Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by Nasrudith » Tue, May 28, 2019, 10:21 PM UTC

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 […

Given the vaugeness involved with advertising and attribuitation being something humans aren't too good at I wonder hypothetically how long it would take companies to realize that consumer advertisement effectiveness dropped to zero vs other economic causes.

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

#172

Post by jimktrains2 » Tue, May 28, 2019, 10:21 PM UTC

munk-a wrote: post #53

Gibbon1 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketing has a light side and a dark side. Light side: Closing the loop between what the customer wants, what their actual problems are, and what engineering and manufacturing can deliver. Darkside: Ladies you need to use our spray or else your hoo-haw will stink.

The light side is of so little value that I think we should just throw it out with the bathwater and kill this modern experiment in advertising. Our society is paying huge costs to support this industry in terms of wealth, novel innovations, productivity and sanity. It's terrible.

> The light side is of so little value that I think we should just throw it out with the bathwater and kill this modern experiment in advertising.

I don't think that's true at all. Where else would you learn about new services or products?

Here are some examples from a 2010 model railroader. https://photos.app.goo.gl/RvRzECgs7MaTo7tP8

Some, especially the Kato model Amtrak one, have some aspects of an aspirational ad, but I don't know if I'd condem them as such. They usually, as the Kato one has, information about the specific items that are now available and often some "ambiance" information that many hobbiests, especially people new to the hobby like to look at.

I don't mind ads like these as they're not designed to make you feel as though you need to purchase something to be better and they're not in a public space. They're they're to matter-of-factly says a service or product is available.

I could also show you the local pennysaver or Craigslist. All of those are also add, but they're not the "aspirational" kind. They're more matter-of-factly that someone is selling so (used) item, or provides some kind of service, or that there is a garage or estate sale at such-and-such address. How else would this information be made redily and easily available?

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

#173

Post by sesteel » Tue, May 28, 2019, 10:22 PM UTC

quickthrower2 wrote: post #149

sesteel wrote: post #66

I view advertising as a form of pollution. In many cases, it erodes the human experience. It is abusive to families with children creating strife where there was none. I spend a lot of time managing expectations and sharing philosophical ideas, like "less is more". I don't mind teaching my children, but I don't like feeling people are trying to take advantage of us all the time. I explain it to them as if it is a gam…

It's good advice, but I find it ironic. Keep your money. Stick it in an index fund. It'll get invested in Google, Facebook, Apple who make money from ... advertising their own or other people's products. To really be minimalist I think it's better (if less lucrative on average) to start your own business that takes a small chunk of business away from the giants, that you have ethical control over. It's getting harder…

It is only ironic on a macro level. And, I think you extrapolated my thought out too far; I wasn't suggesting to never spend money. My concern is teaching two children how to manage their own consumption and to not spend money frivolously. We aren't at the point of asking 7 year olds to start businesses.

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

#174

Post by hathawsh » Tue, May 28, 2019, 10:23 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #118

mc32 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We" had a chance to re-set this at the dawn of Internet Indexing and Search and discovery Optimization, but Overture (and then Google and later FB and TWTTR, at al) and "us" enabled and encouraged advertising to become the driving force of the internet. We could have had a different ad-free internet, but no one was willing to pay that bill.

We did reset this at the dawn of the Internet. Google's text ads were basically Type 1, and they almost completely replaced the earlier Punch-the-Monkey banner ads we had during the dot-com boom, largely because Google was so much more effective as a discovery platform that sites which advertised on it replaced sites that tried to do their own TV/banner ads. The problem is that Type 2 ads are more effective than Type…

I remember that. Google ads were actively helpful! I clicked them because they were cool.

Today, I run an ad blocker because most ads are manipulative again, I recognize I can be manipulated, and I have to do what I can to avoid it. I wonder if there is some way to configure uBlock Origin to allow informative ads while blocking manipulative ads.

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

#175

Post by nemo » Tue, May 28, 2019, 10:24 PM UTC

cm2012 wrote: post #129

xg15 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually, the "inventor" of public relations, Edward Bernays, illustrates my point really well. He claimed credit for getting women to smoke with his PR stunts. The data shows that the trend of women smoking started years before he did anything, and the trendline was completely unaffected when he did his stuff. He, at best, got people already smoking to switch to the brand of cigarettes he promoted.

I feel like the data might not be a slam dunk for your case at all. Bernays started his "Torches of Freedom" PR campaign in 1929. The rate of women smoking actually dropped dramatically soon after thanks to the Great Depression.

Once the Depression was over, the trend line does not appear to be unaffected, though the reasons it trended as it did aren't simple to attribute. Cigarette companies were already advertising to women before Bernays' PR campaign, but they increased their advertising afterwards as a response to it.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4843a2.htm#fig1

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

#176

Post by m463 » Tue, May 28, 2019, 10:28 PM UTC

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.

> Advertising fundamentally is trying to convince you that you need something.

I think this is how we have an increase in hoarding behavior.

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

#177

Post by kelnos » Tue, May 28, 2019, 10:32 PM UTC

munk-a wrote: post #53

Gibbon1 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketing has a light side and a dark side. Light side: Closing the loop between what the customer wants, what their actual problems are, and what engineering and manufacturing can deliver. Darkside: Ladies you need to use our spray or else your hoo-haw will stink.

The light side is of so little value that I think we should just throw it out with the bathwater and kill this modern experiment in advertising. Our society is paying huge costs to support this industry in terms of wealth, novel innovations, productivity and sanity. It's terrible.

I'd very much agree. I don't want people to preemptively try to solve my problems for me. If I have a problem that I've actively decided I want to solve, and have prioritized finding a solution, I'll seek out products to solve it. I don't care to randomly run across an ad for something that I could use, but haven't actively decided that I want to seek out and potentially purchase.

For this reason I block ads in every way that I can, no matter how "light-side" they might be.

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

#178

Post by buckminster » Tue, May 28, 2019, 10:32 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #50

jressey wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Prison provides food, water, clothing and shelter. We send people there to punish them.

> food, water, clothing and shelter

Add love to that list and it sounds like a good life.

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

#179

Post by mlinksva » Tue, May 28, 2019, 10:34 PM UTC

I don't see a link or reference to it, but I guess this is a slightly condensed version of https://andrewoswald.com/docs/AdvertisingMicheletal2019Easte...

Tax ads!

Added: actually it's in the reference list as:

> Michel C, M Sovinsky, E Proto, A J Oswald (forthcoming), "Advertising as a Major Source of Human Dissatisfaction: Cross-National Evidence on One Million Europeans", to be published in 2019 in a volume in honor of Richard Easterlin.

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

#180

Post by ACow_Adonis » Tue, May 28, 2019, 10:34 PM UTC

teawrecks wrote: post #85

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 think advertising is to marketing as space travel is to rocket science. An ideal situation for space travel is to be able to teleport anything anywhere, but that's not possible yet, so they build rockets to travel as fast as currently possible. Similarly, an ideal situation for advertising is to read each person's mind, determine exactly what products they are looking for but aren't yet aware of, and make them awar…

except the goal of marketing is not inherently to meet a person's needs.

At the macro level, it's maximising needs met, but at the micro level this is done by both initiating and implanting desires that otherwise aren't present or necessary, and by creating problems/pain points (which then, as a second order effect, create a need, which is met by the product).

In economic terms, advertisers aim to maximise locally measured utility, but they do this by externalising the costs of the dis-utility they deliberately create.

Like the proverbial glass salesman, garbage man, or mafia, they provide a theoretical good, but they've found business booms if they can generate their own demand by throwing rocks through windows, trashing the town, or partaking in their own crime to sell their protection services.

In our instance, the town is our own psychological and social state, and while we don't account for these externalities andnegatives, they will keep actively damaging us because its in their interest and locally optimal from their pint of view...