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The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is their irrelevance. That’s not to say whether or not the advertisement is for a product or service fo

• nfRfqX5n 1y ago
  it's shocking how bad youtube ads are compared to say instagram or google search. maybe i'm just not targeted well.
• fracus 1y ago
  > The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is their irrelevance. We hate advertisements because they unsolicited manipulations to get our money.
• Sophira 1y ago
  > The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is their irrelevance. Disagreeable to whom, exactly? Personally, I would rather the adverts were irrelevant if it meant I didn't have my every move tracked on the web. The main problems I have with ads are, in order from most problematic to least: * the lengths that ad networks go to to track me, * the very real possibility of getting malware, * the lengths advertisers go to to ensure their ads are seen. (We have popup blockers in pretty much every browser nowadays for a reason.) Take away those, and you could convince me to disable my ad blocker. Until then? Not a chance in hell.
• l33tfr4gg3r 1y ago
  The way I've come to think about this is that the relevance of the ad to you (as a YouTube viewer), is irrelevant. It matters not whether they are relevant to the content/topic of the video, or whether they are of the kind that SponsorBlock blocks, or those shown by YT algos. The ads serve one purpose, and one purpose alone - to bolster revenue for Google. What may have started out as a 'well-intentioned' (using the term loosely) means to recreate Costco-like ads for the digital realm in the early days of the web, was quickly consumed, like most everything else, by Corporate greed and morphed into a source of user frustration over time.
• barrkel 1y ago
  This is not true. The primary thing is that they are a tax on attention and a threat to the user's sovereignty over their focus. The more relevant ads are, the worse they are. Relevant ads are more distracting and more likely to hijack the user's attention and focus against their will.
• layman51 1y ago
  To me the annoyance primarily depends on how shady or high-risk the industry being advertised is. I cannot stand getting ads that have AI puppets of people like Ilia Calderón (a journalist and TV news anchor) to sell supplements or convince people to join investment chat groups.
• absurdo 1y ago
  > I don’t complain about advertisements at Costco because that would be insane. I complain about the advertisements on Youtube because they’re irrelevant and weird but somehow normalized. Calling it like it is.
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
  Sometimes people use the internet for non-commercial reasons. Originally those were the _only_ reasons that people used it. However the Silicon Valley ethos of online advertising faciltated by so-called "tech" coompany intermediaries assumes _all_ internet use is commercial in nature.
• wkat4242 1y ago
  I think special offers are not really advertising. I view advertising as something brought to my attention that I wouldn't otherwise buy. Being made aware of special offers is more to tweak the moment of buying stuff I was going to buy anyway but waiting for a decent price. If I go to MediaMarkt and there's a signpost at the phone area saying "Samsung S25 100 euro discount" then I don't think this is advertising. After all the S25's are lying on the shelf right there whether the offer is there or not. I am there to at least consider buying one and I am there already looking for one before I saw the sign, it's just a notification that the price is low.
• raffraffraff 1y ago
  Not for me. I don't have a TV and I have used adblockers for decades. I live somewhere that I don't really notice offensively intrusive ads. And I wear blouse cancelling headphones whenever people annoy me. At this point I'm completely sensitised to over-friendly, over-confident "HEY FRIEND, DO YOU HAVE THIS PROBLEM? I HAD TOO, AND THIS WONDERFUL PRODUCT SOLVED IT". If I click on a link for Rick Astley "Never gonna give you up", damnit I don't want to listen to an ad first. I have a hair trigger insta CTRL+w on ads. Even the ones that the YouTuber directly refers to in that segment of their video. "Fuck your sponsor"
• DidYaWipe 1y ago
  I disagree. I was willing to tolerate pretty much any ad on YouTube as long as it was normal ad length (:15, :30, or even a minute) if they eventually ended and THE PROGRAM RESUMED. But then YouTube started PERMANENTLY interrupting what I was watching with never-ending commercials or full-on infomercials... forcing me to manually use the Skip button to stop the commercial onslaught and return to the show I was watching. And they forced me to herd the show along like this every few minutes. I put stuff on to watch while I'm cooking or doing something; I can't run to wash my hands so I can mash the control on the remote, over and over and over. So that's when I installed a third-party YouTube client that skips ads. Google took someone who was willing to watch ads, and turned him into someone who never sees one. So Google cost itself and the content creators, through its asshole behavior. Then they had the gall to WHINE about the uptick in ad-blocking. It's right out of the Trump/Putin playbook: attack someone, and then feign outrage and whine when they fight back.
• samtheDamned 1y ago
  > The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is their irrelevance I disagree but not for the reasons I was seeing in the existing replies here. I believe that advertising is manipulative, and I don't want advertising companies to use the fact that most of my data is in their hands to pull the right strings and push the right buttons to try to get me to buy a product I wouldn't have otherwise.
• cyanydeez 1y ago
  also keep in mind: I'd wager there's so much multitasking going on that half the time people won't even be watching the advertisement.
• NoPicklez 1y ago
  I complain about ads on YouTube because it interrupts my attention from what I am watching, which is nothing new. Whilst you're correct about Costco, advertisers don't care where you are to show you an ad. The data shows that if you are laying on the couch watching YouTube and an ad appears relevant to you, that it sells. I don't think advertisers are sitting there scratching their heads as to why people don't like them. No advertiser looks at a billboard in the countryside and thinks people enjoy looking at them, its a profit making opportunity, even if that means hijacking your YouTube video on tech reviews for an Audi commercial. The difference with Costco in your example is that the ads don't impeded on your ability to continue shopping around Costco. If you were walking around Costco and had to stop to listen to someone market to you about clothing when you were simply there to buy some bread and milk you'd get annoyed.
• OkayPhysicist 1y ago
  It's not their irrelevance, it's their intrusion. The difference between going to Costco and seeing an ad for tires while I'm shopping and being forced to watch some ad online is like the difference between getting punched in the gut during a water polo game (not necessarily pleasant, but expected and to a degree necessary) versus someone kicking down my door in the middle of the night and beating the shit out of me.
• BobbyTables2 1y ago
  Imagine if the tire advertisement at Costco stood in front of you for 30 seconds and wouldn’t let you pass or turn around until a minimum amount of time passed.
  • vntok 1y ago
    What would Costco offer you in exchange, like a rebate on the tire itself or on anything bought at Costco maybe? Then surely a lot of people would stay. Youtube is offering access to entertainment in exchange for 30s ads, that's a valuable proposition to many.
• scoofy 1y ago
  You can also pay for YouTube. I do. It’s nice, not crazy expensive. No ads. Creators get paid. Everyone wins.
  • hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
    Specifically it's about $14 a month in the US, from what I see. I say this number so people know how to think economically about this. Anyone who is complaining about this is annoyed, but not $14/month level annoyed on net. Otherwise they'd just get the subscription, or stop watching YouTube.
  • whyenot 1y ago
    Yes, I also appreciate the skip ahead feature that lets you fast forward over the sponsorship ads that a lot of creators have started insetting into their videos.
  • stiray 1y ago
    You lose on long run. In few years, you will pay more and still watch ads while YT will no longer be free. (let me remind you of video streaming services) Managers want their rewards that are tied to earnings and stockholders want to earn more. And once they both get their money, the next year reward will be tied to even more earnings. And stockholders will want to earn more.
    • scoofy 1y ago
      I’ll switch to Nebula if that ever happens. Content creators have no loyalty to YouTube and will share their content elsewhere when YouTube annoys their paying fans.
      • stiray 1y ago
        There is no if. This is how corporate greed works. What will happen is, that content creators will spread to different providers, that also have managers and stockholders/owners. Look what Netflix was like and how many various payable video streaming providers you have now. More than you are prepared to pay for content. In few years, you will be torrenting content that today you watch for free. And only because people decided to pay, showing the world that there is money to be made in YT model.
• CobrastanJorji 1y ago
  > The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is their irrelevance. That's not true. We don't hate billboards because of their irrelevancy. We hate billboards because they're giant ugly attention grabbers that make the world look worse for everybody in exchange for making someone money. If the billboards were all about driving-related products, they'd still suck. The YouTube ads are hated because that's the whole point. YouTube has something we want (the video), and they're keeping it from us until they we do something we don't want to do (watch an ad). We dislike these ads almost by definition. If we liked them, we'd seek them out, and we'd call them something else, like "movie trailers" or "Super Bowl ads."
  • socalgal2 1y ago
    > We don't hate billboards because of their irrelevancy. We hate billboards because they're giant ugly attention grabbers that make the world look worse for everybody in exchange for making someone money. If the billboards were all about driving-related products, they'd still suck. I like billboards when I'm driving down an interstate and I want to decide if I should get off at the next stop and I want to know what food options there are. (example: Driving down I5 from SF to LA). I like billboards when they tell me about an attraction coming up. (Winchester House has a billboard) I like billboards when they advertize concerts/entertainers. (Driving down the I15 from Ontario to Oceanside there are ads for who's playing at Yaamava (https://www.yaamava.com/yaamava-theater https://www.yaamava.com/yaamava-theater), Pala (https://www.palacasino.com/entertainment/upcoming-concerts/ https://www.palacasino.com/entertainment/upcoming-concerts/), etc...
  • grepfru_it 1y ago
    Nothing is wrong with billboards, I can look the other way. When the billboards show up on my dashboard and I have to stare at it before I can turn off my exit then we have problems I don’t mind watching a video with an ad. My child and I can preoccupy ourself. When it’s a 90 second ad we are forced to watch just to watch a 45 second video I’m gonna make certain we don’t watch that ad
    • nielsbot 1y ago
• gausswho 1y ago
  Even if they were relevant, they'd still be holding global internet video culture behind a paywall. First pay with your identity (carrier phone number required for a Google account). Then double pay through Premium in the illusion you won't end up seeing ads anyway.
• user3939382 1y ago
  They’re disagreeable because you’re having your attention robbed unsolicited for the purpose of someone else trying to get your money. The whole concept is an insult. At best they drive materialism.
  • PurestGuava 1y ago
    You're trading your attention for entertainment you don't otherwise have to pay for.
    • owisd 1y ago
      You do in the end because you're buying the products that are funding the ads.
    • account42 1y ago
      Would we have to pay for the cat videos and other things people currently share on youtube because it's the dominant platform. The creators of these are generally not paid.
    • anon7000 1y ago
      Not true, cable TV runs ads and costs money. Many sports channels cost money in a cable package and still have ads. The *paid* Netflix plans have ads now. It’s pretty clear that companies can’t stop salivating over how lucrative ads are, and will continue to shove ads down our throats inside of paid products as long as we live.
      • PurestGuava 1y ago
        OK, but we're very specifically discussing YouTube here, which as discussed, you don't have to pay for; but if you do, you don't see ads.
        • sokoloff 1y ago
          If you do, you don’t see pre-roll and mid-roll ads. You still see embedded ads, sponsor mentions, “all the tools we used are linked below”, etc.
• throwaway290 1y ago
  I don't like ads but keep in mind the only 100% "relevant" ad is disguised as content. Is that what you want? Sponsored or generated stuff that feeds you some agenda while you think you watch something different...
• deleted 1y ago
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• palmfacehn 1y ago
  Consuming content online has always been about agency. You choose the content. Previous media landscapes were largely passive endeavors. Broadcast media choices were limited. You either muted the ads, turned off the TV/radio or endured the advertisements. I often find myself closing YT when ads are played. Not only are they largely irrelevant, but they are frequently in the wrong language. If I want to immerse myself in the local language, I will go outside and interact in that language. If I am listening to a podcast in English, typically around Anglophone cultural or political topics, why would they invade my space with non-English content? I don't want to hear local music or K-Pop when I am listening to classical music. In many cases, the language isn't even local to the country which I reside in. If I cannot have an English-only space on my own computer, I won't be using the site. There's a time and a place for immersion into other cultures. My personal computer in my home office isn't the place.
• idkfasayer 1y ago
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• anigbrowl 1y ago
  The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is their irrelevance. Bane: For you I dislike them because they're loud, flashy, annoying, and (most of all) because YT saturates them. It even tries to put them in the middle of songs when it detects a transitional pause. And they are served so often. It's literally worse than broadcast TV, which is an incredibly low bar to step over. Platforms should not allow advertisers free speech. They should limit the content to static imagery/shots, dissolves, and spoken narration, ie the form rather than the content. Don't tell it can't work, this was how adwords worked on Google Search for years and everyone made handsome profits. Advertising is cancer if allowed to go full spectrum. The people who work at Youtube should be deeply ashamed of what they have allowed it to become and the trash monetization incentives they've established.
• Corrado 1y ago
  I completely agree, though with a twist. Google knows everything about me and yet I get ADs for things that I would never purchase. Just because I'm a middle aged male I see trucks, and beer, and football advertisements all day long. Those are irrelevant to me. If Google would only use their immense knowledge of me and what I like, I might be more amenable to watching their ADs. Where are the ADs for geeky movies that I might enjoy (is there a new Superman movie coming out)? Or books by my favorite authors? Or video games or computer equipment or electric cars? Hell, I have grandkids so stuff for them might work on me. To be clear, it's not only Google, all the big providers have so much information on all of us, but they don't seem to take advantage of it at all. I've turned the AD "customization" on/off for all kinds of things and it doesn't seem to matter in the slightest. Nearly everything I see is irrelevant to me.
  • Kamq 1y ago
    > Just because I'm a middle aged male I see trucks, and beer, and football advertisements all day long Well, yeah. Those companies will pay to send their ad to all middle aged men. Those companies could slice and dice more to get better demographics, but they don't think it's worth it. Google's business isn't to slice and dice the demographics to show you better ads. It's to slice and dice the demographics in any way that the advertisers will pay for. Because the people who are willing to pay money are, ultimately, the customers.
  • ljm 1y ago
    It’s better they don’t. Hyper-targeting of ads to achieve political aims has been happening for the past decade with Meta leading the way. There is zero situation where this technology doesn’t get co-opted by adverse interests to make your life measurably worse. Better to keep them dumb and then grow a regulatory spine to put a stop to the endless proliferation of ads. It was done for advertising on other media.
  • Nextgrid 1y ago
    Their incentive is to make money, not serve you relevant ads. If a geeky movie studio pays X to show an ad to people of your profile, while a car manufacturer pays X*2, Google is better off showing you the car, even if they are internally 100% sure you'd buy the movie instead.
• MagicMoonlight 1y ago
  The most successful marketing campaign of all time was the marketing department convincing companies that they need marketing. If you’re Coca Cola and you spend £1,000,000,000 on a Christmas TV ad of a bear drinking cola, does that increase your sales? No. It does nothing. But every year they’ll do it. The only marketing that works is at the point of sale, and free samples. Anything which is just random and in public will not result in anything. But the genius of the scam is, it’s not measurable. You bill £1,000,000,000 a year for marketing, and they can’t measure if it worked. How do you know if a TV ad worked? But they can’t withdraw the funding, because you’ll tell them their competitors will win. So the scam keeps going.
  • mrob 1y ago
    I don't drink cola myself, but it seems logical to me. The point of the expensive advert is showing everybody how rich Coca Cola is. That increases the trust people have in their products being safe and reliable because they know Coca Cola has something to lose. If they didn't advertise they'd be like those Chinese sellers named as random strings of uppercase letters. I definitely wouldn't buy cola from one of those.
  • Workaccount2 1y ago
    Think about all the ways you a smarter than the average person. Well this is one of them too, unfortunately. Ads work extremely well. Often they are the single most important aspect of product. Google and Meta are two of the largest corporations on Earth entirely because thin brains click their ads all day. Your hate for ads isn't misguided, but you are hitting the wrong mark.
• meyum33 1y ago
  I don’t get how YouTube advertises. Because we use VPN in China, YouTube simply pushes ads in whatever local language my proxy server happens to be. Which baffles me quite a lot since even the most basic tracking and use history (I have two decades in Google) would tell them at least the language I can understand.
  • blitzar 1y ago
    The parasitic nature of ad tech attracts the laziest get rich quickest tech workers who go on to management where they hire the griftiest of grifters into their ranks.
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
• helsinkiandrew 1y ago
  > If I go to Costco and see an advertisement for tires... well, I’m at Costco, where I buy stuff. Things are sold at Costco and people go there to have things sold to them If you visit content on the internet that the Google Ad network thinks suggest you might be interested in purchasing new tyres, then showing you ads for companies that sells tyres is, unfortunately, relevant no matter what your doing now, because you're more likely to click them, or remember the company/brand when choosing a purchase. Also a large proportion of ads aren't designed to affect immediate purchase - cars, movies, coca-cola, and other brands are hoping to get into your (sub) consciousness so you'll remember when you buy days, weeks or months later.
• meroes 1y ago
  The most disagreeable thing is they are psychologically insidious.
• raincole 1y ago
  I really hope ads to stay as irrelevant as possible, for as long as possible. However it seems impossible to last for our society with all the tracking, product placement and astroturfing.
• qwery 1y ago
  You're right to point out the "relevance factor" is not what people commonly take it to be. The context is (as always) crucial. Of course, the degree to which an individual tolerates advertising varies for a multitude of reasons. > billboards [...] countryside I think people simply find this to be an ugly thing. They object to the ugliness of it. They're in the countryside -- i.e. not the town/city -- and they find themselves unable to escape (even here!) from this seedy miasma. Putting disgust into words is not a simple thing, perhaps this is the reason for the inconsistent reasoning you've noticed. All advertising is ugly, it's an ugly business -- money grubbing manipulation. It's inherently weird to be subjected to the endless torrent of uncanny twisted art that is advertising every day for your entire life. The ads on Youtube are normalised by the same force that normalises all the other advertising -- the ads in one context normalise the ads in another. The ads on the side of the bus, on the LCD panels on the train, on the same screen that shows the timetable at the station, before the movie starts, by the seemingly sensible ads in Costco. One hand washes the other.
  • Brian_K_White 1y ago
    We're all living in Truman's world. About the only thing that might make it better is maybe some of this nice Ovaltine recommended by 9 out of 10 doctors.
• andoando 1y ago
  This pretty much applies to all ads everywhere. I mean Im a guy and I get ads for tampons on TV or a million odds for all sorts of diseases I dont have. Shit I rather willingly give info about myself so irrelevant ads can be filtered out and I dont have to waste time on them and the advertiser doesnt waste money on me
• v5v3 1y ago
  You don't get it. You are not the target Most advertising is seeking the less intelligent consumer. Or the young and still naive consumer. They outnumber you 1 million to 1. It's why female musicians make more money putting their name to a makeup brand then their music. It's why Elon will make some promise that is unrealistic. It's why Apple put low paid everyday tech support staff in their stores and called them Geniuses. You have to put yourself in the shoes of the mainstream buyer. They see a headline and believe it.
  • kaptainscarlet 1y ago
    Spot on. As technically apt people, we grossly overestimate the technical ability of the average user.
  • musicale 1y ago
    > It's why Apple put low paid everyday tech support staff in their stores and called them Geniuses. I always thought the geniuses were the second-level (or higher) Apple support that you escalate to when your problem isn't readily solved by the first level?
  • dakiol 1y ago
    Couldn’t youtube easily discern those who are young and naive from those who aren’t so that the latter don’t get ads? It would be a win-win for everyone: youtube spends less (no need to spend bandwidth), companies dont get hated that much, non-naive-young consumers are not bombarded with ads.
    • Barbing 1y ago
      Anecdotally, YouTube will show to boomer home owners scam solar product ads which they'd never show their younger, more scam-resistant counterparts. So they at least make some adjustment. Also wouldn't we farm & sell our ad-free accounts PS: maybe they could just show us Coke ads, whichever ubiquitous brands necessarily advertise to stay in our consciousness etc.
    • account42 1y ago
      It just so happens that anyone who thinks ads don't affect them is naive and thus a profitable ad target.
• joyjayking11 1y ago
  It makes sense
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• b0a04gl 1y ago
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• maelito 1y ago
  No, we just hate ads because they're trying to tell us what to buy. It's the definition of illiberal.
• franga2000 1y ago
  10000x NO! I absolutely hate advertisements in stores specifically because of their releavance. If I go there to buy cereal, I expect to go to the cereal shelf, look at the options, evaluate them and pick the optimal one for my set of criteria. What I absolutely do not want is for one cereal brand to be placed right as I come in, exploiting my psychological quirks to get me to either buy it on the spot without going to evaluate other options or just occupy a slightly larger part of my attention to skew my evaluation process when I get to the shelf. Advertising is just another money multiplier. If you have a ton of money to throw at ads, you'll make more money than those that don't. And to make up the ad investment, you'll necessarily have to be a worse deal for consumers.
  • tonyedgecombe 1y ago
    Yes, advertising is bad because it works. At its core it's manipulative and well targeted adverts are the most manipulative.
  • comprev 1y ago
    When you are next in the cereal aisle take a close look at how they are arranged. What you see is advertising. Shelf space is at a high premium and companies tussle for your attention. The product which is easiest to reach - for an adult on cereal shelves and a child in the toy section - pays a premium to be there. The smaller unknown brands are pushed to the bottom and on top where you have to stretch. It's no different to a large Kellogg's cereal advert in your face as you walk in the shop.
• kerkeslager 1y ago
  > The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is their irrelevance. The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is the whole thing. There is nothing good about ads, ever. If I want information about a product, I'll go looking for it, and I won't go to an advertiser. If I'm looking to watch a YouTube video, there is absolutely no condition under which I want to hear about a product unless that's explicitly what I went to that video to hear about. All ads are lies. There is never an ad that tells you about the flaws in a product or compares it honestly to competing product. I'm simply not interested in being lied to.
• carlosjobim 1y ago
  > The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is their irrelevance. Well, obviously. If the message was relevant or a good offer for the customer, they wouldn't need to pay to advertise it. Advertisement is for products which have low enough cost/benefit for the customer to not sell themselves.
• Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  When Google started ads they were praised for being relevant. But, as long as advertisers are willing to pay more, they can buy off the relevancy, not really caring about directly measurable conversion rates.
• BrtByte 1y ago
  The worse the experience, the more likely people are to pay to remove ads entirely. So we end up with this weird situation where the ad experience degrades on purpose, rather than improving relevance or fitting the context, because annoyance drives subscriptions.
• grogenaut 1y ago
  Lol you sweet summer child, they don't care if the ad is relevant to you, you're not the customer. https://medium.com/@Glenames/programmatic-advertising-101-c92b5f6cd75d https://medium.com/@Glenames/programmatic-advertising-101-c9... Your eyes are the supply. The demand (customer) is people wanting your eyes. Relevance in ads is if your eyes are a candidate to at some point buy their orid8. What your taking about at costco is essentially house ads or really signage. Remember unless you are a brand you are not the customer for ads.
• grogenaut 1y ago
  Lol you sweet summer child, they don't care if the ad is relevant to you, you're not the customer. https://medium.com/@Glenames/programmatic-advertising-101-c92b5f6cd75d https://medium.com/@Glenames/programmatic-advertising-101-c9... Your eyes are the supply. The demand (customer) is people wanting your eyes. Relevance in ads is if your eyes are a candidate to at some point buy their product. What your taking about at costco is essentially house ads or really signage. Remember unless you are a brand you are not the customer for ads.
  • pantulis 1y ago
    This is correct. But the real customer, the brand, cares if the ad is relevant to you because they are either paying for impressions or traffic. Either way, if the ad is not relevant the analytics tools will show that campaigns in Google perform worse than campaigns bought in, say, Meta or TikTok.
• strken 1y ago
  It's not irrelevance, it's lack of trust. I could see an ad for the exact thing I need and I still wouldn't click it. Either it's a scam, or it's technically not a scam because offering 90% off in the first month of a 12 month contract is legal, or it's the worst product on the market and the only way it can get users is blowing VC cash on ads, or there's something else that will surely disappoint me.
  • galangalalgol 1y ago
    I think the theme you and other posters are stating in various ways, is that being expised to persuasion always has negative value. The motivation for some actors can be good, but it will never be universal. When seeking out information to make a purchase, one of the primary taks is to identify and filter out persuasion in the process, in the form of sponsored listings, or reddit shills. I have seen calls to ban paid persuasion, or even all paid speech. I don't know if that is compatible with the notion of free speech, or if I agree it is a good idea, but it certainly would have some good effects in addition to any bad ones.
    • strken 1y ago
      It's not persuasion that's the issue. Opinion articles in newspapers are persuasion and I actively seek them out sometimes. One of the blogs I used to read was The Last Psychiatrist. The author had a saying: "if you're seeing it, it's for you". In other words, if someone goes to the effort of putting something in front of you, they did it for a reason. Usually that reason is not "my company is growing via word of mouth and organic PR efforts because our product is so good, but I just want to grow faster."
  • ufmace 1y ago
    I feel like it's happened to me multiple times that I've seen an ad for something I actually want, but if I click through or look up the company advertised, then do a little research on that company, I discover that it's a scam or a super crappy version, then I actually purchase the thing from a more reputable company with higher quality. So I guess they succeeded in getting me to buy something, from their competitors.
• sfasdfh123 1y ago
  For videos media, you also have to factor in tone and pacing . Totally kill the flow of watching a video essay when a loud talking ads jump out for 5 second. That's why I have a kinder view for Youtube sponsors, since it's read by the literally same person making this video, and have total control when to place it. Even if it's NordVPN ads in a middle of a history channel.
• isoprophlex 1y ago
  The primary thing is that they're there, that they make the world a worse with their nash equilibrium of "everyone is doing it so everyone must continue doing it", and that they're basically rich people begging you to give them more money. Outside of a context where you have made a conscious choice to spend money, at that. I'd argue that even in a supermarket they're mostly useless and manipulative. I came in to buy bananas, you don't need to tell me doritos are buy 9, get 3 free. Fuck ads.
• Akronymus 1y ago
  > People complain about billboards next to a countryside highway because it is entirely irrelevant to driving through the countryside. They also are a distraction, which seems pretty ironic when billvoarda are used to remind drivers to not drive distracted.
• freehorse 1y ago
  I hate the ad-centered nature of modern web anyway, but I don't understand why ads are not based on the content of a webpage/video. I am much less disturbed by ads eg on a podcast where the podcaster gives a sponsored message about a service relevant to the topic of the podcast. And prob if I watch the podcast I am already most probably part of the target audience. There is no need to profile me over the websites I visit or apps I am using and invade my privacy, and still fail to target me correctly. And even if you can correctly infer that fishing is my big hobby and now you should bombard me with ads about fishing, maybe this is not what I want to see or hear about when I am watching a lecture on a computer science subject, and I will definitely not want to buy anything then? Maybe it would make for a less distracting and annoying experience when I watch some videos about fishing?
  • wkat4242 1y ago
    > I hate the ad-centered nature of modern web anyway, but I don't understand why ads are not based on the content of a webpage/video. This is because tracking data is google's moat. They don't want people to offer content-based ads. Why? Because they will find out that they work pretty well while preserving privacy. And will start using them. But then Google has a problem, because to offer those you don't need a global pervasive tracking network to do it. Anyone with a few million can set up an ad network and compete with Google. So, they try to double down on their tracking driven approach because it's something only they and a few other big ones can do. Content-driven ads they discourage with propaganda that they don't work, just not offering or making them difficult to use.
• imiric 1y ago
  Well said. > I don't complain about advertisements at Costco because that would be insane. I complain about the advertisements on Youtube because they're irrelevant and weird but somehow normalized. They're normalized because we've been conditioned over many decades to accept them. We were psychologically manipulated to associate brands with specific feelings engineered by advertising firms. Cigarettes were "torches of freedom". The Marlboro Man was a symbol of masculinity and confidence. Coca-Cola was the happy Christmas drink. Ads with catchphrases became cultural phenomena: "Just do it", "Whasssuuuuup", and so on. We watched ads on cable TV even though we were paid subscribers. We watched 30 minutes of ads before a movie in the cinema. We read ads in newspapers and magazines even though we paid for them, and then when we could get them for "free", we liked even more paying with our attention than our money. We consumed TV and radio shows where "brought to you by" was just part of the content. We accepted ~20 minutes of ads for every hour of TV we watched. So it was natural for advertising to also take over the internet. With the technology built for advertisers by very smart people who got rich in the process, they're able to create campaigns that target potential buyers much more accurately. They can build profiles of people in various invasive, shady and inventive ways, and their profits have never been higher because of it. Never mind the fact that the same technology is used to manipulate people into thinking and acting in certain ways unrelated to their purchasing behavior, and that this is largely responsible for corrupting democratic processes, toppling governments, and the sociopolitical instability of the past decade. Several birds, one stone.
• jader201 1y ago
  Ads have been on TV since the beginning of TV. And before that, that were — and still are — on radio. Where they’re also “irrelevant”. But the relevancy to our current activities isn’t tied to their effectiveness. I know that they’re effective, because I had impressionable teens tell me they wanted me to pick up Prime drinks at the store, all because they were convinced drinking Prime was cool. But let me be clear — I hate ads, too. I hate them on TV, radio, YouTube, billboards, in my mailbox, in my email inbox, and when they cover up 50% of real estate on websites. Pretty much everywhere they show up. But the purpose of ads aren’t for me to like them, or to be tied to where I’m at a place I can purchase something. The purpose is to leave a lasting impression. And, like it or not, they’re effective enough, for some people and for some products, that they’re going to keep doing them, regardless of the fact that nearly everyone hates them.
  • tzs 1y ago
    > But let me be clear — I hate ads, too. I hate them on TV, radio, YouTube, billboards, in my mailbox, in my email inbox, and when they cover up 50% of real estate on websites. Pretty much everywhere they show up. The mailbox ads can actually be quite useful. Since I started looking at them instead of just tossing them straight into the recycling bin I've discovered they often contain coupons for good deals at restaurants that I semi-regularly already go to. Those coupons have saved me noticeable amount of money on those visits. Similarly on groceries. In the grocery case it is not coupons but advertisements of sales. 97% of the time I shop at the large supermarket nearest my home, which usually has the best prices. But occasionally there is a very good deal on something expensive like meat somewhere else and it is their mailbox flyers that let me know about it.
• masswerk 1y ago
  On relevance: I've never seen an ad on YT that would make me buy a product. I guess, this is now a matter of principle. Moreover, it's now also a matter of fending off GenAI content (AKA slop) for the sake of sanity. So, I'm clearly not the audience. Which raises the question, what is YT in the business of selling, they are trying to enforce? Lifetime?
• kolektiv 1y ago
  As spoken by thousands of tech companies over and over - if only the ads were more relevant, users would like them! No, they never will. That's because an advert is effectively an unasked-for imposition on my attention intended to benefit somebody else more than it benefits me (should it be considered to benefit me at all). There's a name for behaviour like that: rude. I am not blind to commercial imperatives, but expecting people to ever feel anything more positive than low-level irritation with advertising is unrealistic. People do not like feeling that others matter more than them, particularly where money is involved. Spaces without adverts in them, whether physical or virtual, are simply more mentally enjoyable to people than those with them. Imagine one of the worlds wonders, natural or otherwise. Imagine the Acropolis, the Coliseum, the Buddha of Leshan - or Lake Annecy, or the Great Barrier Reef, or the Amazon. Now try and imagine a single advert which is so wonderful that it would improve any of them, contextual or otherwise. You can't, and you won't. They're pollution that we tolerate.
  • IshKebab 1y ago
    I totally disagree. There have once or twice been adverts that I've seen where I've thought "yes! I do want one of those!". Obviously I like those adverts. If there really was a way to magically make all adverts relevant then yes - users would like them! But that's a totally impossible ask. Not only do websites mostly have no idea what's relevant to me (even with all the tracking) but they obviously have huge financial pressure to show me crap that I wouldn't ever want. So, yes. Relevant advertising is good, but also basically impossible.
    • lrvick 1y ago
      Even if it is something I would like if a friend told me about it, if I am bombarded by ads I hate it and often will find or make an alternative.
    • kolektiv 1y ago
      I'm not sure we're actually disagreeing that much, but I will say: even if you show me something I love, in a way that I appreciate, but you do it in a time or place where I don't want that thing? That's still an imposition. So in a way we agree because time + place + content + style is something that is not possible to get right. There will never be an advert brilliant or relevant enough to make me happy that you showed it to me while skiing in the Norwegian mountains, or while watching my child enjoy their birthday party. Most cases are less extreme, but then most adverts are much worse - the scale will never be tipped the right way.
• noqc 1y ago
  >The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is their irrelevance. The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is the system that disputes my indisputable right to ignore them. If I paid someone to cut the adverts out of my newspaper before I read it, would I be stealing from the publisher? Silicon valley has spent the last 30 years getting the internet to run on lies, and depends upon the charity of people willing to be lied to. Now that trillions of dollars depend upon this system, they can no longer afford to leave it up to charity, and believe that they must go to war. This is a war that they will lose. Ban advertising, formally enshrine the right of adblockers to operate, and use the new regulation to work out a new business model, or perish in the arms race that you are absolutely destined to lose.
• DudeOpotomus 1y ago
  How old are you? I wonder if you were exposed to the world before advertising took over every aspect of our lives. Before the most valueable companies in the world were based on media and advertising sales. If you were alive before ad tech ate the world, you'd have a very different take on this whole thing.