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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

#291

Post by cm2012 »

anoncake wrote: post #273
cm2012 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay. So say you make an app that helps plumbers do their job well. If every plumber used it, plumber productivity would go up 50%, making life easier for all. It cost you years of your time and lots of money to make this great app, and you need a lot of plumbers to buy it to afford to continue working on it. There's a big plumber app on the market already, but yours is way better. How do you get plumbers to hear abo…

> Uninterested. Plumber magazines or sites? Very low traffic - no way to scale. That means plumbers don't care about plumbing news, including your app. You have no right to disrespect their choice by spamming them anyway. In a world without ads, not subscribing to plumbing news would be a weird choice anyway. Refusing to learn about new ways to increase productivity – like your app – means giving your competition an…

Not subscribing to plumbing magaxines just means the signal to noise ratio in them is bad.

For the value part: What if plumbers use Facebook (which they do) and when they see your FB ad, they buy your product. Wouldnt that indicate they do care about your app?

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

#292

Post by asdff »

deogeo wrote: post #45
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…

> 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.

I bet you do but aren't even realizing it. Every tech product review is a type one ad. WiRED, tech crunch, etc.

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

#293

Post by undershirt »

crispinb wrote: post #274
undershirt wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would drink with you

That's a nice thing to say, thank you. I'm off to an Extinction Rebellion meet up this afternoon, where this kind of perspective is less alien than in the tech sector. They've had to book a bigger venue than originally planned because of a deluge of local interest. I have no great hopes, but there are stirrings.

I was wondering when collapse-awareness would reach the tech community. Glad to hear about extinction rebellion. Email me: shaunewilliams@gmail.com

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

#294

Post by asdff »

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…

I don't know what you even do with that information. Are you supposed to ask your doctor to put you on medication? "Uhh, sir you don't even have that disease."

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

#295

Post by geofft »

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 […

This is the "capitalism doesn't work because of human nature" argument (which I agree with). It is impossible to train people to pursue profit and to value consumption without these horrendous side effects. Meanwhile, it is quite clearly possible to train people to do worthwhile things with their lives without requiring them to chase a profit motive. (Examples include the free software movement, academic research, etc.)

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

#296

Post by asdff »

55555 wrote: post #277
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.

Stuff like this is in a sense worse. Everyone knows ads are ads. But these are 'unbiased' reviews which are totally biased, requiring them to actually distort objective information where required.

If the product is big enough I'll skim reddit. Nothing like hearing the hard facts from a pissed off anonymous hivemind that isn't going to let anyone off the hook. Even the apple subreddit has been crucifying the company as they keep falling down the stairs with every keyboard half-fix they silently release (I think we are at 'gen 4' now).

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

#297

Post by cm2012 »

cwkoss wrote: post #270
cm2012 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay. So say you make an app that helps plumbers do their job well. If every plumber used it, plumber productivity would go up 50%, making life easier for all. It cost you years of your time and lots of money to make this great app, and you need a lot of plumbers to buy it to afford to continue working on it. There's a big plumber app on the market already, but yours is way better. How do you get plumbers to hear abo…

This is fallacious thinking. If you had an app that would increase plumber productivity by 50%, plumbers would be lining up to get into the Beta. Find any plumbing supplier or trade group, and if the effects are actually that good, they'll tell their members at no-charge because that knowledge would be a service to them. Plumbers would be cold-calling other plumbers trying to get a beta invite. All you need is a marg…

This is just not true. Example: I was just hired to scale marketing for a particular app.

This app currently has over 100 real reviews online, averaging 4.9 stars out of 5. Retention is nuts - 98% of people who ever started using the product (which has a monthly fee) are still using it. The company is three years old.

Perfect to take off, right? But few industries are actually viral. We just doubled the number of new customers per month using FB ads in the first two months of scaling it out, and we'll scale much further over the next 3.

Anyone who works in start-up growth will tell you the same things I am.

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

#298

Post by jodrellblank »

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 […

I actually think a large number of societal issues today are stemming from people's inability to think rationally for themselves.

Is this any different from the free market arguments about how regulation is bad, and the customer must inform themselves about literally everything and every consequence, with convenient disregard for the fact that it's impossible for a person to learn everything, and that it turns into a way to assign blame rather than to make the world a better place to live?

Why should "you must think for yourself" become a justification for you to be allowed to show advertising to me continually?

taking bad deals like minimum wage etc.

The only reason there are minimum wages, is because people fought for them, and refused to take even worse deals.

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

#299

Post by asdff »

JohnFen wrote: post #56
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…

> 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'm pretty sure that I haven't seen that sort of ad since the late '80s.

Ever been to the 'gear' section of WiRED?

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

#300

Post by air7 »

crispinb wrote: post #185
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 view advertising as a form of pollution Quite. If (which is now for obvious reasons somewhat unlikely) our global civilisation manque struggles on for another century, it will look back on the overconsumption propaganda industry very much like we now see slavery. Ogilvy, Saatchi et al are the Goebbels' of our age.

> Ogilvy, Saatchi et al are the Goebbels' of our age.

Sorry, but that is waaay over the top. It makes you sound a bit nutty. A "Truther" of sorts, that dangerously believes too profoundly in his own ideology.

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