Re:Ads Don't Work That Way (2014)
by mekkkkkk on Wednesday September 01, 2021 @04:48AM
(#28377609)
Even though I understand that differentiating a strictly pavlovian conditioning with "cultural imprinting" might be interesting, the two proposed modes are still extremely similar. A "cultural imprint" is useless unless it eventually evokes a feeling in the customer. The only difference is that the "imprint" works by extra steps.
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The article makes the exact opposite claim: the cultural imprint does ot need to evoke a feeling in you, you just need to believe that others are associating the product with a certain image (to which the company hopes lots of customers will want to identify).
As the article argues, this also makes it more difficult to escape: you have no control over what others are seeing.
I think that we agree. My only point is that the warm feeling of aligning with a preferred image is still an implanted emotion.
Re:Ads Don't Work That Way (2014)
by iainmerrick on Wednesday September 01, 2021 @04:58AM
(#28377652)
The big difference is that the imprinting mechanism favours widely shared experiences (like prime time broadcasting) over targeted advertising.
I suppose the ultimate combination would be targeted advertising inserted into broadcast streams, to fool you into thinking itβs a shared experience. That already happens with the sideline billboards at big sporting events.
Very interesting! Tangentially I've worked a lot with video streaming, and one technology that there was a lot of buzz around was to splice personalized ads into regular linear TV broadcasts. Basically it replaced the original broadcast ads with personalized ones, completely seamless and unnoticeable. I don't know if it was ever implemented, but it sounds like it would tap into the same mechanism that you propose.
It did, under the name server-side ad insertion (SSAI).
https://videoweek.com/2020/08/12/server-side-ad-insertion-ex...