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It's sad that such a thing needs regulation in the first place. In real life if a salesman is being inconsiderate, I'll go out of my way to avoid their sales an
by potamic 1y ago
It's sad that such a thing needs regulation in the first place. In real life if a salesman is being inconsiderate, I'll go out of my way to avoid their sales and find someone else who is better mannered. But we don't seem to apply the same measure to ads. Ads can be brash, insulting and manipulative, and yet that doesn't seem to cause a negative outcome for them. Rather it appears such ads work better and now that's what everyone's pushing towards. Human psychology is such a weird thing.
- ivell 1y agoI doubt if the ads are working better. I suspect their measurement approaches related to ads effectiveness is wrong. If we are just measuring viewing of an ad as positive, then obnoxious ads will be viewed and thought to be effective. But the emotional response would be the opposite (getting annoyed instead of getting interested). I think for the company placing the ad it is a net negative.
- ulrikrasmussen 1y agoI think there's so much snake oil in the ad business because it is indeed hard to measure the effectiveness of ads, in particular when shown in places where you cannot track the user behavior and correlate the ad with subsequent user behavior. In the end, platforms like Netflix and Hulu don't need to prove that a higher volume works, but perhaps their customers think that it works, and that is enough.
- iinnPP 1y agoThis service problem is fixed like most media-related service problems. Sailing. MPC has the ability to normalize volume in a video automatically.
- iamacyborg 1y ago> I think there's so much snake oil in the ad business because it is indeed hard to measure the effectiveness of ads, in particular when shown in places where you cannot track the user behavior and correlate the ad with subsequent user behavior. Or the alternative, you can track it therefore you assign a disproportionate amount of value to it versus the things that are harder to track.
- rickdeckard 1y agoI'd say the metric is simply "if it's suddenly louder than the content before, we have the users attention and eyeballs". > But the emotional response would be the opposite (getting annoyed instead of getting interested). I think for the company placing the ad it is a net negative In Advertising, "getting annoyed" is just a sub-metric of "getting remembered" ;) Frankly, if the volume is too high I think the annoyance would be mostly directed towards the entire service playing ads at all, not the maker of the individual ad.
- bluefirebrand 1y ago> In Advertising, "getting annoyed" is just a sub-metric of "getting remembered" ;) This really just tells me that either I'm an outlier (probably) or advertisers are morons If I remember something annoyed me with an ad, I will move heaven and earth to avoid their product I loathe advertising in general and the more intrusive it is the less I want your product. I keep a shit list of particularly irritating brands and go out of my way to avoid them
- dahart 1y agoPersonally I feel like keeping a list of annoying ad brands and avoiding them would take up too much of my mental space, and it would lead me occasionally to bad purchasing decisions. Advertising is what it is, sometimes manipulative and sometimes very annoying, but basically all companies have to do it and they tend to do what works and behave similarly. As long as I have a choice, I’ll avoid advertising in general, regardless of whether it’s annoying. There is evidence that louder ads work: https://news.nd.edu/news/loud-and-clear-high-energy-ads-keep-viewers-tuned-in-study-shows/ https://news.nd.edu/news/loud-and-clear-high-energy-ads-keep... This feel unsurprising to me given the long known fact that people tend to rate audio quality based on volume. (It’s what the stereo sales scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High was based on.)
- bluefirebrand 1y ago> Advertising is what it is, sometimes manipulative and sometimes very annoying I think the difference between you and I is that I think it is always manipulative, and therefore is always very annoying There are no honest advertisers. Only scum.
- neves 1y agoI don't mind ads in the beginning of movies, but I hate with my full heart all companies and products that interrupt a tense scene
- rkomorn 1y agoSorry for the mini rant but... One of the things that annoy me about TV shows is that the pacing on shows that were designed for network TV with ads is so predictable you can know whenever a tense scene is going to have an interesting outcome or not. Tension somewhere between the usual ad boundaries? Nothing's happening. Tension near the 7 or 10 minute boundaries (depending on 30 or 60 minute shows)? Something's gonna happen. It makes TV shows predictable even when watched on an ad-free platform.
- wingspar 1y agoI think that is bumping into the standard three-act structure common in fictional narratives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-act_structure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-act_structure
- rkomorn 1y agoMaybe if you consider that the "three-act" structure is forced onto 20 and 40 minute runtime shows at precise time windows. What I'm talking about is far less visible, if at all, in adless 60-minute runtime episodes. Edit: and "what I'm talking about" is clear before-the-ad cliffhangers with after-the-ad "rewards" in the form of events that advance the plot.
- randycupertino 1y ago> all companies and products that interrupt a tense scene reply Like the PEPSI vending machine, brightly lit up and just happened to be there PERFECTLY working order in the middle of an apocalypse to provide a refreshing Pepsi to Brad Pitt at the tense zombie cat-and-mouse moment in World War Z? https://youtu.be/XzMhRnpTrL0?si=8FqSm_42Cx9sZE4R&t=93 https://youtu.be/XzMhRnpTrL0?si=8FqSm_42Cx9sZE4R&t=93
- s1mplicissimus 1y agoUnfortunately that's not how human attention works. Being annoyed (or really having any strong emotional reaction) causes the ad to have a stronger impression on your memory. Now pair that with "autopilot mode" while shopping and you have a desirable (for the business) outcome.
- netsharc 1y agoI still avoid some products because their maker paid the local version of the insufferable Simon Cowell to promote their products.
- mrguyorama 1y agoYOU still avoid. But not the vast majority of consumers.
- everdrive 1y agoWhether or not this actually turns into purchases, I would imagine that obnoxious == memorable, and therefore advertising companies believe more memorable ads will turn into more purchases.
- AdrianAvtomat 1y agoI tend to believe this is some form of Goodhart's law running amok, but when I see obnoxious ads converting I have to wonder if the emotional response eventually boils off leaving behind that sweet sweet brand awareness.
- immibis 1y agoAFAIK even annoying people with ads still makes them more likely to buy your product. Even making people think "ugh, I'll never buy that" still makes them more likely to buy that. They do this stuff because it works. Even if you think it doesn't work, it still works.
- OkayPhysicist 1y agoMy personal little doomsday theory is that the entirety of the advertising industry is built on faulty data. Approximately no one has the complete data set to determine how much an ad is worth. For direct ads ("enter promo code BLAH", "Click Here to check out the new...", there's hard data. But most of the perceived value of advertising is different: The company buying the ads has zero chance of knowing if someone seeing a car ad on YouTube 6 months ago factored into their decision to purchase a different car by the same manufacturer. Maybe the advertising platform has a chance of knowing (though Google AdSense has never asked me for my sales data), but they are strongly motivated to never reveal any results that would damage their industry. The platforms that serve the ads have no reason to thoroughly vet whether ad impressions are being accurately measured because error is almost always in their favor. Basically, nobody has the data because anybody who could have the data is incentivized to not look at it. That's the recipe for a rather long-lived bubble, one which if it popped (say, some short trader targeting the entirety of tech industry) would fundamentally change the tech industry. In short, I don't think making me watch a video of a truck for a couple seconds should be worth a nickel.
- nullify88 1y agoWe do apply the same measure, adblocking. Except since companies base their businesses on ads theres a cat and mouse game at play to ensure you pay them with your attention. I'm reminded of the scene in "Airplane" where the captain is fighting off sales people in the airport. I feel the same way about the Internet. My earliest memory of adblocking is the VHS recorder or player skipping commercials similar today to SponsorBlock and other autoskipping methods.
- anal_reactor 1y agoI've noticed that I got Pavolved and whenever I hear things like "But first" or "This is where I'd like to tell you about" I immediately rush to the keyboard, expecting a sponsor segment I should skip.
- add-sub-mul-div 1y agoDuring baseball games I've come to get annoyed when I hear the announcer stop talking and take a breath, about to change their tone of voice from conversational to formal so they can launch into one of the micro ad reads between pitches or at-bats. It's the one type of ad/sponsor I can never block or mute, it's just too short/sudden. It's a 5-10 second read. Muting the tv for a whole 3-minute commercial break doesn't bother me.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoAds have become integrated into everything. It's not new. Probably one of the most infamous examples, is why red and white are associated with Santa Claus. That's because they are Coca-Cola's corporate colors, and they heavily advertised and gave away a lot of swag, back at the beginning of last century. If you look at older depictions of Saint Nick, he's usually wearing some green. I get sick of ads designed to look like copy, and presented inline in stories. That's going to get a lot worse, as LLMs are probably excellent at customising marketing drivel to fit into legit content. Brand-building is important [to corporations]. Things like what words TV presenters and actors use can be manipulated to reinforce a corporate glossary. Whenever you see a couple of actors enjoying a beer in a TV show, you'll notice the bottle labels are usually turned away from the camera. If you can see the label, it was generally paid. I used to work for a famous camera company. I would often see actors using our cameras, but with the name blacked out (sometimes, you could see the electrical tape).
- everdrive 1y ago>But we don't seem to apply the same measure to ads. I actively avoid buying things if I keep bumping into their obtrusive ads.
- lotsofpulp 1y ago> In real life if a salesman is being inconsiderate, I'll go out of my way to avoid their sales and find someone else who is better mannered. I do. I don’t watch things with ad breaks.
- beAbU 1y ago> It's sad that such a thing needs regulation in the first place. Profit motivated business (i.e. almost all of them) have a fiduciary duty towards the owners or shareholders. They are legally bound to maximize profits at all costs. If they don't do this, the leadership will be found guilty of dereliction of duty and be sanctioned. Business aren't people, therefore human morality does not apply. Regulations are the only thing that keeps this behaviour in check. It's the nature of the beast unfortunately. > and yet that doesn't seem to cause a negative outcome for them It absolutely has a negative outcome for them, there is a post on the front-page of HN right now about how a California law is forcing Netflix and other streaming services to turn down the volume of their ad breaks.
- colechristensen 1y agoI think the solution is to recreate and reenforce United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. for the modern age, forcibly separating the production and display of video media. That means Netflix couldn't make any of it's own shows, you wouldn't have each media company with its own streaming service. Add on top of that standard fees for streaming royalties which were how do I say contract free syndication. As in you don't need to make a deal with a studio, any company can have anything in their streaming library and everybody pays the same fee (maybe with something like a 1 year lockout, but anything made available on one would be required to be available on all). Then you have a real market for streaming services and productions instead of all of these little monopolies. Consumers get to choose with their wallets instead of tying the art with the corporate policy.