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I think that advertising in general, pre-internet, was perhaps a pain. It was unsightly to have stuff plastered all over buses, trains, any available space some

I think that advertising in general, pre-internet, was perhaps a pain. It was unsightly to have stuff plastered all over buses, trains, any available space someone was trying to show something in your face, to get their brands name in your eyeline. Now they are still doing that, but they have compounded the awfulness, because now they track where you are visiting and push more of those ads in your eyeline. Switched device, tough, the ads do too. The advertiser now also knows who looked at the ad, where they came from to see the ad, where the left to after they saw the ad. And then what they did for the next 2 weeks, so now they can make sure their ad is in front of your eyes whenever they want because they tracked your browsing habits. Advertising was bad before, now it is insidious tracking and monitoring of users, under the pretense of advertising. /rant

chrismorgan 5y ago
I’m only 29, but the impression I have received from my youth, from parental and grandparental anecdotes, and from photographic records is that offline advertising in at least Melbourne, Australia is worse than it was, with a key tipping period being somewhere around 15 years ago. As the most significant example, public transport vehicles and locations had no-to-minimal advertising 20 years ago; now they have extensive advertising surfaces, inside and out, and the big posters at most of the train stations cycle between multiple ads and blah blah blah. Awful stuff. My guess is that offline advertising has become cheaper and so they do more of it. I live out in the country now. There are no outdoor ads here. I like it. (The local weekly paper is called The Advertiser: an apt name, for it’s about ¾ ads. But I don’t look at it. My life is basically completely ad-free except when I go down to Melbourne.)
- SirSourdough 5y ago
  It wouldn’t surprise me if the pervasiveness of online advertising creeping in at the fringes of our attention normalized an increase in the amount of ads that do this in the physical world.
- greggman3 5y ago
  It's funny but i actually like the ads on the trains in Japan and when I was visiting other countries who's transit systems had no ads I thought it was boring. Some of the ads are hilarious. Some are for the services that are not common in the USA. Nintendo has some where they add in a trivia Q&A, the format being, Question->Ad->Answer and I usually find them interesting and I'm often happy to learn about whatever new Nintendo game they are showing off. Often there are ads for theater plays, concerts, museum events that I only find out about because I saw them on the train. I also like some of the campaigns where they decorate an entire station or the entire train, the entire car.

chrismorgan 5y ago

I’m only 29, but the impression I have received from my youth, from parental and grandparental anecdotes, and from photographic records is that offline advertising in at least Melbourne, Australia is worse than it was, with a key tipping period being somewhere around 15 years ago. As the most significant example, public transport vehicles and locations had no-to-minimal advertising 20 years ago; now they have extensive advertising surfaces, inside and out, and the big posters at most of the train stations cycle between multiple ads and blah blah blah. Awful stuff. My guess is that offline advertising has become cheaper and so they do more of it. I live out in the country now. There are no outdoor ads here. I like it. (The local weekly paper is called The Advertiser: an apt name, for it’s about ¾ ads. But I don’t look at it. My life is basically completely ad-free except when I go down to Melbourne.)

SirSourdough 5y ago
It wouldn’t surprise me if the pervasiveness of online advertising creeping in at the fringes of our attention normalized an increase in the amount of ads that do this in the physical world.
greggman3 5y ago
It's funny but i actually like the ads on the trains in Japan and when I was visiting other countries who's transit systems had no ads I thought it was boring. Some of the ads are hilarious. Some are for the services that are not common in the USA. Nintendo has some where they add in a trivia Q&A, the format being, Question->Ad->Answer and I usually find them interesting and I'm often happy to learn about whatever new Nintendo game they are showing off. Often there are ads for theater plays, concerts, museum events that I only find out about because I saw them on the train. I also like some of the campaigns where they decorate an entire station or the entire train, the entire car.