3 ms·

The best concert I ever went to was one I'd never have known about if not for a TV commercial. I don't follow music news and don't drive by the venue to look at

The best concert I ever went to was one I'd never have known about if not for a TV commercial. I don't follow music news and don't drive by the venue to look at the marquee. I hate commercials, they're annoying, I mute/skip them all but that one got through and it's made me consider that you can be too extremist about this like anything else. To an extent, our interests are aligned with advertisers. Of course their information is biased, but an intelligent person can cut through that and take just the raw information, which has value. If there's a new pizza place open on a street I don't drive down, I'd like to know. Another example. I realized I haven't seen anything but already-familiar movies in recent years because I've closed off all avenues to seeing trailers for movies I'm not already sold on.

janice1999 2y ago
> Of course their information is biased, but an intelligent person can cut through that and take just the raw information, which has value. You may be intelligent as an individual but your adversary has teams of PhDs, decades of psychological research and tons of personal information on you, now parsed and analysed by AI to target you. Thinking you can see "raw information" is very naive.
- add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
  The things you're saying are real on the scale of the entire audience, advertising does work in the aggregate. But I'm stubborn and frugal and skeptical so I'm not buying some new product unless the stars align. I trust myself to be able to hear that it exists from a biased source. Even if you don't believe the claim that X is the best product, it's good to know it exists as a starting point for if/when you ever start research on the options.
  - tokioyoyo 2y ago
    If you do any groceries in bigger markets, the shelf positioning and location of the aisle is also a part of advertising. Companies pay premiums for some spots.
    - Fluorescence 2y ago
      As a fellow frugal sceptic, that won't impact us much. We get a little buzz dragging the super value pack off a top shelf or knowing that the bottom shelf economy product is actually made in the same factory as the high priced brand. We are the ones standing in the aisle eyes glazed computing the 1g/£ value of a "get one free offer" vs. the family pack no matter how hard supermarkets obfuscate it with different units on each label. It's a contrarian world-view that assumes by default, that eye-level products have the lowest value. I used to humbly assume I must be vulnerable to advertising but I later realised I actually have years of expenses that show otherwise. They show I am a cheap bastard. I don't make impulse purchases, mostly buy fruit and veg, don't buy branded products if it can be avoided and major purchases will be drawn out optimisation processes with spreadsheets and using return processes to compare alternatives if necessary. What I can humbly reveal is that this is no brag, this is no moral virtue, just a personality trait that is not always rational and comes with swings and roundabouts e.g. good opportunities are rejected with suspicion, important purchases are procrastinated and we can make poor use of our time to indulge our psychology e.g. walk 10 minutes to the next store to buy something for 50p cheaper just because being gouged 50p physically hurts!
cobertos 2y ago
It'd just be nice if it was consensual. It is resource intensive to try to opt out of/avoid the ad-based society. And you never truly can as some data sharing and ad watching is almost compulsory (video/sound ads at gas pumps). To be fair, I've gotten some great ads for things I never would have found myself, on places like Instagram. And yet I didn't get to choose when or how the ads were delivered.
- add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
  Cable TV commercials have been more or less consensual since DVRs came out in 1999. Start watching a show late and fast forward the commercials. The internet taking the anonymity and freedom to skip ads away from us is the main problem.
  - tharkun__ 2y ago
    Isn't that the same thing? (Cable) TV ads are not more consensual just because you were using the ad blocker of the time: DVR
tensor 2y ago
Advertising should be opt-in, and user tuneable. I avoid advertising in my life as much as possible, but yet, I still find out about all the cool local things going on. How? I use instagram, where I follow things that interest me. The key difference here is that I'm in control. I use it only when I feel like it, I've disabled all its notifications. That said, instagram still has a bunch of obnoxious ads I don't want. It's really not as user tunable as the "opt-in bazar" model should be. But that is the solution, ads should be 100% opt-in. You should be in control of when you want to go browsing vendor wares, and when you do that then sure they can hawk their stuff to you, but otherwise not.
- M95D 2y ago
  That's called news, not ads.
Fluorescence 2y ago
There are perverse incentives at work. Given media is advertising funded, they need it to be necessary. It means they cannot run cultural content that informs you of things of a commercial nature. It would be to give away their revenue generating product for free. Rather than your example showing the advertising-economy is successfully informing you of things, it may show that it has extinguished an entire category of cultural programming that could have kept you entertained and informed without being a pay-to-win manipulation game.

janice1999 2y ago

> Of course their information is biased, but an intelligent person can cut through that and take just the raw information, which has value. You may be intelligent as an individual but your adversary has teams of PhDs, decades of psychological research and tons of personal information on you, now parsed and analysed by AI to target you. Thinking you can see "raw information" is very naive.

add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
The things you're saying are real on the scale of the entire audience, advertising does work in the aggregate. But I'm stubborn and frugal and skeptical so I'm not buying some new product unless the stars align. I trust myself to be able to hear that it exists from a biased source. Even if you don't believe the claim that X is the best product, it's good to know it exists as a starting point for if/when you ever start research on the options.
- tokioyoyo 2y ago
  If you do any groceries in bigger markets, the shelf positioning and location of the aisle is also a part of advertising. Companies pay premiums for some spots.
  - Fluorescence 2y ago
    As a fellow frugal sceptic, that won't impact us much. We get a little buzz dragging the super value pack off a top shelf or knowing that the bottom shelf economy product is actually made in the same factory as the high priced brand. We are the ones standing in the aisle eyes glazed computing the 1g/£ value of a "get one free offer" vs. the family pack no matter how hard supermarkets obfuscate it with different units on each label. It's a contrarian world-view that assumes by default, that eye-level products have the lowest value. I used to humbly assume I must be vulnerable to advertising but I later realised I actually have years of expenses that show otherwise. They show I am a cheap bastard. I don't make impulse purchases, mostly buy fruit and veg, don't buy branded products if it can be avoided and major purchases will be drawn out optimisation processes with spreadsheets and using return processes to compare alternatives if necessary. What I can humbly reveal is that this is no brag, this is no moral virtue, just a personality trait that is not always rational and comes with swings and roundabouts e.g. good opportunities are rejected with suspicion, important purchases are procrastinated and we can make poor use of our time to indulge our psychology e.g. walk 10 minutes to the next store to buy something for 50p cheaper just because being gouged 50p physically hurts!

cobertos 2y ago

It'd just be nice if it was consensual. It is resource intensive to try to opt out of/avoid the ad-based society. And you never truly can as some data sharing and ad watching is almost compulsory (video/sound ads at gas pumps). To be fair, I've gotten some great ads for things I never would have found myself, on places like Instagram. And yet I didn't get to choose when or how the ads were delivered.

add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
Cable TV commercials have been more or less consensual since DVRs came out in 1999. Start watching a show late and fast forward the commercials. The internet taking the anonymity and freedom to skip ads away from us is the main problem.
- tharkun__ 2y ago
  Isn't that the same thing? (Cable) TV ads are not more consensual just because you were using the ad blocker of the time: DVR

tensor 2y ago

Advertising should be opt-in, and user tuneable. I avoid advertising in my life as much as possible, but yet, I still find out about all the cool local things going on. How? I use instagram, where I follow things that interest me. The key difference here is that I'm in control. I use it only when I feel like it, I've disabled all its notifications. That said, instagram still has a bunch of obnoxious ads I don't want. It's really not as user tunable as the "opt-in bazar" model should be. But that is the solution, ads should be 100% opt-in. You should be in control of when you want to go browsing vendor wares, and when you do that then sure they can hawk their stuff to you, but otherwise not.

M95D 2y ago
That's called news, not ads.

Fluorescence 2y ago

There are perverse incentives at work. Given media is advertising funded, they need it to be necessary. It means they cannot run cultural content that informs you of things of a commercial nature. It would be to give away their revenue generating product for free. Rather than your example showing the advertising-economy is successfully informing you of things, it may show that it has extinguished an entire category of cultural programming that could have kept you entertained and informed without being a pay-to-win manipulation game.