Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

voxeu.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 537 posts

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#21

Post by kazinator »

cm2012 wrote: post #3

Doubling of advertising expidenture (Which is a massive, sea change) would apparently make people 3% less happy. So basically it has a negligible impact on happiness even if this analysis is true. I highly doubt it is true though. It's a purely correlational study, that says from 1980-2011, advertising increased and people in general got 3% less happy. They say they accounted for GDP when doing their regression, but…

The spending on advertizing likely has diminishing returns. The marginal decrease in satisfaction that would come from doubling the spending is possibly smaller than the baseline decrease caused by the initial expenditure.

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#22

Post by jacquesm »

plg wrote: post #6

my kids only watch netflix and shows/movies we buy on iTunes so basically they see virtually no ads, SO unlike my experience growing up watching network TV where every 12 minutes there was a series of 5 or 6 30-second ads

And what do you think Netflix's ranking is if not advertising?

'movies we recommend based on other movies you've seen' and so on.

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#23

Post by dan-robertson »

bayouborne wrote: post #8

"The effect implies that a hypothetical doubling of advertising expenditure would result in a 3% drop in life satisfaction. That is approximately one half the absolute size of the marriage effect on life satisfaction, or approximately one quarter of the absolute size of the effect of being unemployed." Does marriage, on average, across cultures, have a proven detrimental effect on life satisfaction?

Higher, assuming that it came from this reference at the bottom of the article:

https://www.pnas.org/content/100/19/11176

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#24

Post by lordnacho »

jandrese wrote: post #4

Isn't this what you would expect? Advertising fundamentally is trying to convince you that you need something. If you're perfectly happy with your current situation then what else would you need? So the advertising has to convince you that you're not happy but that there is a product that you can buy that will increase your happiness. You're basically being negged by advertisers.

Well like it says there's two kinds.

One is "Hey, did you know this thing exists? Check it out! Here are all the tests it passed, realistic cost of ownership, and locations where it is in stock".

The other is "Look at this woman, isn't she fascinating? People like her will desire you more if you buy the thing she's lying on top of. Actual woman not included."

Unfortunately, people have discovered type 2 is effective for a lot of things. Not only that, there are no scruples at all with appealing to people in this kind of way. It's not lying in the normal sense, but it is manipulation, or an attempt at it. Current dogma seems to be that rational people can just take the type 1 info out of your type 2 advert and think with the appropriate organ.

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#26

Post by bayouborne »

djtriptych wrote: post #18
bayouborne wrote: post #8

"The effect implies that a hypothetical doubling of advertising expenditure would result in a 3% drop in life satisfaction. That is approximately one half the absolute size of the marriage effect on life satisfaction, or approximately one quarter of the absolute size of the effect of being unemployed." Does marriage, on average, across cultures, have a proven detrimental effect on life satisfaction?

I think they say "absolute size" to mean absolute value. e.g. 3% drop is half the absolute size of a 6% rise.

ah, thank you.

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#27

Post by theonlyklas »

bayouborne wrote: post #8

"The effect implies that a hypothetical doubling of advertising expenditure would result in a 3% drop in life satisfaction. That is approximately one half the absolute size of the marriage effect on life satisfaction, or approximately one quarter of the absolute size of the effect of being unemployed." Does marriage, on average, across cultures, have a proven detrimental effect on life satisfaction?

Examining 87 countries (N = 292,525) covering a period of 29 years, marriage will increase life satisfaction. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280308599_The_Life_...

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#28

Post by locknumber110 »

enlyth wrote: post #15

To me, it is worrying how much human effort we're investing into advertising as a whole. The top minds of our generations, backed by billions of dollars in funding, are working on increasingly manipulative ways to capture people's attention and use it to generate profit. We're constantly getting better at it; who knows what path this will lead us down. I suspect it might not be the one we had wished for.

As a wise philosopher once said regarding advertising, "Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little."

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#29

Post by oregontechninja »

I view any and all non-obiective advertising as literally evil. There is absolutely no good reason for advertising to exist it's current state.

Are there any nations or states which outlaw or heavily regulate advertising? I've heard some governments outlaw advertising to children.

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#30

Post by rwc »

lordnacho wrote: post #24
jandrese wrote: post #4

Isn't this what you would expect? Advertising fundamentally is trying to convince you that you need something. If you're perfectly happy with your current situation then what else would you need? So the advertising has to convince you that you're not happy but that there is a product that you can buy that will increase your happiness. You're basically being negged by advertisers.

Well like it says there's two kinds. One is "Hey, did you know this thing exists? Check it out! Here are all the tests it passed, realistic cost of ownership, and locations where it is in stock". The other is "Look at this woman, isn't she fascinating? People like her will desire you more if you buy the thing she's lying on top of. Actual woman not included." Unfortunately, people have discovered type 2 is effective…

But can you point to a time in human history where type 2 wasn't the predominant form of advertising? This is not some modern discovery or exploit.
Post reply on HN