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Reddit abandons user privacy - Ars Technica
(arstechnica.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Yea it feels like something has been rotten with the ads industry for a long while. I’ve read a few pieces here and there about how it could collapse and that it’s built almost entirely on dumb lies. But it’s still here.
I’m no economist, but my best guess is that it’s a little like war and the effort we put into it. Complete trashy waste almost all the time, except for when one person or country decides to put effort into it, because then you have to as well or run huge risks. We’d all be better off without ads, including brands/companies, but when one is doing it every company has to too.
Ads are meant to get brand recognition out there for most things. Then when you're in a store you buy what you've heard of before. They wouldn't do it if it wasn't effective.
You're putting too much faith in the talent and insight of marketing executives. Large companies throw tens of millions of dollars at their marketing department. They'll spend the money on a diverse ad campaign that ticks boxes, not one that is actually effective. People don't buy based on the commercial they saw last. People buy what's shoved in their faces.
That's great, but you're still wrong.
Absolutely spot on reply.
Brand recognition and memory triggers is what big brand ads are about.
Cleanex, Hoover, Coke, most cologne/perfume ads, Old Spice...
With very, very few exceptions, any time I see an ad I make a mental note to never buy that product. As such, most products I am familiar with(presumably because I saw an ad) I will not buy. The exception is pretty much just Hershey's chocolate bars, I can't live without them.
You had me on board until... Hershey's chocolate? That's not even chocolate anymore, it's like putrid brown wax!
And by definition it's still nothing but systematic brain washing. It's actually very 1984, and I can't understand how some people are ok with being manipulated into buying shit 24/7 and think that global perpetual invasive advertising is this perfectly normal thing that humanity has always had around...
I think capping it 1984 is a bit extreme, but I do agree with the overall sentiment. We've gone wag overboard in trying to monetize evert aspect of modern life. It gets old.