in selling to?
      - catlifeonmars 6y ago
        If you intentionally discount a product based on the fact that they advertised it to you, you’d be making a decision based on some property not intrinsic to the product, which means that you might not purchase the optimal product. This would all be ok if the tradeoff was a strong signal to the seller that advertising has a negative impact on sales, but I’m positing that the impact of that one sale is negligible and well within the noise threshold of an extremely noisy process. For all you know, if the seller notices at all, they might conclude that they didn’t advertise to you enough. However I’m totally ignoring any utility you might gain from a principled approach and if it works for you, then more power to you.
- kelnos 6y ago
  I have a fundamentally different view of this: I don't want people advertising to me at all, and I am perfectly fine -- happier, really -- if I "miss out" on buying something I might like because I didn't "get to" see an ad for it. Advertising is psychological manipulation at its worst, and we'd all be much better off without it.
  - pschastain 6y ago
    "Advertising is psychological manipulation at its worst" Hyperbole is unbecoming. Off the top of my head I'd say grooming someone for sexual abuse is a significantly worse form of psychological manipulation. I speak from having experienced both, and only one has had a catastrophic effect on my life.
e3bc54b2 6y ago
Its very interesting in that when people read "relevant" ads, they usually take the meaning as "relevant to buyer". But in reality, ads are always "relevant to seller/advertiser". Seller is almost never interested in selling you anything but what makes most profit from you. Eg. A decathlon might be better cost/benefit ratio wise, but you will always get an ad for Nike, because Nike is paying for the ad, not decathlon. Such is the lie that was fed to us, and most of us accepted it. Tragedy of the commons indeed.

avree 6y ago

There are plenty of good products that only get discovered because of advertisement. People aren’t constantly searching for every single one of their pain points at once. One day, you may have a need for a product, and someone who previously solved your need can’t afford to make the product anymore because only a small percentage of people realized it was a solved problem.

petters 6y ago

This has not been true for me. I have discovered interesting things in Facebook ads that I would not have discovered and bought otherwise. (They were obscure Kickstarter projects)

matkoniecz 6y ago
I agree that there is some chance that some products will be genuinely useful. But overall risk of getting persuaded to buy worthless products or scammy "investments" seems to not be worth discovering real gems. Overall I would prefer both scams and genuine offers to be as far as away from my interests as possible. Obviously, I would prefer actually useful offers to be close to my interests and to have no scams/worthless trash/malware/porno in my ads, but it appears to not be an available option.
rainforest 6y ago
Most Kickstarter campaigns I get shown on FB are from third party services that just upload the Kickstarter breach list (my email is in it). Could that have happened to you?
craftinator 6y ago
> I have discovered interesting things in Facebook ads that I would not have discovered and bought otherwise. I've never had this experience, between Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Every "targeted" ad I've been exposed to has either been for something I already have, or for something that's insufficient to my needs. Because of this, and because I dislike the invasiveness and anti-privacy of modern advertising, I started keeping a log of all of the ads I can remember. Then before I make a purchase, I lookup the product on that list and pick a different company to buy from. If you, as a company, use invasive advertising, I will not be your customer.
- catlifeonmars 6y ago
  That seems counterproductive. You will be worse off by using irrelevant data in evaluating the choice of a particular product, and the company that paid for the advertisement likely won’t even miss your sale.
  - craftinator 6y ago
    > You will be worse off by using irrelevant data in evaluating the choice of a particular product What do you mean irrelevant data? I am much better at choosing a product that suits my needs than Google and friends are. The only irrelevant data is the one provided by the ad companies. > the company that paid for the advertisement likely won’t even miss your sale. If that's true, then why do you think they advertised to me? Why would they possibly choose to advertise to people who they weren't interested in selling to?
    - catlifeonmars 6y ago
      If you intentionally discount a product based on the fact that they advertised it to you, you’d be making a decision based on some property not intrinsic to the product, which means that you might not purchase the optimal product. This would all be ok if the tradeoff was a strong signal to the seller that advertising has a negative impact on sales, but I’m positing that the impact of that one sale is negligible and well within the noise threshold of an extremely noisy process. For all you know, if the seller notices at all, they might conclude that they didn’t advertise to you enough. However I’m totally ignoring any utility you might gain from a principled approach and if it works for you, then more power to you.
kelnos 6y ago
I have a fundamentally different view of this: I don't want people advertising to me at all, and I am perfectly fine -- happier, really -- if I "miss out" on buying something I might like because I didn't "get to" see an ad for it. Advertising is psychological manipulation at its worst, and we'd all be much better off without it.
- pschastain 6y ago
  "Advertising is psychological manipulation at its worst" Hyperbole is unbecoming. Off the top of my head I'd say grooming someone for sexual abuse is a significantly worse form of psychological manipulation. I speak from having experienced both, and only one has had a catastrophic effect on my life.

e3bc54b2 6y ago

Its very interesting in that when people read "relevant" ads, they usually take the meaning as "relevant to buyer". But in reality, ads are always "relevant to seller/advertiser". Seller is almost never interested in selling you anything but what makes most profit from you. Eg. A decathlon might be better cost/benefit ratio wise, but you will always get an ad for Nike, because Nike is paying for the ad, not decathlon. Such is the lie that was fed to us, and most of us accepted it. Tragedy of the commons indeed.