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As much as I hate advertisements and avoid them as much as possible, watching the evolution is somewhat fascinating in an anthropological sense. It's like an arms race between companies and consumers, accelerated by consumer adaptation to previous ad strategies.

You've got the old days, when ads mostly seemed to be about describing the features of products in a relatively factual manner.

Then when most products have the same basic features you start focusing on single metric comparisons to competitors.

Then when all the competitors are finding metrics where they're the best you start leaning into mascots and brand loyalty and slogans.

Then when everyone has branding and mascots you focus on how all the Cool People prefer your brand because it makes them Cool and Sexy

Then when everyone assumes the content of ads can't really be trusted as a useful metric you enter the fever-dream era where you shift to memorable skits about the product.

Then when everyone gets used to memorable depictions of your product you enter the surrealist fever-dream era where the skits aren't even really about the product anymore.

Now it seems like we're in the brainrot "flash your logo in the midst of visual overstimulation" era, but that's about where I only see ads by accident anymore.

I'd love to hear about how advertisements have evolved in recent years if anyone can fill me in, but not enough to watch them