> The whole point of ads is to convince people to buy things that they may otherwise not.

Is it? Or is it to make people aware of product existing? It's a subtle difference.

I don't own a TV anymore, but when I'm visiting relatives, I do watch it a bit on a rare occasion.

My first impression is that every show is hopelessly interspersed with frequent commercials. I don't understand why they put up with it. I am the master of my attention span, not the advertisers or the broadcaster. If I'm too frequently interrupted, I lose interest and find something else to do. Traditional TV has become a non-option to me, not the least because I don't want to arrange my life after the TV scheme.

My second impression is.. why the hell are they spamming me with their commercials? Yes, I DO know about the f* product, I already DO have a favorite brand, and a commercial is not going to make me switch.

But sometimes, extremely rarely, I do learn about a new product (through any kind of ad -- TV or web) that may interest me and then I look for more information or just buy it to test it if it's something cheap (like, e.g., a new coke edition).

I gave up on cable TV 8 years ago. Before that I would always mute commercials, I despise my attention being broken to sell me stuff I don't want. When we had company they would think it was odd at first but then realize how awesome it was to not have an announcer screaming about dirt, cars and fast-food. I have a serious problem now when going to someone's home and they don't mute commercials, but instead try to talk louder over them.

Side note, my wife lost 35 pounds after ditching cable. She noticed her cravings for fast-food and pizza subsided when she wasn't being bombarded with food adverts all day long. TV commercials are designed to tickle your insecurities and then sell you stuff to lessen those insecurities. That was how we were taught in advertising school. Being aware of the tricks still doesn't always work at lessening their impact.

Yea do you watch the show House of Cards? I find it to be very entertaining and I highly recommend it, however it's native ads fucking kill it for me sometimes. I kinda hate native ads with a passion lol... But they are proven to be highly effective. However they serve to harm the content and provide misinformation. grrrr

Poor people aren't robots. They can and do see adverts for things that they don't then buy.

Additionally ad targeting means they might see adverts for things they could afford and that's t be relevant to their life instead of things meant for rich westerners.

The whole mental confusion between advertising and privacy in the technical and media community is really irritating. What's the alternative to advertising? Direct payments. And how do you do those? Credit cards. And what do credit cards have on them? Your legal name and your physical address. And how do they work? You provide those details to the seller.

Good luck using Tor or even incognito mode on a an without adverts.

> Poor people aren't robots. They can and do see adverts for things that they don't then buy.

Ah, the grand delusion of advertisers put out again. Sure, people aren't robots, but if ads couldn't influence their behaviour no one would pay for them and there wouldn't be any.

It pretty amusing to see pro advertisement people argue that ads aren't predatory because they're not ACTUALLY effective you see..

That would truly be a foolish argument to make. However the argument I am making is, is ad supported content is one of the few monetary schemes which allows you to produce a product that allows for poorer people to part of the audience.

They are still paying for it with every product they buy because prices include the ad budgets. At best you could argue that poorer people are subsidized by richer people because they buy more and therefore pay for a larger share of the ad budget but ads certainly don't make stuff free for poorer people. Whether they would be better off with no advertising at all, i.e. if they still pay a larger share of the ad budgets than what the ad supported stuff they consume is worth, I can not tell.

Your argument supposes that you know the surplus earned by brands segmented by user wealth group (how much money users give to brands after using the service - how much they would without)

That's a strawman. (And wow, am I surprised to be able to say that to anyone on HN).

What's actually argued is advertisements aren't 100% effective, in that they can't force you to purchase a product as a mind-controller.

Ads let you know a product exists, may convince you that it's worthwhile or better than competitors, and offer reminders to keep the idea of the product on your mind. However, that's all the same things a carefully crafted in person sales-pitch could do, and sales pitches aren't mind-control even though they are far far more effective than any number of internet banner ads can be.

You're arguing with a straw man. I never said ads don't influence behaviour. Obviously they do. My point is they don't exert the kind of scary mind control power that some people like to pretend they do - adverts increase sales, but so does having a shop window with your goods on display, so does putting your products in specialised parts catalogues, whatever. There are lots of things you can do to increase sales and which can count as marketing of some kind.

My point is to claim poor people are exploited by advertising is nuts. It's the other way around. Advertising is why poor people can have exactly the same gmail account with all the same features as a rich guy can. Nuke advertising and you evict poor people into a ghetto web. These people at Mozilla don't seem to be thinking these things through at all and that's a problem ..... there was a time that I had a lot of technical respect for Mozilla and Firefox, but it seems every time I read about the projects these days they're doing something that I find to be kind of dumb.

Its definitely true ads are highly effective and one must admit highly effective on oneself as well. Look at Microsofts recent resurgence, their marketing budget has begun to rival that of Samsung and anecdotally I see their ads everywhere. However ads are not the end all. There are many deciding factors why someone buys a product outside of purely ads, but again ads are a very strong driving force. I don't think internet ads are nearly as effective at 'mind-influencing'(not being sarcastic) as the traditional mediums. I actually click on ads frequently on the web, because I see a product that might interest me. For example, I see an ad for Linode and it presents me a compelling price point so I go and investigate it. hmm I am not entirely sure what I set out to say in this response, but I don't think the point that ads are what keeps people poor is very accurate. I believe a lack of access to resources particularly relating to education and opportunity are what keep poor people poor.

In my world, Microsoft started to turn hate into, "I will take a second look at what you are offering--maybe--if I'm in a good mood." Their advertising is still just noise, and a huge waste of money in my world.

I started to turn when they offerd some products for free.(I still don't use the products they offered, but it was a nice gesture.) The best Ad I heard was on here. A guy commented, 'I like my Surface. I use it to take notes in class.' I started to think about the possibilities this devise could offer over Apple's products.

I still have some healing to do though--I was in Costco today and looked at a Surface, but just pushed one key and walked away. Do a few more acts of kindness Microsoft, and get that Surface price as low as possible; I will seriously think about giving you money again or at least push a few more keys. I don't think I will ever pay for your OS though--just on principle. As to ads, I think Microsoft is wasting money. Manufacture good hardware, and keep giving away software--people will notice.

You have barely used their hardware, but you believe it to be good hardware. Seems like effective ads to me. Have you actually used the device? Its kb is terrible and its touchpad is a joke. MS natives ads have dominated news feeds for the last few months. A/ws these points are meaningless. Just observing trends.

MS paid amd gave a ton of Surfaces to the NFL to use on TV... They were used as iPad stands for the first week , until MS clarified the contract requirements.

"If I were starting life over again, I am inclined to think that I would go into the advertising business in preference to almost any other. The general raising of standards of modern civilization among all groups of people during the past half-century would have been impossible without that spreading of the knowledge of higher standards by means of advertising."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

That was a time before modern communications technology made it very easy for knowledge of higher standards to spread naturally, and a time of much less dangerous advertising. Advertisers today literally use brain scanners to design adverts that manipulate people most effectively. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromarketing And advertisers have the ability to test and refine their ads far beyond what advertisers of Roosevelt's time could do, using tracking that would be considered stalker behaviour if an individual did it. If advertising reverted to 1930s level there'd be much less need to defend yourself from it.

"By the way, if anyone here is in marketing or advertising...kill yourself. Thank you. Just planting seeds, planting seeds is all I'm doing. No joke here, really. Seriously, kill yourself, you have no rationalisation for what you do, you are Satan's little helpers. Kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself now. Now, back to the show. Seriously, I know the marketing people: 'There's gonna be a joke comin' up.' There's no fuckin' joke. Suck a tail pipe, hang yourself...borrow a pistol from an NRA buddy, do something...rid the world of your evil fuckin' presence."

- Bill Hicks

You know people once thought tobacco was good for their health too.

I don't know if this quote is true but advertising in Roosevelt's times was really different. It was not a creepy tracking business tracking everything you do and traditional advertising was much less present everywhere back then.

Yes, the purpose of ads is to convince people to buy things that they otherwise may not. But shouldnt that be a positive thing, more often than not? Traditional reasoning would suggest that someone buys something because it improves their lives, so selling it to them is a positive act.

I had a startup that made PowerPoint collaboration software, and we advertised on Google for terms like "work on presentation at the same time" and "PowerPoint collaboration." We got almost all of our users from Google, and most of these users were thrilled to find our software which they wouldn't have been able to find without targeted ads.

Of course ideally, the country would provide some form of no questions ask aid. But I live in the US and its a very 'touchy' subject. So I must always seek a solution that embraces corporatocracy, believe me I am very much for tax supported wealth redistribution. It has been shown to be highly successful, but its basically a sin in my country.

A/ws even people struggling financially like to relax and enjoy 'content', should this just be a privilege of the wealthy? Without ads it seems like it would be even more so. As for being a solution to their problems, its not ads, but the type of services ads can support. Using a Search Engine as an example again, they are a way to educate and empower oneself. I used a search engine to teach myself programming and I now am a developer. While of course most poor people could never dream of doing such a thing, for numerous reasons. Making content only accessable behind a pay wall acts to strength someone's,without means, ability to compete in the modern world.