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A comment on Vienam Bans Unskippable Ads, Requires Skip Button to Appear After 5 Seconds. Parent comment

Re:Vienam Bans Unskippable Ads, Requires Skip Button to Appe... by haritha-j on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @12:40PM (#46515599)
I wonder if there's a middle ground, where you only have statement based, textual ads. Amusing ourselves to Death (great book btw), discusses how until the 19th century, ads were basically just information dense textual statements. The invention of slogans and jingles was the start of the slow downfall in ads.

I interned at an ad agency once, and I really enjoy creative advertising, but frankly there's just way too much advertising in this world.

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Re:Vienam Bans Unskippable Ads, Requires Skip Button to Appe... by Gerard0 on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @02:15PM (#46517093)
Damn! I have been reading about Amusing Ourselves to Death on here since weeks and I assumed it was a new book from a contemporary author! I'll get it now, thanks for being the one who finally got me to :)
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Re:Vienam Bans Unskippable Ads, Requires Skip Button to Appe... by vel0city on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @01:34PM (#46516486)
I just wanted to second recommend Amusing Ourselves to Death. A very good and short read that I find continually relevant applying the same ideas to social media.
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Re:Vienam Bans Unskippable Ads, Requires Skip Button to Appe... by tpmoney on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @06:51PM (#46520614)
> until the 19th century, ads were basically just information dense textual statements.

I'm curious how does this account for "town criers" and the like? And there seems to be quite a few examples of less "information dense textual statement" in some of the articles on Wikipedia about advertising [1] [2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_card

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Re:Vienam Bans Unskippable Ads, Requires Skip Button to Appe... by haritha-j on Wednesday January 07, 2026 @04:27AM (#46524322)
I'm not an expert, but looking at those articles, most of the illustrated and colour designs seem to have become popular in the 19th century, though I do see a few illstrated examples from the 18th century as well.
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