@Richard_Littler
That's me, usually. There's one kind of advert that makes me have sympathy for other brainwashed fools, though: adverts for household cleaning gadgets. I loathe housework so I'm a sucker for things that promise to do it for you. The rest, though... I couldn't even tell you what most tv/online ads are pushing.

@Richard_Littler advertising absolutely works. You're just more educated, privileged, opinionated, etc than other people. And you only know people who behave like you do.

Go to a union meetup and ask actual trade workers how much time and mental capatity they have to spare to manage all the shit that gets thrown at them. We dont live in meritocracy but a caste system, carefully divided.

I come from this life. I'm a class traitor but I try to make up for it by helping to change the world.

@Richard_Littler I'm hunting new apartments currently, (and therefore looking to sell mine.)

I simply will not go with any of the brokers who put their flyer into my clearly-marked "no junk mail" letterbox.

@Richard_Littler
When I move into a new area, I'll listen to all the local radio ads and subscribe to the newspaper (or whatever qualifies for local news). Those ads are usually for local businesses and how I find pet stores, plumbers, electricians, ...

@Richard_Littler

I love advertising! I bought a refrigerator online. Then I bought 18 more refrigerators because advertisements suggested I might also be interested in them!

@Richard_Littler

Did.. did *I* write this post..?

@Richard_Littler I don't really know. I watch a fair bit of CNN, amongst other things, they have lots of adverts for Turkish Airlines, Visit Dubai, Abu Dhabi... If advertising was all powerful I'd have thought I'd be slightly tempted, but I don't feel the need to book tickets to the Middle East. Oh, or start betting on the football, play online Bingo, buy a new sofa, a new car etc.....

@Richard_Littler I don't mute ads on TV, but I definitely skip ads on YouTube.

@Richard_Littler I almost spent 80 dollars on licorice after seeing ads over and over. I'm proud of myself for resisting, but also sad I didn't get a huge box of licorice in the mail.

@Richard_Littler That's a great point! It definitely feels like ads can be more of a nuisance than anything sometimes. Have you found any ads that actually caught your attention? I’m curious if there are any out there that break the mold!

@Richard_Littler You underestimate how ignorant the average normie is. A lot of them aren't even using ad-block. They have their chrome on windows and consume every single ad the almighty tech overlords feed them lmao

@Richard_Littler Effective Advertising can work. They provoke you (at a not inconvenient time), to make you look, provide a ‘hook’ that relates to something in you, and then an easy to perform call to action. But above all, good enough that you wouldn’t mind experiencing it again. That takes effort and skill and therefore there are nearly zero of that quality nowadays. A guy Dave Trott https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Trott_(advertising_executive) runs a blog often bemoaning the failure of modern ad quality.

@Richard_Littler It works on those who arw hooked, addicted to our sick society. It's their heroine.

@Richard_Littler I've done screen sharing with coworkers and gotten screenshots from customers and watched various YouTubers do Internet searches ...... Most of them aren't using an ad blocker. Their brains reflexively close or filter out the noise and they assume that's just the way it has to be.

We here on Mastodon have a sample bias, an echo chamber, a filter bubble, or what have you.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@Richard_Littler i shamefully admit that for a brief period where YouTube stopped working when my ad-blocker was running (the latter has since changed to avoid the detection), i was getting bombarded with ads all the time ... and while generally annoyed by them, i did end up buying one specific cheap gadget that one of those advertised. not proud of it. but yes the general principle still stands - advertising is shouting into the void for the most part

@Richard_Littler
It's like email spam. 99.9% of it just annoys someone to no purpose, but occasionally it finds a mark to justify the small per-unit expense.

And there's a meta-level scam, which is selling advertising is profitable regardless of whether the advertising works, and selling personal data collected by delivering the ad is profitable regardless of whether the data is useful.

The enshittification is self-fuelling at that point.

@Richard_Littler I remember songs from ads from 40 years ago. We like to say that ads don't work on us, but believe me, they do.

@Richard_Littler
Most of my ad burden is for things that I have no interest in or are for quacks.

Newspaper advertisers should know that I will not accept hundreds of cookies so I will never see their product.

@Richard_Littler I seem to remember it’s not about liking the thing or not, it’s knowing about it. Called something like exposure.
I remember one day, a big international company were signing a contract with where dad worked.
Dad’s place had advertised on billboards all round the pitch at a six nations match at, I presume, a fortune.
All this money aimed squarely at 4 business people in the stands on a bit of a jolly.

@Richard_Littler Oh yeah, those 'turn off your ad blocker to view this site' messages are hilarious. I'm like 'Ok, fuck off then'.

@Richard_Littler Much like spam, I assume it must work at least sometimes or people wouldn’t do it. I don’t think I’ve ever bought a product based on a straight-up ad, but I will admit to being influenced by product placement: seeing something used by somebody cool or to do something cool will get me to at least check it out. What actually surprises me is that this channel is not *more* prevalent than it actually is.

@Richard_Littler I suppose it’s like phishing attacks. Loads of attacks and a small number of results that make it worth it.

@Richard_Littler there have been studies that conclude it does not. or: not much.

@Richard_Littler it's the "mere exposure" effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect

@Richard_Littler
I remember reading a book on effective marketing, they were of the opinion that word of mouth was way more effective than advertising, I've not seen anything that contradicts that since.

@Richard_Littler is it the old "self-sustaining business model" that the only people who believe advertising works either work in advertising or want to advertise something?

@Richard_Littler

Yes. It does, but not if you don’t see it…obvs.

@Richard_Littler I love how many of the 6music presenters take the piss out of the constant trails for BBC TV and radio shows they have to play, and the endless promotion of iPlayer.