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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

#491

Post by chc »

JohnFen wrote: post #482
chc wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batching small payments is not the hard part of creating a payment system that can support the entire Web. Harder parts include problems like UX (e.g. balancing the need to make a system people will want to use against the danger of users unknowingly running up a huge bill), getting buy-in from websites (why should they use your service in particular?), and just convincing people to sign up for yet another godforsake…

Yes, I understand. I just find it odd that nobody has done it yet, particularly as the non-web infrastructure and business logic already exists.

Various services like that have come about (for example, LaterPay). They just didn't catch on because, again, micropayments are not the hard part.

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

#492

Post by anoncake »

cm2012 wrote: post #466
anoncake wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If plumbers aren't satisfied with the signal to noise ratio of magazines they don't want to see ads either.

They still use FB even though they see ads there. And then convert when they see the Plumbing ad.

So? Maybe some ends justify the means. Selling an app isn't such an end.

Is being able to sell your stuff all you care about? Because that's the impression I'm getting. I'd summarize our discussion like this (exaggerating for effect):

> Ads damage democracy, make everyone unhappy, they're a huge drain on our economy and can be replaced by better methods of distributing information.

> But I get to sell a plumbing app.

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

#493

Post by anoncake »

return1 wrote: post #284
anoncake wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happiness is the one thing we should be optimizing for. 3% is not negligible if there is no trade-off.

> Happiness is the one thing we should be optimizing for here s some more spurious correlations. Countries with very high happiness have some of the highest suicide rates. happiness might be dangerous to the survival of the species. We should optimize against it https://medium.com/@dtg319/happier-countries-are-more-suicid...

I don't think you can debunk a scientific paper written by multiple professors with a blog post on Medium.

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

#494

Post by r00fus »

foldingmoney wrote: post #372
r00fus wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost correct. Governments have a strong say in what is incentivized and what is not through taxation and monetary policy. The people running government are (in most places) elected by the people but that is affected by political manipulation, gerrymandering and politicians often represent the moneyed interests that got them into power.

Okay, explain to me how the government is incentivising 'advertising, soda, highly processed food, credit cards, car dealerships, (most) sales people, etc.' through taxation and monetary policy.

How about the chicken tax [1]? Or how any truck is allowed to bypass CAFE standards for emissions [2]? Or the fact that if a truck or SUV is used for "business" it can be written off completely over time as opposed to a limited amount [3]?

That's off the top of my head. Taxation is control. And the wealthy & powerful have undue influence over who chooses what gets taxed - using the above methods I referenced.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

[2] https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tips/small-business-taxes/bu...

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/cafe-lo...

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

#495

Post by flycaliguy »

otabdeveloper1 wrote: post #412
deepakkarki wrote: post #346

Folks in this thread may find this interesting, a 4 part documentary on Edward Bernays and the history of advertising and PR as we know it today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04 From the video description - "The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's idea…

Advertising hasn't been about 'persuasion' or psychology for a long, long time. Advertising today is mechanical applications of the central limit theorem / law of large numbers to sociological problems.

Can somebody point me to further reading on this subject please? Specifically in advertising.

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

#496

Post by mikelyons »

kaybe wrote: post #127
perfunctory wrote: post #33

What can I say "Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won…

I'd say that's not true any more. We do have a war to fight, the war against destruction of our planet by humanity. (Hoping our politicians would fix it has turned out to be ineffective so far.) If we could have a war against drugs or terror we can also have a war against climate change, soil degradation, desertification, insect decline and biodiversity loss.

What nobody is willing to admit or even consider is that it is a spiritual war. Progress on this front cannot be made without the collective consciousness of humanity moving toward higher/greater awareness.

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

#497

Post by return1 »

anoncake wrote: post #493
return1 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Happiness is the one thing we should be optimizing for here s some more spurious correlations. Countries with very high happiness have some of the highest suicide rates. happiness might be dangerous to the survival of the species. We should optimize against it https://medium.com/@dtg319/happier-countries-are-more-suicid...

I don't think you can debunk a scientific paper written by multiple professors with a blog post on Medium.

Why yes, multiple other professors have found it.

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/happiest-places-po...

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

#498

Post by baddox »

grenoire wrote: post #436
baddox wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the advertising has to convince you that you're not happy That claim doesn't follow. Some people actually are unhappy, or would actually be happier if they discovered and purchased certain products. I'm not claiming that advertising is or isn't a net positive, but this part of your argument doesn't hold up. It's kind of like saying "dating, or asking someone on a date, is fundamentally trying to convince someone…

If someone is perfectly happy, then they cannot be happier with someone else. At the hyperbole, your argument doesn't hold either.

Yes, my point was that both claims are logically equivalent, to point out that they are both fairly poor arguments.

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

#499

Post by dwaltrip »

jasode wrote: post #490
dwaltrip wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are called classified ads if they are placed in the newspaper, as the primary purpose of the newspaper is to deliver the news, not sell things. They wouldn't be considered ads if it was a dedicated medium intended primarily to facilitate the exchange of used goods (or whatever product). This is what I was referring to. But even still, classified ads are an interesting case. They feel closer to a catalog than you…

>They wouldn't be considered ads if it was a dedicated medium intended primarily to facilitate the exchange of used goods (or whatever product). This is what I was referring to. Then I admit I don't follow what your reply[0] was about to jimktrains2 comment "I've bought from ads on Craigslist." With my straight reading of your subsequent replies, it seems like your suggestion of "a dedicated medium intended primarily…

I thought Craigslist had ads in addition to user-submitted postings, which is I wrote my comment the way I did.

Apparently Craigslist doesn't actually have "ads" in the usual sense: https://www.quora.com/How-does-Craigslist-make-money-if-it-d...

It seems the difficulty here is identifying what is considered an advertisement, beyond the obvious display ads which are not intrinsically a part of the content that they are embedded in. But fortunately display ads (and their brethren) are the most problematic, so I think we would get significant mileage just focusing on that.

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

#500

Post by a123b456c »

analog31 wrote: post #480
dalore wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a/b tests only work for outcome based advertising. A lot (if not more) of the old world advertising isn't outcome based. It's more about make consumers hear your brand over and over and be associated with things that you think of them automatically.

The descriptions I've read about a/b testing make it sound a lot like null hypothesis significance testing, which has a well earned reputation in the social sciences. And you have to buy the things that you're testing, either from a vendor, or by employing people who assemble the stuff.

Advertising signals are normally too weak to be detected by standard A/B tests. Additionally, most traditional advertisers do not run A/B tests. Their agencies especially do not run such tests. Source: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=lewi...
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