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Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

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

#101

Post by JohnFen »

cm2012 wrote: post #93
JohnFen wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand. I'm not saying that I accept that the correlation is accurate. I'm just saying that if it is, the tradeoff to stop making 3% of people less happy is totally worthwhile. But of course, still in the hypothetical, it wouldn't be necessary for ads to disappear to accomplish this. All that would be necessary is for advertising to adhere to the ideals the ad industry itself says it holds: rather than manipula…

I'd take issue with that. Go to https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_t... and look up some random brands you've heard of. The vast majority of ads are on the level. The ones that aren't are when the product itself is a scam most of the time.

I don't do Facebook, and have no clue what FB ads look like. I'm talking about advertising generally, online and off. I very rarely see ads that are like that.

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

#103

Post by XCSme »

jressey wrote: post #32
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.

I would go further and state that our entire economy and society are based on the manufacturing of demand. There are so few things we actually need. Food, water, clothing, shelter. Everything else is a luxury you've been convinced to buy (or it was given to you by someone who was convinced). I'm not talking about ethics here, just straight facts.

Depends what you refer to when you say "need". Is internet a luxury? I want to video call my parents thousand of kilometers away (webcam). I want to do it without the connection being interrupted every second (good internet connection). I want to be able to distinguish my mother from my father (HD webcam) and hear them without buzzing sounds (good microphone). But wait! There's this thing called a "smartphone" that has good camera and microphone, and you don't have to be sitting in the dark corner where your PC is.

The problem with ads is that most of the times they promote a product for a need that either doesn't exist or does not apply to you, but still, after being spammed a lot you might give in and think you actually need that.

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

#105

Post by zacherates »

mrob wrote: post #82
zacherates wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Wirecutter ( https://thewirecutter.com/ ) is a site dedicated to this kind of advertising and it is extremely useful.

You say that, but the very first thing I see is "Father’s Day Gifts Your Dad Will Love". Not "Recommended Gifts for Father's Day", or something similarly objective, just straight up manipulation like all the other adverts.

That's fair, the gift guides don't seem to be particularly useful; however, I've found the buying guides to be really useful, to the extent that I have developed muscle memory for "best X wirecutter" whenever I need to buy a thing I don't have strong opinions about / don't want to do a bunch of research for.

For instance "The Best Steak Knife Set" [1], lays out a couple of options and why you might pick them as well as their criteria and test methodology so you can figure out why you might want to pick something else.

[1] https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-steak-knife-set/

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

#106

Post by cm2012 »

bribroder wrote: post #96
cm2012 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest driver of people wanting more is peer actions or non ad entertainment (people with fancy things in movies).

How did you think those fancy things got into the movies? Why were those peers seen performing those actions?

To tell a story. The specific brands paid to be there, but the idea of the glamorous item is always there. This is consistent with extensive literature showing marketing can switch brand preference but is very bad at getting people to change their mind about product categories as a whole (like smoking or drinking) they've already heard of.

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

#107

Post by jandrese »

conanbatt wrote: post #100
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.

Humans enjoy things more based on their subjective interpretation of it. Advertising makes you enjoy things more.

That's a bold claim. Can you elaborate on it some more? I'm not sure how the advertising is helping our interpretation in this case.

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

#108

Post by worble »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #86
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.

Here's the reason they keep doing-- It works. Stop rewarding it and they'll stop. I actually think a large number of societal issues today are stemming from people's inability to think rationally for themselves. Things like fake news, being vulnerable to advertising, taking bad deals like minimum wage etc. If someone were able to think rationally and into the future to figure out, "4 years from now if I choose this […

You realise the reason why it's so effective is that it's psychological manipulation right? Telling people to just "stop rewarding" it is almost the same as telling abused partners to "just leave the relationship"; it's not that simple, and trying to reduce it as such is at best unhelpful, and at worst actively harmful.

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

#109

Post by xg15 »

cm2012 wrote: post #106
bribroder wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you think those fancy things got into the movies? Why were those peers seen performing those actions?

To tell a story. The specific brands paid to be there, but the idea of the glamorous item is always there. This is consistent with extensive literature showing marketing can switch brand preference but is very bad at getting people to change their mind about product categories as a whole (like smoking or drinking) they've already heard of.

Then don't talk about advertising but talk about the big brother, public relations - the inventor of which played an important role in positioning smoking as a pleasant and desirable activity.

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

#110

Post by funkymike »

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #46
jacquesm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

assuming he's like me (ad blockers, limited tv, etc), I have a Netflix account, and I don't even honestly know what 'Netflix ranking' is. Assumimg it is something like Netflix's recommendation service, well, this might come back to an difference in philosophy: I don't need/want to be recommended shows to watch, and I don't use recommender/suggestions. One does not have a need/desire to consume media as an abstract co…

How do you decide what to watch?

How do you become aware of new shows you would be interested in?

For me this is one of the benefits of Netflix's recommendation service. While I feel like the quality of the recommendations has gone down over the years, it still has value. I tend to watch 1-2 shows at a time until I have watched the entirely of them. When I finish one I want to find another to watch, but don't always know what I want to watch next. So for me "I want to watch something but i don't know what" is the exact problem I have on a regular basis.

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