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Caporegime
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How do you square the circle...
- Thread starter mrochester
- Start date
I can be. I've worked with advertising and creative agencies for over a decade. When I see an advert I probably have a reasonable understanding of what it is trying to achieve, and buying something - as the immediate fulfilment at least - is not always the purpose.
Poor advertising stands out like a sore thumb. But the best marketing isn't noticeable at all, although that's increasingly difficult to achieve online, as people's attention span is so brief. Many businesses will still acquire custom through more direct channels, and digital serves brand reinforcement content better. Our sales pipeline ranges from 48 hours to 3 months, but I'd love to switch to an industry where results are measured in near realtime - that's real cutting edge.
We used to have an advert break every 15 minutes here. But now we're slowly moving to the every 7 minute mark they had in the US. It's nearly impossible to follow some programmes over there when there is an advert break, and then they also overlap adverts while the programme is on.
I agree with this, but I have two other concerns as well:
1) The manner in which advertising is done online is inherently insecure because it rests on dozens of sources running scripts on your machine with no way of being sure of preventing malware from being included. Neither the page the advert is being shown on nor the company buying the advertising space have complete control over the content of the advert. It's a very long way from simply displaying an image or a video. Even if the site showing the ad is one you trust, that's not good enough any more.
2) Advertising online is now interconnected with a level of spying that a cold war era dictator could only dream of.
I run security software that blocks almost all ads as a side effect because almost all advertising is done in an insecure way. I'd accept being advertised at as the cost of something, but I won't accept the degree of intrusion and risk now connected with online advertising. I take basic online security steps and even just that much blocks almost all advertising. I'm probably still spied on, but considerably less than normal.
Soldato
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Advertising is so much more subtle than that. We are all inspired to make purchase decisions based on advertising and marketing techniques; anyone who thinks they are immune to that is kidding themselves.
The techniques behind it are fascinating, even if it is morally disgusting.
Soldato
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Who said youtube adverts were short
If you want something at more of a network level PiHole is also a good shout. Isn't too difficult to set up... I've got it running on an old Pi Zero currently. It's difficult to block YouTube/Google ads unfortunately as they wised up and now host all their ads in the same place as the content you actually want if I recall correctly - can't blacklist one at DNS level without blocking the other. As others have said this can be done via plugins/software though. Saves some bandwidth too!
PiHole means any device on the network skips the ads - if you copy and paste a blacklist it will also most likely block some trackers etc. so if you're subscribed to certain emails some of the links/content may be blocked too (one negative to it). Can be paused to access these though... or removed from the blacklist.
PiHole means any device on the network skips the ads - if you copy and paste a blacklist it will also most likely block some trackers etc. so if you're subscribed to certain emails some of the links/content may be blocked too (one negative to it). Can be paused to access these though... or removed from the blacklist.
I just buy something when I need it.
The only thing advertising does for me is make me aware of things. But I hardly watch TV adverts because nothing interests me on there. Generally TV as become very generic.
When I do buy something I don't see a TV advert and buy it. It just makes me investigate it further, preferably looking on Youtube to see if someone as done a review of the product first.
I use a mixture of adblock and uBlock Origin. I never see adverts on Youtube videos (if there was a way to unblock individual channels on the firefox version I would to support the creator). On some websites I have to manually alter some settings in uBlock to block certain images out. But as you say, sometimes they are sneaky and end up putting an url that appears to be the same address as the site your visiting, even though mousing over it we can see its going to go to a different website.
When it comes to online adverts, it wouldnt be so bad if they properly secured the servers. But they are weak on security and we end up being fed virus-laden adverys that just visiting a site where that advert shows immediately infects the user. I think if people had more confidence in safety, and knew where the ad money was going, then they might be more inclined to watch a couple of ads.
There are some websites that detect adblocker and suggest either whitelisting them, or watching a video advert. I think that is a good solution. I usually watch the advert, or at least have it playing while I'll go do something else
Soldato
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It's working exactly as intended; so subtle that you're convinced it has minimal effect on you... Even though you are saying things like...
"The only thing advertising does for me is make me aware of things"
Eh!?
I think some adverts do work. Those with the catchy tunes. My dad is of the same belief as me, but then he ends up singing the advert songs, or mimicking their phrases. Though he doesn't buy anything as he's a stingy bugger
I think some adverts do work. Those with the catchy tunes. My dad is of the same belief as me, but then he ends up singing the advert songs, or mimicking their phrases. Though he doesn't buy anything as he's a stingy bugger
But if he does buy some thing, he's more likely to buy that company's version of that thing rather than some other company's version of it. So the adverts have worked on him.
A perfect example of how advertising works very well is branded generic over the counter medicine. It's exactly the same stuff, e.g. 200mg of ibuprofen is 200mg of ibuprofen, but people will pay many times as much for it solely because of the name on the box and that's solely due to advertising.
An example:
https://www.wilko.com/en-uk/health-...pain-relief/c/693?q=:relevance:type:Ibuprofen
Wilkinson's own brand 200mg ibuprofen caplets are 30p for 16.
Nurofen 200mg ibuprofen caplets are £2.50 for 16.
That's in the same shop, on the same shelves, right next to each other. Just a random example - I'm sure you've seen the same thing yourself for all sorts of things. I picked medicines because they're very tightly controlled so you can be sure they're identical.
When advertising allows a company to sell a product in direct competition to exactly the same product at less than 1/8th of the price, advertising clearly works very well.
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I would always buy the cheapest paracetamol and ibuprofen (sometimes as low as 15p for a 16 pack of paracetamol).
When a product is identical, I will get the cheaper one. When the products aren't identical or comparable, I will weigh up the pros and cons and buy the one I find offers the best value.
I've switched to using Nano Adblocker (a uBlock Origin fork) in 'hard blocking mode'. That's basically your regular uBlock but also blocking all 3rd party connections, all 3rd party scripts and all 3rd party frames. You need to slightly adjust most sites on your first ever visit (even if it's just to allow static.domain.com or images.domain.com) but overall, it's actually much less work and hassle than using the default 'easy mode' plus NoScript or whatever.
Hard mode gives significantly lower connections per site visit (5x less than the default blocking mode!), less cookies, way lower load times, etc. It also completely closes off tracking, analytics and all third party stuff.
I came across this website speed test app/site the other day. You feed it an URL and it loads the site both with and without (basic) adblock and displays a comparison for you - load times, DOM, cookies, domains hit, third parties, etc. It's scarily eye-opening to see just how bloated and slow many sites are these days, and just how compromising they are of your privacy (dozens of third party trackers etc).
Hard mode gives significantly lower connections per site visit (5x less than the default blocking mode!), less cookies, way lower load times, etc. It also completely closes off tracking, analytics and all third party stuff.
I came across this website speed test app/site the other day. You feed it an URL and it loads the site both with and without (basic) adblock and displays a comparison for you - load times, DOM, cookies, domains hit, third parties, etc. It's scarily eye-opening to see just how bloated and slow many sites are these days, and just how compromising they are of your privacy (dozens of third party trackers etc).
Caporegime
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I think the whole premise of the question is wrong.
Look at Steam.
Look at Netflix.
Plenty of people want to pay for things. If the amount is reasonable and the service is convenient and slick, people are happy to pay.
Yeah I torrented everything under the sun in my 20s. That's just part of growing up. But I pay for everything now and have done for many, many years.
This, can't say I've ever seen an advert that's made me want to buy something.
Plenty that have put me off companies for life however, will never give safe style, cillit bang, go compare, money supermarket, we buy any car etc. my business, purely based on their adverts, (and many more, those are just the ones off the top of my head)
Yeah I'm really often bemused that advertising is so effective.
The only time I pay any attention to an ad is if I like the music. Then I google "what is the song in advert suchandsuch". I'm not sure that's what's they were going for, tho, when making the advert
So the only effect it could be said to have on me is brand awareness/recognition. It has never (that I recall) made me rush out and buy something.
And a lot of that awareness ends up being annoyance. "Oh it's that bloody Peleton advert again."