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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

#211

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #166
lordnacho wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not a copywriter in the sense of "person who writes adverts," but I am someone who writes copy for website content. One of the problems is that it isn't even good communication to say (for example) "This device has a 7 inch screen." That's mostly useless information for most people. It's much more genuinely helpful to tell people something like "You can easily read our large screen even in bright sunlight." Most…

I don't see why it's hard to see the line. Real benefits are real. If Gadget X is easy to read and light, it's easy to read and light.

Imaginary benefits are imaginary. If you buy Gadget X you will not instantly become attractive to the opposite sex, nor will you be the envy of your friends.

The line is where you shift the emphasis from real benefits to imaginary social, emotional psychological, and sexual - i.e. lifestyle - boosts that the product can't possibly provide.

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

#212

Post by Draiken »

eswat wrote: post #47
seasoup wrote: post #20

I think they are missing the biggest issue with advertising, which is it incentivizes businesses to create things for the sole purpose of drawing their attention to the advertising. Truth is less important than shock value. Utility less important than appearance of utility. Extremist rhetoric gathers more eyeballs than moderate views. Advertising's biggest negative effects are in how it manipulates people into manipu…

It’s a colossal move but we have to move the marketplace away from the current growth capitalism towards one of real utility.

Isn't that impossible? I mean, capitalism is literally profits above everything else. Since evil marketing == profits, it will never change. It will only get worse.

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

#213

Post by JohnFen »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #166
lordnacho wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not a copywriter in the sense of "person who writes adverts," but I am someone who writes copy for website content. One of the problems is that it isn't even good communication to say (for example) "This device has a 7 inch screen." That's mostly useless information for most people. It's much more genuinely helpful to tell people something like "You can easily read our large screen even in bright sunlight." Most…

> It's much more genuinely helpful to tell people something like "You can easily read our large screen even in bright sunlight."

I don't know about that. Years of being exposed to advertising has taught me that squishy claims like that are almost certainly misleading.

It's harder to skirt truth in advertising laws when you're stating objective facts, but it's trivial when making squishy "experience" claims.

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

#214

Post by JohnFen »

howard941 wrote: post #122
deogeo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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". I almost never see ads of type one - in fact, even finding that information is usually made accidentally or deliberately difficult.

Your post had me thinking the consumer pharmaceutical ads for prescription medicines would fit but then no, they flunk all three of the elements you called out. The marketing just weirds me out -- I'm supposed to select chemotherapeutic agents peddled from a TV ad? One of a dozen patent autoimmune remedies? Prescription medicine ads deserve their own abusive category and are particularly abusive in that their costs a…

There is no reasonable argument that consumer ads for prescription medications should be allowed, and there are tons of reasonable arguments (including public health arguments) for why they should not be.

That they're allowed in the US at all is demonstration of caustic effects of high-dollar lobbying.

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

#215

Post by ellius »

maxaf wrote: post #200
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…

I spend no time managing expectations because my child isn’t exposed to advertising. There is no TV or social media in our household, and no ads thanks to multiple overlapping ad blocking solutions. There’s advertising outside, but it’s easy to ignore, and usually contains messages relating to things my daughter has no baseline for. For example, she doesn’t care about some billboard advertising a TV show because... y…

I tried to think of a counterargument to this and drew an almost total blank. There have been some great works of art over say the last 20 years or so—"Breaking Bad," "The Sopranos," and the like—but it's almost completely trash. I can't name more than a half-dozen things I'd have missed if I had thrown out my television and deleted Facebook etc.

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

#216

Post by inetknght »

bediger4000 wrote: post #144
oregontechninja wrote: post #29

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.

I could not agree more. I have gone out of my way to teach my children that advertising is lies. Literally. That's what I told them, and demonstrated to them. I also use uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, and NoScript in browsers I control, plus my own DNS-based advertising domain blocklist.

If only lies were illegal

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

#217

Post by cm2012 »

cwkoss wrote: post #194
cm2012 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, I don't think the correlation holds in the first place. But if it did, there absolutely is a trade-off. It's more or less impossible to grow any endeavor beyond local scale without ads, unless you're lucky enough to be an industry with a strong viral or press component. Take a look at the S-1s of most companies that go public. 9/10 of the companies have been able to grow because of ads.

Only companies with inferior products need to advertise: great products are spread quickly at zero cost in the age of social media. Further, a proportion of the sale price funded the advertisement. Any product that has been advertised is necessarily overpriced.

Sentence 1 is untrue. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20034730 for an example.

Sentence 3 is also untrue. No advertising means people hear about much fewer brands, which means reduced competition, which means higher prices. This more or less balances out the cost of ads for the consumer.

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

#218

Post by sesteel »

maxaf wrote: post #200
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…

I spend no time managing expectations because my child isn’t exposed to advertising. There is no TV or social media in our household, and no ads thanks to multiple overlapping ad blocking solutions. There’s advertising outside, but it’s easy to ignore, and usually contains messages relating to things my daughter has no baseline for. For example, she doesn’t care about some billboard advertising a TV show because... y…

This brings up an interesting topic for discussion. I think there are several modes of parenting: hands off, protective, preparatory, etc. I think most parents try to balance these. I've taken the view that for most situations I want to prepare my children for the world they will face given what I know today, be hands off to see how they react, and only protect them as a last resort. While, some kids simply aren't ready to handle the problems they face on a daily basis, mine seem to understand more than you'd think they would. I could see how removing these stimuli from the beginning might be a good idea when you know it is going to be a problem or you want to create a peaceful environment, but I'd really prefer them to make that choice, not I.

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

#219

Post by JohnFen »

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…

> We did reset this at the dawn of the Internet. Google's text ads were basically Type 1

I remember those. Those ads were actually useful and welcome.

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

#220

Post by shrimp_emoji »

maxaf wrote: post #200
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…

I spend no time managing expectations because my child isn’t exposed to advertising. There is no TV or social media in our household, and no ads thanks to multiple overlapping ad blocking solutions. There’s advertising outside, but it’s easy to ignore, and usually contains messages relating to things my daughter has no baseline for. For example, she doesn’t care about some billboard advertising a TV show because... y…

Compared to when, the '90s to '00s?

At least rap's woke now. Back then, it encouraged criminal behavior and discrimination[0]. D:

That said, I think I turned out okay.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIeSGUK-Lyo&feature=youtu.be...

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