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Insane state of today's advertising part 3

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Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#311

Post by Jedd »

Simon_says wrote: post #202
Jedd wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Friends or colleagues who I know aren't materially invested but still have strong opinions are extremely compelling. My usual line of questioning when I have the luxury is to ask what features of $thing they don't like - usually more insightful than pros.

That's interesting. I do something similar with online reviews on Trip Advisor and Amazon: I filter to look at only 1-3 star reviews (or sometimes only 2 and 3 star reviews if there are enough). In my experience, positive reviews are all the same, but negative reviews will give really good specifics. Then you judge just the relative proportion of reviews that are positive vs. negative.

I'm extra wary of TripAdvisor, Amazon, etc -- as I don't know the people making the reviews, and I tend to assume a fair amount of astroturfing. I'm not convinced that they haven't worked out how to game the reviews such that even the lower-rated reviews aren't positives in disguise, in a similar way to those interview questions along the lines of 'What's your biggest weakness?' -- "I am a perfectionist // I work too hard // I care too much // I need to make every project a success", etc.

Typically anyone that bothers to select a thing for purchase will examine all the features and attributes that they consider important, but often overlook the negated aspects that only come from familiarity with the product.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#312

Post by briandear »

robryan wrote: post #190
eveningcoffee wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Preroll ads are valuable because people are mostly paying attention. eg you went to youtube to watch X, and they show you 15 seconds of swiffer beforehand. Personal anecdote time. Preroll ads are the main force for me behind installing the adblocker. I just can not stand something that manipulates my flow. I call it televication of the Internet. It is unbearable. If for some reason I am not able to block them then…

Twitch gets me which is unfortunate because they are generally providing a good service. They hit you with one of these ads pretty much every time you change channels, no matter how frequently.

In flight entertainment on United does the same thing. I practically have the barracuda networks pre-roll memorized by now. But if it helps United provide more content without raising prices, then I am ok enduring a 30 second ad. Content costs money — either the consumer pays directly or an advertiser pays. But people don’t make movies for free — at least not if they want to continue making movies.

Also, ads in YouTube — the content creator enables that so they can get paid.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#313

Post by vanderZwan »

mozumder wrote: post #270
vanderZwan wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From my perspective, I've found various things via advertising that I would have never come across by other means. If you want to make a fair comparison, that should be compared to all the things you didn't find because useless ads took up your time and mental space. Also, whether or not you found something through an ad is not the point; one isn't not going to convince a smoker to quit smoking by trying to convinc…

> If you want to make a fair comparison, that should be compared to all the things you didn't find because useless ads took up your time and mental space. Why would you save mental space for non-adverised products? Are you supposed to be a product researcher? Is that your job? Is time not valuable for you? Because efficient people buy the first thing they recall, for crap that doesn't matter. > I've been TV- and ad-f…

> Why would you save mental space for non-adverised products? Are you supposed to be a product researcher? Is that your job? Is time not valuable for you? Because efficient people buy the first thing they recall, for crap that doesn't matter.

So many implicit assumptions and premises I hardly know where to begin...

You're equating "spends a big budget on branding" with "quality", which is a ridiculous fallacy.

Yes, my time is valuable. So buying something that is sub-par for the job is a terrible investment of time and money. The idea that I need an advertisement to help decide which product to buy when I can compare products in the store (both physically or on-line) is also ridiculous.

Plus, the most efficient thing is to not buy crap that doesn't matter in the first place. And I'm a lot better at deciding what matters to me since invasive ads are out of my life.

> How many newspapers and magazines have you bought that contained ads? Because your complaint is about user-experience, not advertising.

First: no it's not. Ads are not equal across media. The amount of manipulation possible through moving pictures and sound is vastly worse than it is through paper advertisement. And for the record: almost none, I barely read the news, and when I do it's on-line, and the few magazines I read are imported so they target people from another country.

> And yes, the anti-advertising smugness is the worst. Everybody advertises, always have, always will. I mean, you had Roman gladiators in ancient times that were sponsored by brands.

This is starting to sound like That One Guy At The Party who gets uncomfortable because one other guest is a vegetarian, and then tries to prove the vegetarian friend is a hypocrite.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#314

Post by dkersten »

clarry wrote: post #137
teolandon wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as I am able to block any element I want using my browser (and god help us if we reach a state where we can't), I won't have to look at any ad for more than 2 seconds. Any website that has too many ads to disable manually, or is in some way embedded with critical parts of the website is simply not worth my time.

> As long as I am able to block any element I want using my browser (and god help us if we reach a state where we can't) Render content & ads on a single canvas?

I believe that falls under

> Any website that has too many ads to disable manually, or is in some way embedded with critical parts of the website is simply not worth my time.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#315

Post by DanBC »

ionised wrote: post #280
recursive wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone thinks advertising doesn't work on them. And everyone is wrong.

Some clearly doesn't work as intended though. If I see an advert for Coca Cola, it doesn't make me want a Coke. I hate Coke and I understand that it is not at all good for me. No amount of advertising is going to make me buy one. Simply being aware of the brand in this case seems pointless, because I'm doing nothing with it. In other cases advertisements will merely lead me to avoid that brand or company out of spite…

It's a shame you got downvoted because you're making a reasonable point.

I loathe Pepsi Max ads. I like Coke Zero add. But I never buy Coke, I only ever buy Pepsi Max.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#317

Post by dkersten »

aeleos wrote: post #108
JeremyHerrman wrote: post #99

I didn't see any ad blocker recommendations in the comments, so I searched and came across a list on Tom's Hardware of the best ad blockers of 2017. The funny part is that Tom's Hardware was FILLED with these exact kind of ads from algovid and adaptv. Even worse, the list is in a carousel / slideshow format so you have to keep clicking if you didn't GTFO like I did.

If you are still looking for an ad blocker, I have had great experiences with ublock origin.

I'm looking for something to block YouTube adverts on iOS (not in the browser, but a standalone app). I hear that ProTube is good, but apparently its only available in the US app store and I don't feel like making a US AppleID right now... Does anybody have any recommendations?

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#318

Post by fauigerzigerk »

oiboabfljasbfo wrote: post #186
recursive wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone thinks advertising doesn't work on them. And everyone is wrong.

My claim is that it does work. Astoundingly well. My further claim is that it is not in the public interest.

I think people will always try to influence others, and I don't think advertising is the worst form of doing it. If you say that it's not in the public interest you'd have to compare it to alternatives that are.

That said, I think there should be restrictions put on the methods that advertisers are allowed to use. What currently happens in online advertising hurts everybody, including those who rely on ad funded business models.

Another issue is aonymity. In a world without advertising, you'd have to pay for everything directly. Making anonymous payments is extremely difficult and easily outlawed entirely.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#319

Post by petra »

cft wrote: post #156
oasfboasbfos wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only good ad is a dead one. With very few exceptions, especially in the consumer space, you won't need advertising if you actually need something. You'll search it out or your friends will tell you what to buy. Advertising serves as a way for the capitalist class to exert veto power over other aspects of society by yanking funding at opportune moments (see the current Google snafu or Bill O'Reilly's departure fro…

An anecdote from 2010: my company had racks of Rackable Systems servers. Every month a server went dead- power supply, board or some such. Rackable Systems were unreliable. Then on Slashdot I saw a square ad for IBM System X servers (unfortunately they have been sold to Lenovo a couple of years ago). That somehow made me do research- although I was aware of IBM System X before. Between 2010 and 1013 we bought perhaps…

Electronic engineers face a similar problem, everyday:finding the optimal components to build stuff with. And at least in the case of standard components, they do that via parametric search tools(poring over many details), combined with vendors exposing a lot of details about products. And it works very well.

I wish we had that in more fields. Would provide huge value, but it's a hard problem. But i suppose if with the right incentives(banning advertising ?), we could do it.

The other source of info for EE's is education and PR, some of it probably pretty unbiased(at distributors sites), due to incentives.

As for ads ? they exist, but they seem to play a relatively small role, and probably nothing major will change if they stopped existing.

Re: Insane state of today's advertising part 3

#320

Post by Kiro »

oasfboasbfos wrote: post #148
jdangu wrote: post #76

Awesome to see that subject #1 on HN. At my startup Confiant [1], we block bad ads in stream on behalf of publishers. Cedato aka Algovid aka TLVMedia is one of our prime targets, we block millions of their ad impressions daily. They are essentially buying cheap display ad placements to resell them as fake video preroll ad placements. They sell on video exchanges like AOL's AdapTV and others. To maximize their yield,…

The only good ad is a dead one. With very few exceptions, especially in the consumer space, you won't need advertising if you actually need something. You'll search it out or your friends will tell you what to buy. Advertising serves as a way for the capitalist class to exert veto power over other aspects of society by yanking funding at opportune moments (see the current Google snafu or Bill O'Reilly's departure fro…

> You'll search it out or your friends will tell you what to buy.

That's a very simplified description of consumption. You make it sound like we only buy stuff we're in immediate need of and therefore actively search for.

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