Many ads at the time still used a strategy of "reasoning with the reader": explaining the technical benefits of the product, and how using it would make your life better in some way.

Sometime around the 90s, most advertising gradually shifted to emotional manipulation, which is empirically more effective at scale. The famous iPod ads, for example, said nothing at all about the iPod's technical merits, or how you'd benefit by using an iPod instead of other MP3 players. They just showed some vaguely cool-looking person listening to an iPod.

The "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads depicted PCs as old, uncool dorks; while the Mac is fun and interesting and young. Not a word about any actual features or benefits of the Mac. Purely associative emotional branding.

This actually does work in terms of "selling more iPods at scale," though it is dissatisfying to that small segment of the population that cares about making informed and rational decisions. Most HN readers fall into this category, though there aren't enough of us in the world to carry mass advertising strategies.

> Sometime around the 90s, most advertising gradually shifted to emotional manipulation...

Yup.

> ... which is empirically more effective at scale.

I don't think that's the issue. Back in the 80s, stuff came out regularly that was significantly better than the predecessor (if there was one). Emotional manipulation took over when new versions no longer had significant technical advantages over existing competitors.

Right IPhones became a fashion accessory. I guess partial reason is that when everybody uses a smartphone you have to appeal to the masses, and pure reason doesn't reach them.

The same goes for the high fashion in clothing. Doesn't matter if the clothes are the best to wear and most protective and most resilient against wear and tear. Were' in the era of tech-fashion including wearable computing.

> Not a word about any actual features or benefits of the Mac.

From what I recall almost every "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ad's premise was a feature or task that the Mac did easier or better, leaving the PC deflated or envious.

I was always fascinated by the BMW ads of the time: https://www.motortrend.com/news/bmw-1980s-ads-jeff-zwart-pho...

Back then people often bought magazines for the ads.

I still buy magazines for the ads. For example, I buy Mopar Action for the ads that are targeted towards me for things I might want or need for my Dodge. When I open the mag, I want to look at the ads.

This is fundamentally different from guessing what I want to see based on my browsing history. If I open a site on cooking, I don't want to see ads for car parts or kitchen faucets, regardless of my history. I would want to see ads for cooking supplies.

> If I open a site on cooking, I don't want to see ads for car parts or kitchen faucets, regardless of my history. I would want to see ads for cooking supplies.

Is that not the way it works for you? I mean, I pull up allrecipes.com and see a bunch of food-related stuff like my local supermarket (and one less relevant ad for Iceland Air, no idea). Closer to the subject at hand, the modern "Byte Magazine" might be something like tomshardware.com, where I see lots of tech products being hawked (phones, a tablet, Xfinity service), and ads for the retailers that sell them (lots of Best Buy on the pages I saw).

I mean, sure, there are going to be exceptions. But in general ads on the internet seem at least reasonably relevant.

It really seems sometimes like sites like HN are turning into information bubbles, where concepts like "advertising in the modern world is a dystopian disaster" are... just taken as faith? The experience of regular people doesn't really agree, and it seems like we're becoming more detached as the years go by.

No, it doesn't work for me. I'd turn on context-sensitive ads on my sites, and then see what ads it supplies.

Unrelated garbage. I remember once buying a kitchen faucet, and for months it seems every site I visit showed me ads for faucets.

For example, on a programming site it would keep pushing ads for the Batman movie. Phooey.

Another problem is the same C++ training ad would be served on every one of my site's pages. Magazines don't run the same ad on every page.

Instead, I now run affiliate ads for quality programming books from a list I curated. Ads I would like to see myself when browsing those pages. Ads that probably add value to the page, rather than subtract. No more Batman or C++ training ads.

> Another problem is the same C++ training ad would be served on every one of my site's pages. Magazines don't run the same ad on every page.

No, but they ran the same full-page BASF floppy disk ad or whatever at the end of the contents page every month for two years. Repetition in advertising has been a thing since the field was introduced. I can't believe you're only seeing it for the first time now. Even today, go pick up a Motor Trend and compare it to a Car & Driver (or Vogue and Elle, whatever floats your boat) and take a look. They're all running the same ads!

Now, sure, it's true that online ads afford the opportunity to saturate that print doesn't. But it's not any different at all. And it works! Which is why the advertisers (who, let's be clear, know their business a lot better than you do) do it.

I stopped running their ads. Their technique didn't work for me.

With all respect, that sounds like a criticism of internet advertising c. 2008 or so. I mean, sure, weird stuff like that happens and there are always going to be anecdotes. But no, for a long time now advertising on targetted/niche/interest-based sites has followed that niche, for the obvious reason that that's where the best ROI on the advertising is.

I mean, sure, there will always be funny hiccups, and on the edges there are genuine issues of privacy and justice and market fairness to be discussed.

But the idea that we're in some kind of advertising dystopia is simply not the experience of regular users. It's a meme[1] being perpetuated in the tech community. Regular products purchased by regular people are being advertised very effectively, and on the whole with near-universal approval of the customers.

[1] And as mentioned, an increasingly detached and frankly slightly deranged one. Real concerns about privacy are now being short-circuited with nonsense about "But Their Ads", and that's hurting the discourse we actually need.

Have you considered that your experience may not be representative of everyone else's experience? You can't know the objective facts of what ads Walter sees. You also can't know how people experience ads subjectively.

For myself, I have a really hard time focusing on anything in the presence of visual or audio distraction, with ads just being one example. I wear earmuffs all day while working just so I can focus. The equivalent on the internet is adblock. Without adblock and uBlock origin's element zapper, I simply cannot function on the internet today.

Are you implying that my sensitivity to distracting noise in every aspect of life is somehow influenced by a meme about internet ads?

I don't see how you could read what I wrote and take it to mean that it's not possible that anyone ever, anywhere, saw a poorly targetted ad on a web page somewhere. In fact I see my point as sort of the converse: there's a deeply annoying undercurrent in HN discourse that seeks to use the word "advertising" as a shorthand for all sorts of ethical problems that are complicated and nuanced.

When, no, advertising is doing what it always has. Internet advertising, broadly, is well-targetted. It just is. (For really obvious reasons! Of all the people who want ad targetting to work most, the advertisers and the ad brokers are at the top of the list!)

I don't recall ever seeing an ad on a web page that I clicked on.

Today's marketing is much more targeted and dark pattern driven.

There was an earnestness to many ads back then. Either "native" style ads, or price lists -- given researching anything was much more difficult without internet, magazines and print brochures were all you had. Ads were critical.

My perception of ads is they are more automated and naive than they should be.

I get an ad for something I want. I get it. Then I don't need it anymore, but I get the same ad over and over again as if it went from a single thing I wanted to a hoarding obsession.

Then by chance I get an ad for something I want, but I want it later in the year, not today. I click the ad but don't get it.

When I want it, after few months, it is never shown again, and I get dozens of generic unrelated ads instead.

I wish it was actually more tailored to me.

I see the personalized ads Amazon presents for me. All things I don't want.

I bought hundreds of computer shoppers. Just because it was ads. I think there was an article or two in there sometimes. It is funny enough where I learned the xor trick. That thing was a monster at least a couple of inches thick of nothing but computer ads.

As I recall they included just enough editorial material to qualify for the "literature" postage rate rather than the "advertising" postage rate, which was higher.

(those might not be the exact terms that were/are used)

The Alice and Bob article... I don't remember the content exactly.

I know it's mostly nostalgia, but the ads also are very qualitatively different from today's.

Look how much text and detailed discussion there is compared to today's ads. These ads just seem to respect the reader's intellect more.

Because it was a time of magic. Every month you could find things that were significantly better, significantly cheaper, or completely brand new. (And by "completely", I do not mean "a new product that does the same old thing". I mean something I'd look at and think "I never even thought of doing that with a computer".)

There was just a newness and excitement, and the ads show it.

And this mirrors the web today. All the new stuff is over, it is all incremental change, rehashing, repeat.

Yea, I mean I was born in the 90s, and I have to say the ads are really really enjoyable. I love the amount of depth and detail, and the longer-form article style that they use.

And the beautiful serif typefaces (including in the titles!) and wild colors too! These days everything is Helvetica and friends, and bland shades of gray.

Imagine how I feel! I was heading into my sophomore year in high school in 1983, the same month this article came out. I wasn't a subscriber to BYTE then, but the memories of us learning Assembler and C at the time are almost as vivid now as they were back then.

I didn't realize it was more than 50% ads, more than most websites we consider terrible nowadays.

I think one reason is that back then, it was the way of keeping in touch with the commercial offering. Now, there are millions of review websites and user groups for that. A quick search can least you to the most niche products easily. As a result, ads just try to sell you stuff you are already aware of, instead of informing you about a new product and its capabilities, making them a lot less interesting.

And even ads about shady products were kind of interesting.

Perusing with the same feelings

Funny how the prices haven't changed much (seeing a "new computer" for $1,995), given the change in computing power and purchasing power (of the dollar)

I was born in the late 80s, but I also feel nostalgic. I think it's because there was more of a sense of play in computing back in the day.

I feel a real romanticism for vintage computing.

I was wondering why this thing is 578 pages long, and it turns out it's at least 80% advertising if the first 50 pages are anything to go by.

Because leafing through ads for stuff in 1983 was the equivalent of googling for stuff today.

I worked in a bookstore at the start of the 1980s. Its magazine section had many hundreds of titles (I stocked them). All of them were more or less that way: mostly ads by page area and page count, with the ratio of ads to content rising as you got toward the back of the magazine (but with most magazines maintaining the last couple of pages for distinctive editorial content).

Magazines are generally much slimmer nowadays. Magazine racks are generally smaller and less ubiquitous. I presume the ad dollars have mostly moved onto the web, and the great majority of magazines have shrunk—many disappearing entirely.