Good insights, and not just software developers, really. We don’t like ads, sensationalism, or anything reeking of bullshit. If we have to talk to someone to find out the price, the product may as well not exist.
Good insights, and not just software developers, really. We don’t like ads, sensationalism, or anything reeking of bullshit. If we have to talk to someone to find out the price, the product may as well not exist.
Here’s the thing… I want to be sold something. Not anything, but certain somethings. There was a brief time when Google AdSense was new that I was excited for the experience. (I now know how fucking stupid I was, but hey, I was young).
The idea that a new product aligned to my interests and designed with me in mind would be advertised to me instead of feminine hygiene products or mesothelioma lawsuit ads seemed awesome.
I do not want your bullshit hype machine alpha male inside club cool kid image peddled as the reason I should hand you my money. You’ve got the wrong guy. Tell me what it does with a side of what I can do with it. And the “what I can do with it” shouldn’t be “get laid”.
Broadly speaking, the problem with modern American advertisement isn’t the content so much as the volume. Tried to watch a football game a few weeks back and I barely saw any football being played. Every millisecond of screen time and every pixel of screen space that wasn’t a moving football was consumed by ads.
I was at an actual game a year ago, foolishly thinking being there was going to be a better experience. NOPE. Ads on the announcements. Ads at the endzones. Ads painted into the turf. I got solicited to buy shit as I was loading up my ticket and right inside the gate once I was scanned in. The whole interior of the stadium was a mall full of overpriced crap. Seats were branded. The food was branded. I was buying something and I was drowning in people trying to sell me more shit.
I don’t care if every single item on offer is something I might actually want. I can’t fucking breath for it all.
Oh, yes. Watched a UK cooking show lately, the experience was alien; every 10 minutes a 5 minute ad window. Local channels are regulated to no more than 5 minutes per half hour or so. Luckily, smart TV lets you jump over it.
Volume is the biggest problem, sure. Content is a close second. I was flabbergasted last time I was in the USA. Ads have barely any relation to what they’re selling.
A poster for shoes features a full-body shot of a half-naked model, the shoes barely visible with the whole poster within your visual field at once.
Ads for beer, travel agencies, clothes and antidepressant medicine, which should be illegal to advertise, by the way, are indistinguishable from each other: just a few happy 20-somethings in a nonspecific late afternoon outdoors setting.
A bunch of ads I saw I don’t even know what they were for, they just had hot young people and logos for companies I never heard of. No text, no nothing.
Several ads purporting to sell an “experience” when they were for the most mundane, use-it-on-autopilot products you’ve ever heard of. The products were so forgettable I can’t remember an actual example, but picture an ad selling you on the wonderful experience of using the new ad-supported monthly coat hanger subscription service and you’ve got it.
Ads for lawyers (something else that should be illegal) were on point though: “hey, do you want money you know you don’t deserve at all but can be argued in bad faith that you do? Hit me up”.
Oh, and everything is perpetually half-off, because the American consumer is apparently too stupid to realize that just means they’re lying about the price.
Ad placement is not only bought for the purpose to introduce you to their product for you to buy. Sadly most ad placement is bought for brand re-enforcement (Coca-Cola purchases a magnitude more ads even though everyone knows the company and the product, but sells many more bottles than Pepsi)
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And the gratuitous association between random brand X and random hot person Y surely also serves a purpose, like subliminally telling your lizard brain that you’ll become like hot person Y, or succeed in mating with them, if you buy brand X. That explains the problem, but does nothing to make it less of a problem.
AdSense could have been amazing if it was used to find good ads for the user instead of finding good users for the ad.
I think a slightly more insidious side to targeting ads is that even when they have the “right” product for you, it’s the shitier and overpriced one. The one that spent money on marketing instead of quality.
Bring back catalogs.
Who here remembers Computer Shopper?
When I want something, I’ll come to you. Don’t come to me.
Catalogs are still a thing. I pick up the mail and not only get catalogs from stores I purchased things at ten years ago, but the amount I see in the ‘instant recycle bin’ is insane.
I mean quality, and giant, compendiums for their industries/themes.
If some store sends me their catalogue, they’re soliciting. That’s the practice I want to go away.
Instead, say I am in the market for suits, I pick up a giant men’s apparel catalogue which has ads from every source imaginable. This can be a website too, paper is optional. I come to them when I need something. Every apparel store, vendor, and dealer is in there. It is competitive and neutral. The owner of the catalogue may not sell their own things in the same catalogue (amazon breaks this important rule). The owner of the catalogue is regulated and may not reject ads for any reason in order to avoid bribes from the vendors to silence their competitors. The ads themselves are regulated and must be truthful and informative, without the psychological manipulations. Talk about the product and do not talk about how I will feel after the purchase.
That’s the vision I have. Computer Shopper was pretty close to this.
I think McMaster still has a catalogue…
A-fucking-men