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Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

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Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#191

Post by JohnFen »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #63

Like cancer, I think it's possible to split ads into two categories: Benign and malignant. Benign ads are like ads for toothpaste, Febreeze, or airlines. Malignant ads are, to give but two examples, for things like gambling and pharmaceuticals. The pharmaceutical business, in particular, was much more widely trusted and had far higher public favorability ratings in the old days when their advertising to the public wa…

I disagree. I think your examples of "benign" ads are as malignant as the others.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#192

Post by somenameforme »

keiferski wrote: post #175
somenameforme wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at literally any poll on the topic - people hate ads universally, with advertisers not far behind. And ad blocker usage has skyrocketed. It's now up to ~30% of all internet users [1] with younger people starting to approach a majority. And it should go without saying that the only reason that's not near 100% of users is because most people don't know they exist and/or don't feel comfortable installing one. [1] -…

This link claims that 39% of people over the age of 56 use an ad blocker. Sorry, but color me skeptical. I could but wrong, but I am highly skeptical of that statistic. This report also doesn't seem to clarify what is meant by "ad blocker," specifically, which makes the whole thing pretty suspect. Looking into the sources they provide, at least one of them doesn't mention ad blockers at all, even though the related i…

Have you noticed the growing number of sites trying to be increasingly aggressive towards ad-blockers? They're not jumping through these increasingly sophisticated (and expensive!) technical hoops to try to squeeze a few more ad views out of a "tiny, tiny percentage".

The Reg gives 52% of all Americans [1], b2.ai (who sells anti ad block services) gives 45% in North America [2], and so on. Most sources seem to fall in a 30%-50% range, with all sources agreeing that uptake on adblockers has rapidly and dramatically increased. People hate ads.

[1] - https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/27/america_ad_blocker/

[2] - https://www.b2.ai/ad-blocker-statistics-2024/

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#193

Post by someothherguyy »

somenameforme wrote: post #179
someothherguyy wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most common reason middle class+ people say they aren't having children is because they don't have enough money, but it's simply untrue. Source? https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/07/25/the-exp... This seems to say because they "don't want to"

Your own source would be a good example. That study is 'p-hacked' to create a headline. They inexplicably limit the group they're talking about to those who say that they are unlikely to ever have children, which is a subset of the people who are not having children. It looks like they had to cull off about 60% of their sample. So a more accurate headline would be "people who don't plan to have kids say they don't wa…

> Your own source would be a good example

You say this then go on to shit on it and then only agree with parts that support your argument?

> they are unlikely to ever have children

This reports the same thing:

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/19/growing-s...

> That study is 'p-hacked'

Not typically how p-hacking is used?

> Having the age range be 18-49 is illogical

It looks like they selected the buckets on the criteria of being adults and physically able to have children.

> 18-49 is not reasonable for fertility issues

I guess? It probably made the survey easier to conduct though.

> Even with their heavily biased sample

Why is their sample biased? It was a survey of that population.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#194

Post by keiferski »

somenameforme wrote: post #192
keiferski wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This link claims that 39% of people over the age of 56 use an ad blocker. Sorry, but color me skeptical. I could but wrong, but I am highly skeptical of that statistic. This report also doesn't seem to clarify what is meant by "ad blocker," specifically, which makes the whole thing pretty suspect. Looking into the sources they provide, at least one of them doesn't mention ad blockers at all, even though the related i…

Have you noticed the growing number of sites trying to be increasingly aggressive towards ad-blockers? They're not jumping through these increasingly sophisticated (and expensive!) technical hoops to try to squeeze a few more ad views out of a "tiny, tiny percentage". The Reg gives 52% of all Americans [1], b2.ai (who sells anti ad block services) gives 45% in North America [2], and so on. Most sources seem to fall i…

1. The study is claiming 50% of all Americans based on a sample size of 2,000.

According to a survey of 2,000 Americans conducted by research firm Censuswide, on behalf of Ghostery, a maker of software to block ads and online tracking, 52 percent of Americans now use an ad blocker, up from 34 percent according to 2022 Statista data.

2. Both of them, and indeed all of these studies seem to be funded by ad blocking companies. That alone makes them suspect.

I can buy the idea that the advertising industry is under pressure from built-in restrictions pushed by Apple, et al. But the idea that 52% of the American population even knows what an ad blocker is, much less has one installed, is completely absurd.

From a quick search, that percentage is comparable to the number of people that: own an iPhone, drink coffee everyday, or own a pet.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#195

Post by disambiguation »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #63

Like cancer, I think it's possible to split ads into two categories: Benign and malignant. Benign ads are like ads for toothpaste, Febreeze, or airlines. Malignant ads are, to give but two examples, for things like gambling and pharmaceuticals. The pharmaceutical business, in particular, was much more widely trusted and had far higher public favorability ratings in the old days when their advertising to the public wa…

Did I just read a febreeze ad?

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#196

Post by pavel_lishin »

ngriffiths wrote: post #188
danaris wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so it must be worth it. ...To someone . That doesn't mean it's worth it to society . No one actually likes muggings, and they still exist everywhere, but that doesn't mean that our society would be worse off without muggings. No one actually likes the flu, and it still exists everywhere, but that doesn't mean that our society would be worse off without the flu. The idea that "it's still around/common, therefore it…

I don't see it as subscribing to free-market ideology - more like "every bad thing has a certain prevalence, and that prevalence is a policy choice." The flu exists because we don't aggressively isolate/contact trace people who get the flu, but it isn't that prevalent and results in few deaths because of how much we invest in vaccination, hygiene, and medical care. The muggings continue because we don't spend the ins…

> The muggings continue because we don't spend the insane amounts on law enforcement and surveillance that would really be required to eradicate them.

Or a society where people's drug addictions are treated as a medical problem, and poverty is fought with the same fervor that we fight "terrorism" and "drugs".

> Also, these examples are different in another way - few people get mugged or get the flu, but literally everyone consumes ads daily. I think a lot of people dislike ads but I'm not sure I agree that there is a strong desire to dramatically reduce or change them - people seem happy to complain but pretty hesitant to pay actual money to reduce them.

People consume ads like I consume mosquitos in the summer.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#197

Post by DamnInteresting »

vdnkh wrote: post #190
acc_297 wrote: post #67

The below section resonates: lately YouTube has figured out I am in my mid-twenties and considering for the first time how best to save money for a secure/stable future. The number of ADs I see now not so subtly implying that I can expect to “lose big” or “rent forever” if I don’t subscribe to QuestTrade/WealthSimple/… It’s just frustrating to know that someone put time and thought into making me and a million other…

This is incredibly petty of me but why do people keep spelling "ads" as "ADs" lately? It's an abbreviation not an initialism

It could be a backronym for Asshole Design.

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

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#198

Post by disambiguation »

The chicken and egg problem of this is that many early / young websites turned to advertising as a way to keep the lights on. This makes something like a federated ad-free internet a flimsy proposition. Which only leaves walled gardens and charity. I think we won't see change until ad blocking becomes mainstream.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#199

Post by fwn »

acc_297 wrote: post #67

The below section resonates: lately YouTube has figured out I am in my mid-twenties and considering for the first time how best to save money for a secure/stable future. The number of ADs I see now not so subtly implying that I can expect to “lose big” or “rent forever” if I don’t subscribe to QuestTrade/WealthSimple/… It’s just frustrating to know that someone put time and thought into making me and a million other…

> ... some types of advertisements need to be highly regulated ...

I truly detest advertising and have been avoiding it with a passion for about 20 years through adblocking, aggressive unsubscribing, etc. But regulating advertising is only a quick fix to a much more dangerous problem of user disempowerment.

For tech-savvy people, most ads can be blocked, that is, until you insist on using proprietary software to access social media platforms or stream movies or stuff like that. DRM is the ultimate enemy here.

While the regulation of advertising is very quick, it is also quickly abolished if decision makers change. Regulation around user choice and user empowerment along with media literacy is a much more sustainable and more robust solution than regulation of specific ad types, places, messages or genres. (I'm thinking of the policy templates for regulating alcoholic beverages or sugary products in the EU.)

We see the fragility of the content-wise regulatory approach in parts of the US where online gambling has been legalized. I cannot find the article now, but this policy change led to an absurd amount of advertising, to which consumers were extremely vulnerable.

Advertising would not have been such an effective shortcut into the brains of so many consumers if those consumers had had the freedom, tools and education to easily decide what kind of advertising they want to be exposed to (and what kind of accompanying tracking they find tolerable).

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#200

Post by somenameforme »

keiferski wrote: post #194
somenameforme wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you noticed the growing number of sites trying to be increasingly aggressive towards ad-blockers? They're not jumping through these increasingly sophisticated (and expensive!) technical hoops to try to squeeze a few more ad views out of a "tiny, tiny percentage". The Reg gives 52% of all Americans [1], b2.ai (who sells anti ad block services) gives 45% in North America [2], and so on. Most sources seem to fall i…

1. The study is claiming 50% of all Americans based on a sample size of 2,000. According to a survey of 2,000 Americans conducted by research firm Censuswide, on behalf of Ghostery, a maker of software to block ads and online tracking, 52 percent of Americans now use an ad blocker, up from 34 percent according to 2022 Statista data. 2. Both of them, and indeed all of these studies seem to be funded by ad blocking com…

2000 is a massive sample assuming it's reasonably representative - far larger than you'd see in an average e.g. election poll. Statistics can be counter-intuitive. The surveys are also generally carried out by survey companies, not the first parties.

You can corroborate these data pretty much anywhere and everywhere. For a silly one I dug up here's [1] PewdiePie in 2016 talking about already seeing a 40% adblock rate as reflected by a non-scientific poll but also in his revenue stats, up from 10%-15% in past years. And it's certainly way higher now - obviously though that sample is going to trend young and probably technically above average.

But really, the thing about ad-blocking is that it's the ultimate in viral tech. Anytime I meet somebody who's not using ad-block I tend to introduce them to the Brave browser and the result like 99.9% of the time is 'omg I didn't even know this was possible.' Those are now people who will probably never go without ad-blocking again and some percent of whom will likely then go on to introduce others to it. There is literally no downside to using an ad-blocker and a million upsides. People just simply don't know about them and/or think they're somehow difficult to use.

[1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20160304044704/https://pewdie.tu...

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