Statistically speaking, the only thing advertisers are good at selling is their own services to businesses. Advertising is a miserably bad investment that mostly just eats up funds, even as it’s forced to exist by businesses needing to be seen and known about. Like nobody alive sees an ad and thinks “ah, I must own [thing] now!” they just maybe notice that [thing] exists and maybe at some point remember that it exists but are more likely to just run across it when doing a search for [general type of thing] later anyways. But without engaging in it, businesses suffocate because they never build up a critical mass of being known about.
It’s all such a fucking stupid and pointless grift that has no reason at all to exist and it doesn’t even do the one thing it’s claiming to do well at all.
it’s one of the prime examples of bullshit jobs
Always good to see another Hexbear who used to be in Advertising.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the best way to normalize vandalism of any and all physical advertisements, and how to get more and more people to wake up and realize that being advertised at is nothing but an assault on your psyche. How do I get more and more normies to realize how infuriating it is that literally no one wants to see this shit, and yet we’re all forced to look at it ALL the time? If enough people hate ads half as much as I do, the world could be a much cleaner, nicer place.
I wonder now if there’s been any studies done on purchases between people who use ad blockers and people who don’t. I’d be curious to see the effect advertising has on sales.
but are more likely to just run across it when doing a search for [general type of thing] later anyways
This is not organic. It’s called re-marketing. You are running across that stuff later because the ad agencies keep a profile on you and know you came into contact with this ad earlier but did not convert into a sale. They know that re-marketing to you at another more appropriate time can convert into a sale.
The advertisers are selling a dashboard that the marketing department can use to razzle dazzle the higher ups
And then you have the insidious social media influencer shit, especially on Instagram and TikTok, where people posing as everyday randos start gushing about how great X product is… A week later, my partner is demanding whatever the latest Ninja kitchen gadget is, while the last four sit on the counter in varying states of disuse. Or worse, those emery cloth abrasive “hair removers” that are just white label AliExpress trash that scratch the ever-loving shit out of your skin and sometimes leave bits of grit in stuck in your skin and/or pores. It’s a little horrifying to watch “consumer demand” get generated in real-time against an otherwise rational person.
Maybe I’m just hyper-aware of it because of my own history with piss-poor impulse control and some hard-learned lessons.
Actually Instagram ads are pretty effective. Because it looks at posts you look, microphone data, messages you send in their dms, and maybe Google account data if you linked it to your Google account if you use those.
So much of that corpo surveillance shit seems to ignore or deny the negative influence of their own marketing pressure.
There are specific products I have gone out of my way to never, ever purchase because the marketing was obnoxiously aggressive, and that goes double for when it tries to target me in some invasive and creepy way.
Dbrand is probably the poster child of this for me, don’t know what they thought they were cooking.
Remember the guy who bought a toilet seat and Amazon thought he’s starting a collection?
Targeted advertising should be illegal. Contextual ads (eg: this is a fan site for cars, we advertise cars) are probably fine. That’s how billboards have worked since like the dawn of civilization.
Targetedadvertising should be illegalThat’s how billboards have worked since like the dawn of civilization
maybe i’m wrong, but i feel like billboards aren’t that old
I think ancient Egypt had stuff like billboards, but the more modern sense is from the 1800s I think.
"SCENIC ‘THE NILE’ (next 5000 exits)"
Amazon be like ‘you bought a fridge, you must love fridges!’
I got a survey that asked me about POTATO I had recently purchased, and what I liked about POTATO compared to other similar products. I did the whole survey, the questions got more surreal. I think I got a coupon or something at the end
I worked in mind control before quitting. The company calculated that most advertising firms lost money relative to just randomly sending reminder sms’s to people about your product.
That said, there were able to do some absolutely heinous stuff based on the data that were harvested. Like determine if people were probably buying plane tickets for family events and charging them more (dunno if that ever shipped but was demonstrated in theoretical sims) .
just randomly sending reminder sms’s to people about your product.
Better place some recommendations in social media and maybe some static(!) sidebar ads, way less annoying.
Btw, how is programmatic advertising still legal? Nobody can take responsibility since nobody knows where what comes from and it’s a huge problem in malvertising and misinformation.
At least the company providing the platform should have acoountability over the bidders.
