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this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2024
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it's nuts that no one likes ads yet advertising wouldn't be a billions of dollars industry if they didn't work
well, as long as the companies buying the ads think they work, we have an industry
I think you're giving companies too much credit. Freakonomics did a series called "Does Advertising Actually Work?" and the tl;dr was ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/does-advertising-actually-work-part-1-tv-ep-440/
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/does-advertising-actually-work-part-2-digital-ep-441/
What I've found is that advertising only works if I already wanted that product. That advertisement doesn't have to be these huge ad campaigns that they currently do. It could be as simple as showing a still image of a twix bar, and saying "Hey! Go buy a twix!" Yeah, ok.
But if I wasn't already planning on buying that product? Well that ad time may as well have been some archival footage showing the inside of a 1940s concentration camp in use.
That is to say, both are things that you find offensive to have to be watching, and neither are going to entice you to buy the product.
munches on a twix bar
.....what?
The main purpose of ads isn't to sell you a specific product immediately, their real purpose is to expose you to their brand to make the brand more familiar (and therefore more trustworthy) to you.
For example, recently, I needed a new insurance. So of course I went to the websites of the 5 insurance companies that I knew from advertising and compared their offers. Then I went to a comparison portal, which again I knew from the ads. The best offer was from a brand I didn't know so I went with the second one which was from a well known brand. I trusted the second offer more, simply because the brand felt more familiar to me.
Here's another story: there is this big online clothing store. I always hated their ads, they were really annoying, and at that time I didn't understand why anyone would buy clothes online. So guess where I went, 5 years later, after a disappointing offline shopping tour, in desparate need for new clothes?
Beat me to this.
Advertisers tend to be strongly opposed to measuring advertising effectiveness, because if they're not effective, then they're out of a job.
Costco further supports this
i think human psychology is too nebulous and qualitative with way too many factors to definitively "measure" how effective ads are. all they really know is (most of the time) buy ads, revenue goes up.
but there's a reason your personal data is so coveted by advertisers. if they can parse that you're an avid hiker from the millions of data points they collect from you (websites visited, geolocation data, other purchases, etc), then they can sell ads for $400 hiking boots specifically for you, that people who never leave their couch and order delivery from hungry howies every day would just ignore
I suspect that's why Facebook makes so much money, they have a lot of information on you like that.
In a weird way, this is actually quite handy, as you get ads for things that are actually relevant to you.
dude, ads are bullshit. you should never buy anything based on the seller's ads. and i used to say a good way to research products was go to the niche subreddit, or even amazon reviews, but those are so full of bullshit shills anymore it's hard to know.
A lot of people don't mind ads, they even say they don't see them anymore, that their brain just tunes them out. Then you look at their spending habits and it's quite clear they are seeing them.
A big part of the population doesn't mind being constantly manipulated.
The sad thing is: ads dont need to be liked to work. Making enjoyable ads is expensive, making annoying ads that still work is cheaper
That's because they are psychological warfare. They don't need to be liked because the goal isn't to create a positive association with the product, it's to brainwash people into thinking they need the product
Or sometimes just remind you the product exists. They don't have to make you like , but when you see it you end up thinking "man it's been a while since I've had ". Next then you know, you're grabbing at the grocery store because you've been thinking about it lately.
Head On! Apply directly to the forehead!
That was certainly memorable but also I did not buy any.
Yum Yum, Bumblebee, Bumblebee Tuna!!
My wife worked for a company that was heavily reliant on generating leads from ads. They had lots of real time monitoring of conversion rates to make sure they were actually making more money than they were spending on the ads. They would have to turn ad channels off all the time because the return on ad spend went negative.
So my conclusion is that ads can be somewhat effective for companies, but if they don't actively monitor and control the performance of their ads, they're probably just burning money. A lot of companies seem to advertise because they think that's the only way to grow.
I've seen a few ads recently that are just random as hell, don't say a product name and don't even have a website or link to find out what it is even advertising. They always make me wonder how they're working, if they're working. They seem like just a waste of money and time for everyone involved, including the advertiser themselves.
I use adblockers but my parents don't. Visiting my folks and seeing the ads they get served is just bizarre. They get served ads in Spanish even though there's nothing about the account, device or geolocation that would indicate the audience is Spanish speaking, they get very long ads for medicines, which...you know how they always list an increasingly long and concerning bunch of side effects? Well the last one I saw ended with a full reading of the drug's MSDS. They get ads from car dealers half a continent away, campaign ads for a different state's legislature...Why was there ever a television advertisement even made for General Electric power plant turbines? Who's watching Zeltik, gets a mid-roll ad for gigawatt generator components and makes any kind of decision based on what they saw?
I also get ads in Spanish often when watching on my TV (no adblocker)... Dunno if that's just because I am in California or if my phone or other devices picked up my Spanish speaking neighbors and assumes I also speak Spanish. I mean, I do, but not well or often.
This is on a Smart TV specifically. I haven't seen this behavior on a PC or phone...again because it's my parents' house, they watch videos on their smart TV. So I don't know if it makes system language available the way a web browser does...? I will say Spanish is the second-best guess in this area.
The people that do spend the time trying to find out what it is for will remember the eNgAgEmEnT from needing to find out what it is and that correlates with future sales. Just like "rewards" programs that are designed to mentally lock someone into the store/product while harvesting their data.
Apparently there are some people that like ads, and a larger amount who may not like them but are willing to tolerate them.
Those of us who will make proactive choices to not engage with advertising are the minority.
My mom (mid 70s) says "Oh I don't mind the commercials. It gives me a break to go pee."
And when I say "or you could just get a dvr, and pause for as long as you want, any time you want."
Her response was "Yeah....but who wants to do all that???"
Um......boomers are weird.
Lemmy users typically vastly overestimate the amount of hassle people are willing to put up with to deal with technology.
It's why we have so many Linux evangelicals.
Granted I agree with the overall spirit of your reply, I don't agree with it in terms of hitting the pause button on a remote. She's had VCRs before. And DVD players. She knows how this works. Hitting the pause button and hitting the play button has to be THE easiest form of technology I can think of.
But for Linux? Yeah. The platform has been around something like 30 years, and STILL only has 4% of the overall userbase, despite the fact that only the rich can afford a Mac, and Windows is so trouble ridden these days, that it's actively like living in the book 1984. Yet, nobody is switching to Linux, because it's Linux.
But if you try to point out the problems that average people have with Linux, you get told "Then YOU create your own fork. It's open source!"
Like, c'mon. I don't even know how to USE Linux. You think I know how to program???
Because overall, I think Linux COULD BE superior to windows.....if it were easy to figure out what the hell I'm doing. I tried to unmute my speakers. On windows, down in the task bar is a speaker icon. Right click it and get some options, or double click it and get a slider bar.
Took me 3 days to figure out how to get audio. I should not need to go into terminal and mess around with 30 paragraphs of copy/paste/troubleshoot to figure out why my speakers aren't getting audio. This is just one example, but I'm sure SOMEONE is going to chime in, and tell me that I'm wrong, and that Linux is the best, and I'm an idiot.
Ok, I'm an idiot. Sure. Guess what. So are 80% of the userbase. Linux has 4% of the userbase. The reason it's so small is because Linux doesn't cater to the idiot. You got people a month ago before Biden dropped out of the race who were undecided voters. Its not like either of the choices are some unknown. I would venture to guess that 1 month ago trump and Biden were two of the most well known people on earth. Their policies and what they stand for are and were well documented. There were still undecided voters.
Those are the people Linux needs to cater to. The people who forget how to tie their shoes. The people who don't have a thought running through their heads, and then get distracted by a butterfly.
I've used an Android phone for 10+ years at this point. Android is written in Linux. Android doesn't have this problem. Any idiot can use Android. I would venture to say that 100% of Android users have no idea what Terminal is. If you asked them to use terminal, they'd say "Terminal? Are you dying?"
So, I see Linux as this potentially great thing.....that's utterly useless because it's developed by elitists who hold the mentality that if they had to suffer, so should all of you. Problem is, instead of advancing Linux, they're just holding it back from what should be a much bigger userbase. Just so they can say "Ha ha, I know how to use it. It's easy for me! Now YOU learn."
Not taking into account that people like me will still keep using a Windows 7 PC that's not been updated in about a decade. And I genuinely don't know if the firewall is even on. Or even how I'd access that.
I like to read a catalog when I'm interested in discovering something I may want. An advert on the internet is like a door-to-door salesperson staring through my window.
This is my impression.
My partner doesn't care about ads at all. I installed newpipe on her phone but she prefers the yt app, with ads.
Usually in these threads someone starts espousing the virtues of "responsible" or "appropriate" ads.
A common argument is that its the most efficient way to pay for online content. I strongly disagree.
Suffice to say, I think ads are so normalised that most people don't see them as intrusive.
People accepted unobtrusive ads, it's once they started taking over the actual content that they became a big no-no. The ad companies and ad-reliant websites fucked themselves.
No one likes being manipulated. I like ads that promote healthy living for example, if they don't secretly promote any brand or product. They are pretty rare though, almost only in some public health care facilities.
I legit strongly suspect they don't work, at least not as well as it's implied. Like, everyone thinks they work because they used to work really well or something.
The problem started when they went from a basic preroll ad, to unskippable and then the large amount of mid-roll ads to push people into buying premium just as they increased the price.
the real problem is that people will complain about it for a minute, then buy it anyway
Or they work somewhat, resp. in some cases and the rest is make believe in execeutives, a waste of money. Let's say 50/50?