6 ms·

I may be living in my own small little bubble but I don't know anybody shopping for anything because their smart TV showed an ad. Everything ads seem to do is j

I may be living in my own small little bubble but I don't know anybody shopping for anything because their smart TV showed an ad. Everything ads seem to do is just piss some people off. Then again I remember that if commercials weren't successful, TV as we know it would not exist. People gobbling up ads and buying stuff because of that is why ads are still being used after all. After all... https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-invaded-by-commercials.html https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-inv...

SuoDuanDao 5y ago
There's also the factor that whoever owns the platform showing the ads doesn't care whether the ads are effective. So long as your eyeballs are tracking it, they'll get paid anyway.
- dalbasal 5y ago
  Only in the sense that restaurateurs don't care if the food is good. If it's selling... sure, they'll keep selling something that sucks. But generally, advertisers aren't quite the fools everyone thinks they are. There are always fools around, but prices tend to be rational enough long term. If ads aren't effective, revenue will dry up eventually. All that effort to track people for ads... these are all attempts at improving effectiveness.
  - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
    I don't entirely agree. A better analogy might be that a restaurant's landlord doesn't care if the food is good. I've run into the problem that sellers of adspace will often prefer to work more with customers who have lower conversion rates. Makes perfect sense when you think about it, people with the crappiest products need advertising the most, while the best products can lean on word-of-mouth. Edit: Come to think of it, the fact a product is advertising at all might come to be seen as a negative signal of value by the public at large.
    - vinay_ys 5y ago
      There are 20 equally good product brands for 99% of things you buy and use everyday. But you have a clear favorite amongst those 20 that you have already chosen to buy and use consistently. And you don't change your preference unless you are repeatedly reminded of those alternatives. This is advertising 101. Then there are products that you don't yet use because you don't yet think you need or want them. And you don't feel you need/want them until you are repeatedly and subtly/overtly "sold" this product.
      - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
        Please don't act as if you know me. Advertisers don't know me nearly as well as they'd like their bosses to think and neither do you.
        vinay_ys 5y ago
        Please don't take it personally. I obviously don't know _you_ and the "you" in my sentences isn't referring to you specifically. With that "you", I was referring to the typical user in general.
        SuoDuanDao 5y ago
        Fair enough. I intentionally cultivate a preference for novelty which is at odds with that description. Between that and the presumption a lot of the hype around advertising has, I can get defensive around the subject.
      - InitialLastName 5y ago
        Alternatives as well: - There are things you buy infrequently or on a whim where the options are equally good, and the advertisers just want their product to be the last of the competitions' logos to be associated with a positive feeling. For example, I rarely drink soda, but when I do I'm choosing between Coke and Pepsi with no real brand connection (other than both companies feeding feelings into my brain on occasion). How can I know whether the advertising is some part of what influences me to pick one? - Products whose function is partially social signalling, where the advertising can serve to establish the signal/brand connection. I care virtually not at all about pickup trucks, but I have a mental connection between Ford and Denis Leary's voice talking about "toughness". Ford pays for all that because you're much more likely to buy an oversized truck for your grocery runs if your community's overriding association with the F150 is "tough" than "small hands".
  - mitchdoogle 5y ago
    I don't think advertisers are dumb. I think they're immoral, unethical, despicable jerks.
gmadsen 5y ago
for every 10 people like you, one is affected by it and buys something. economies of scale and all that
dalbasal 5y ago
>> Everything ads seem to do is just piss some people off. This is an eternal sentiment. For the more analytical, there are many examples of advertising millions demonstrably doing nothing. Ha, BMW turned off their ads for a year and nothing happened. So and so blew squillions on ill conceived ad campaigns, etc. It's very easy to cherry-pick advertising stories. To bastardize the adage, "half of the advertising tree is always cherries." And yet, advertising is one of the biggest economic forces of our time... as you say. It literally rivals oil, shipping and other traditional giants. FB & Alphabet are, as businesses, $trn advertising businesses. That's the market proof that advertising does affect your choices. The simple proof is easily visible to anyone on the advertiser side of the advertiser-consumer relationship. You open an online business. No one shows up. You advertise. People show up. It may or may not be profitable, but the causality is plain. Even without tracking/analytics/snooping... it's a plain fact that many or most customers for many businesses or even whole sectors are attributable to ads. Consumers only notice that ads piss them off. Advertisers only notice that ads make consumers do stuff. Both are extremely dismissive of the others' intelligence.
soylentcola 5y ago
To be honest, if it was just "hey, here's this show on Netflix!" or "Try this new streaming platform!" type ads, I could deal. I've never had too much trouble disabling this sort of thing on my Sony TV. The thing that always worries me is that it's essentially a low end smartphone with a really sweet screen. I still don't know what will happen if the OS/firmware ever gets borked. Will it just fail over to the last input I used, essentially rendering it a monitor? (not the worst thing that could happen) Or will it just boot up to some error screen and become useless because the "smarts" broke and now I can't use a perfectly good display anymore? I know a lot of people prefer the ease and convenience, and that's why they sell so well. But I'd always prefer to have the display be the display, and then use whatever box or dongle or PC I choose to provide the content. Those can be swapped and upgraded. The 2014-era smartphone SoC built into the TV can't.
carschno 5y ago
Ads are not primarily about making the user consciously _like_ a product. They are about making the user _know_ a product or brand. Once they are in the mood or need of buying something, product X "feels" vaguely familiar. This is supposed to give them more confidence in the potential purchase.
jrockway 5y ago
> I may be living in my own small little bubble but I don't know anybody shopping for anything because their smart TV showed an ad. Everything ads seem to do is just piss some people off. I don't think you're living in a bubble, but I do think that advertisers will pay for completely ineffective ads. Therefore, Samsung and LG have to compete to make the worse product so they can win the free money these naive advertisers are handing out. I assume that investors simply won't accept one-time sales as a business model anymore. They want continuous growth with no employees on payroll to grow things. Ads are that. (You can see this everywhere. Apple wants 30% of Spotify subscriptions just for making the iPhone. Games are designed for esports and the associated sponsorships. Amazon wants $99 a year for shipping, rather than $10 on top of each order. Easy money, and people say "yes!!!!" to it all.)

SuoDuanDao 5y ago

There's also the factor that whoever owns the platform showing the ads doesn't care whether the ads are effective. So long as your eyeballs are tracking it, they'll get paid anyway.

dalbasal 5y ago
Only in the sense that restaurateurs don't care if the food is good. If it's selling... sure, they'll keep selling something that sucks. But generally, advertisers aren't quite the fools everyone thinks they are. There are always fools around, but prices tend to be rational enough long term. If ads aren't effective, revenue will dry up eventually. All that effort to track people for ads... these are all attempts at improving effectiveness.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  I don't entirely agree. A better analogy might be that a restaurant's landlord doesn't care if the food is good. I've run into the problem that sellers of adspace will often prefer to work more with customers who have lower conversion rates. Makes perfect sense when you think about it, people with the crappiest products need advertising the most, while the best products can lean on word-of-mouth. Edit: Come to think of it, the fact a product is advertising at all might come to be seen as a negative signal of value by the public at large.
  - vinay_ys 5y ago
    There are 20 equally good product brands for 99% of things you buy and use everyday. But you have a clear favorite amongst those 20 that you have already chosen to buy and use consistently. And you don't change your preference unless you are repeatedly reminded of those alternatives. This is advertising 101. Then there are products that you don't yet use because you don't yet think you need or want them. And you don't feel you need/want them until you are repeatedly and subtly/overtly "sold" this product.
    - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
      Please don't act as if you know me. Advertisers don't know me nearly as well as they'd like their bosses to think and neither do you.
      - vinay_ys 5y ago
        Please don't take it personally. I obviously don't know _you_ and the "you" in my sentences isn't referring to you specifically. With that "you", I was referring to the typical user in general.
        SuoDuanDao 5y ago
        Fair enough. I intentionally cultivate a preference for novelty which is at odds with that description. Between that and the presumption a lot of the hype around advertising has, I can get defensive around the subject.
    - InitialLastName 5y ago
      Alternatives as well: - There are things you buy infrequently or on a whim where the options are equally good, and the advertisers just want their product to be the last of the competitions' logos to be associated with a positive feeling. For example, I rarely drink soda, but when I do I'm choosing between Coke and Pepsi with no real brand connection (other than both companies feeding feelings into my brain on occasion). How can I know whether the advertising is some part of what influences me to pick one? - Products whose function is partially social signalling, where the advertising can serve to establish the signal/brand connection. I care virtually not at all about pickup trucks, but I have a mental connection between Ford and Denis Leary's voice talking about "toughness". Ford pays for all that because you're much more likely to buy an oversized truck for your grocery runs if your community's overriding association with the F150 is "tough" than "small hands".
- mitchdoogle 5y ago
  I don't think advertisers are dumb. I think they're immoral, unethical, despicable jerks.

gmadsen 5y ago

for every 10 people like you, one is affected by it and buys something. economies of scale and all that

dalbasal 5y ago

>> Everything ads seem to do is just piss some people off. This is an eternal sentiment. For the more analytical, there are many examples of advertising millions demonstrably doing nothing. Ha, BMW turned off their ads for a year and nothing happened. So and so blew squillions on ill conceived ad campaigns, etc. It's very easy to cherry-pick advertising stories. To bastardize the adage, "half of the advertising tree is always cherries." And yet, advertising is one of the biggest economic forces of our time... as you say. It literally rivals oil, shipping and other traditional giants. FB & Alphabet are, as businesses, $trn advertising businesses. That's the market proof that advertising does affect your choices. The simple proof is easily visible to anyone on the advertiser side of the advertiser-consumer relationship. You open an online business. No one shows up. You advertise. People show up. It may or may not be profitable, but the causality is plain. Even without tracking/analytics/snooping... it's a plain fact that many or most customers for many businesses or even whole sectors are attributable to ads. Consumers only notice that ads piss them off. Advertisers only notice that ads make consumers do stuff. Both are extremely dismissive of the others' intelligence.

soylentcola 5y ago

To be honest, if it was just "hey, here's this show on Netflix!" or "Try this new streaming platform!" type ads, I could deal. I've never had too much trouble disabling this sort of thing on my Sony TV. The thing that always worries me is that it's essentially a low end smartphone with a really sweet screen. I still don't know what will happen if the OS/firmware ever gets borked. Will it just fail over to the last input I used, essentially rendering it a monitor? (not the worst thing that could happen) Or will it just boot up to some error screen and become useless because the "smarts" broke and now I can't use a perfectly good display anymore? I know a lot of people prefer the ease and convenience, and that's why they sell so well. But I'd always prefer to have the display be the display, and then use whatever box or dongle or PC I choose to provide the content. Those can be swapped and upgraded. The 2014-era smartphone SoC built into the TV can't.

carschno 5y ago

Ads are not primarily about making the user consciously _like_ a product. They are about making the user _know_ a product or brand. Once they are in the mood or need of buying something, product X "feels" vaguely familiar. This is supposed to give them more confidence in the potential purchase.

jrockway 5y ago

> I may be living in my own small little bubble but I don't know anybody shopping for anything because their smart TV showed an ad. Everything ads seem to do is just piss some people off. I don't think you're living in a bubble, but I do think that advertisers will pay for completely ineffective ads. Therefore, Samsung and LG have to compete to make the worse product so they can win the free money these naive advertisers are handing out. I assume that investors simply won't accept one-time sales as a business model anymore. They want continuous growth with no employees on payroll to grow things. Ads are that. (You can see this everywhere. Apple wants 30% of Spotify subscriptions just for making the iPhone. Games are designed for esports and the associated sponsorships. Amazon wants $99 a year for shipping, rather than $10 on top of each order. Easy money, and people say "yes!!!!" to it all.)