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Advertising of the Future, Already Here
prostoalex writes "Did Stephen Spielberg predict the future of advertising, when in Minority Report the relevant ads were delivered by retina scanner, which could then personalize any message? August issue of Inc. magazine takes a look at future of advertising and who's offering advanced technologies today. Internet search engines and helpful utilities from companies like Claria already know a lot about your shopping and browsing habits. Combine that with advanced tech from TV viewership tracker Nielsen and large nationwide databases like Experian, and the advertising messages of the future could get extremely personal."
Just what some people would want are "extremely personal ads" where they walk by a kiosk in the mall, and it asks if they want to switch from Viagra to Levitra...
"Truth is not decided by majority vote" consensus gentium -- Norman Geisler
Gah, it'll be a grim future when you can't avoid ads by closing your eyes (because they'll be projected inside your eye).
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
At Taco posting an article about intrusive ads. The future is here, it's the Slashvertisement (TM). Oh, the humanity.
You can't directly put something on MY eye unless I get an implant of some kind. As long as I refuse to get any implants then they can't advertise to me..
I like muppets.
Well, as a non-female entity, if I don't have to see any more Stayfree ads, I'll take that as a positive.
So does anyone have one or more good reasons why this kind of intrusive abuse of advertising should not be banned right now?
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?" Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.
... advertising of the present?
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
Seriously, I would appreciate some ads that are relevant to me. Instead of punch the monkey and Free* iPods, I could be getting discounts on stuff I'm interested in and might actually buy. If I could get a guaranteed higher quality of ad, I would definitely give up some of my personal information, especially to sites that I care about.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Helpful is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose. Helping your PC crash is one thing Gator's stuff is known for.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Am I the only one who finds the way Amazon presents items to you a bit frightening?
Just to give credit where it's due, it's probably more accurate to say that Philip K. Dick foresaw this advertising, as it or something similar appears not only in his short story Minority Report, but throughout his fiction.
I happen to be a young ad exec (not to mention a privacy nut, avid slashdot reader, gamer, geek, etc) and I'm really getting tired of people not understanding our industry.
Are there sleezy advertising people? HELL YES! Is it the vast majority of them? HELL NO! You see, there is this interesting phenomenon where people tend to only remember negative experiences over positive ones, and then make generalizations that most are bad.
And guess what, this is true of ANY industry. Software development? Yup, you got your sleezeballs there too, but you wouldn't say the vast majority are that way. (Or would you?)
What really pisses me off is that everybody assumes that our goal is to just annoy you and grab your attention in any way possible. Attention Slashdotters: We Are Not Idiots! (All of us at least. We know damn well that if we are advtertising a product to privacy advocate geeks, we will not win them over with a popup that says "based on your previous purchases of viagra from www.biggerpenis.com....". But the truth is that often times the advertising us geeks find offense with is not targeted at us at all, and in fact the target audience has no problem whatsoever with it.
New technologies will continue to be developed to target more accurately because that generates better results. I repeat: IT GENERATES BETTER RESULTS! This means that due to it being targeted better, people are buying more! We are not holding a gun to their heads saying they have to buy, we inform them of the product (and yes, some do it less truthfully than others, I will not lie about that)and they make the decision to buy.
I also want to comment about a new form of advertising many of you most likely participate in. Viral advertising. All those cool video clips that companies put out, all those funny websites like CoqRock.com, or Subservient Chicken, all of these get passed on by people like you because you find them interesting, clever, and entertaining. THAT is the goal of most advertising agencies. Believe it or not, we LIKE making good ads that people like. New technology lets us do this in different ways.
So in summary, I'm not saying there isn't a dark side to our industry (like every single other friggin industry in existence), I'm just saying that everybody seems to focus on the bad and ignore the good. If people want some proof that good advertising exists, check out the Cannes Lion Awards. They have videos of all the winners, and I'm sure most Slashdotters would approve.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
You have to respect the freedoms of others. You can't ban something just because some people (such as yourself) might be offended by it sometime in the future, you can only act after a deed is done. Last time I looked nobody was jailed for WANTING to kill someone, it only happens if they actually do.
By acting preemptively you're making presumpions about people's behaviour based on your own flawed experiences, which are probably not relevant to the situation at hand.
This is all separate to the issues of freedom of speech of the advertisers themselves.
Slashvertize.
That might not be the future, but it sure is the present.
I can only hope that advertisers start to realize what they're doing by making their ads increasingly intrusive. I've done a fair amount of work studying advertising, and it's shown that by creating louder, personalized, in-your-face ads is more effective to about 90% of the market, and it turns off about an additional 10% (these numbers incredibly generalized for your reading enjoyment). However, as great as that sounds to marketers, advertising has increased so dramatically on such a huge scale, that these stunts are yielding diminishing marginal returns, because they now do it continuously. It's nearly impossible for today's generation to escape advertisement and endorsements. Increasing the volume has reached the point of turning off just about as many people as it gains - and this will become a huge factor as the baby boomer population reaches Senior Citizen status. The elderly respond far better to conservative advertising than to brash advertising - they also become less likely to switch brands, having built up brand associations over several decades. As they're going to be a dominant economic force, not earning wages but spending money nonetheless, advertisers need to back off of the intrusive advertising if they want to continue making sales.
Personalized ads will be just as invisible, thanks to AdBlock.
My behavior with AdBlock: if the ad contains movement of any sort - animated GIFs, Flash etc. - I will always AdBlock it. Small, stationary ads I generally leave in place, especially if they are around the border of the article I am reading. As Firefox/Mozilla usage increases and tools like AdBlock become (hopefully) widespread, it will be interesting to see if advertising changes in response. The "conventional wisdom" in advertising is you need to make your ad stand out, hence pop-ups and wildly animated adverts. These are the most noxious and instrusive. If users start to react to this sort of ad, maybe it will die out over time? I could live with a world of small, static ads like Google's text ads - they can even be useful sometimes.
Sailing over the event horizon
I can only hope that advertisers start to realize what they're doing by making their ads increasingly intrusive. I've done a fair amount of work studying advertising, and it's shown that by creating louder, personalized, in-your-face ads is more effective to about 90% of the market, and it turns off about an additional 10% (these numbers incredibly generalized for your reading enjoyment).
However, as great as that sounds to marketers, advertising has increased so dramatically on such a huge scale, that these stunts are yielding diminishing marginal returns, because they now do it continuously. It's nearly impossible for today's generation to escape advertisement and endorsements. Increasing the volume has reached the point of turning off just about as many people as it gains - and this will become a huge factor as the baby boomer population reaches Senior Citizen status.
The elderly respond far better to conservative advertising than to brash advertising - they also become less likely to switch brands, having built up brand associations over several decades. As they're going to be a dominant economic force, not earning wages but spending money nonetheless, advertisers need to back off of the intrusive advertising if they want to continue making sales.
This is actually good... or at worst neutral... Worry not about technology divining your consumer tastes, but rather about it creating them...
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
Isn't more accurate personal advertising a good thing?
I'm already getting those personalized ads via e-mail! I mean, how did they know I'm up to my eyes in debt with a small, flacid penis and looking for hot horny teen girls?
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Hello, I am your digital shopping assistant! I saw that you were looking at some of our trousers - may I help you with that? I think you would like these, kind of like in that porn that you watched yesterday. Or these, maybe? The extra air might help you get rid of that fungus thing that I found in your medical record.
To the mods: Yeah, redundant, but I'm sure you'll be praying for Adblock :-)
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
For me, i ignore 99% of all ads, even if they might interest me.
And for that 1% that make it thru my 'ingore filter', i vow to never purchase a product from that company again.
Does that mean i have mastery control over markets? No, but I'm sure I'm not that different then other consumers who are sick and tired of the ad-overload that is EVERYWHERE and have learned to tune it all out.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Could get personla? For 10's of years now I've been recieving advertising mail that says things like "[myname] you may have won [prize]" and "[myname] has been pre-approved. Personalized advertising hardly seems new.
Just remember, they can't force you to buy any of the products.
Future technology would enable a very large penis popping out of the screen and shout: "ENLARGE YOURS TOO!!"
Ang imagine getting 10 such spams a day - AT WORK!!
Advertisements were getting too personal already in the early 90s. Our beloved fax machine has been getting personalized messages like 'Dear Fax Newsdesk! We are happy to offer you, mr. Newsdesk, a ...' for a very long time.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
The idea of tapping into databases like Experian for the purpose of advertising creeps me out. Those databases are highly controversial and were not supposed to exist to begin with. This is very troublesome and scary and should be stopped before it is too late.
Just block ads outright. I keep an updated hosts file of ad servers here. The whole situation with flash ads, firefox proof pop-ups, etc is getting ridiculous. Funny, I've been blocking ads for years yet I still buy stuff.
What about making some sort of contact lens that also blocks retina scans? Sounds like a worthwile investment to me
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
Well, M$ advertising don't appear personal, im on a gaming website with MSN Search advertising Ski Resorts, i watch discovery and M$ are advertising child at school with outlines of their bodies in white. Only a few ads I see are relevant to what I do, most are complete rubbish about IPods and screensavers.
It's not Spielberg who invented it, but Philip K. Dick. You can read something about it in its novel
"Sales Pitch", written in 1953.
yahoo is probably further ahead on data collection than anyone. they track every link on the site, the federate all data you associate with your ID, they have a demographic profile on you if you provided it, and they have an massive infrastructure doing analysis and mining on everything they find.
1. Old pc
2. Smoothwall GPL
3. Ad Zapper (in the smoothwall, google martybugs)
4. Privoxy
5. TOR
6. Linux all around.
Track me bitch...
I see no ads unless I WANT to see them. On TV, I make frequent use of the mute button.
I'm about to build a Mythtv box and take FULL control of what I watch as I hear Mythtv busts ads automagically.
Where I can sit on my enormous fat ass eating doughnuts (bought by driving 20 meters in my SUV to the doughnut store) and having ads beamed into my retina and my brain and where the CIA can read my thoughts using the patriot act and advanced technologies. All my personal details are on an implanted chip that yahoo, google and msn can set cookies with. I am proud to be American. We need to impose these wholesome values onto terrorists like Iraq and Iran. They don't know what they are missing out on.
Well the article seems to be /.ed for the moment, but judging by the blurb it doesn't appear to be anything radically new.
/. reported on something a little more impressive awhile back, and although I can't find the /. link (due to our great search system) I did manage to find the link to the Human Locator website. The technology uses cameras to track your position walking down a street or through a mall and then can show ads specifically at you. I think there was also an effort to somehow find personal information about pretty much all its intended customers and then target these interactive ads towards your preferences.
I'm pretty sure
Nothing disturbs me more than blind loyalism towards some unrealistic and over-idealistic notion of one's nationality.
I'm surprised there is no forced browser UID yet that cannot be removed and no permanent undeletable cookies. I'm also quite surprised there is no DRM that prevents you from blocking ads in browsers as well as other things like stopping you from extracting pictures from websites. If porn was permanently bound to its ads then it would probably make a lot more money.
When it comes to the Internet at least, ad execs seem to act like idiots. Maybe it's just the dumb ones that get assigned to it, maybe they are pretending, I don't know, but I find very little intelligence or ethics areound in 'net advertising.
I used to work for a newspaper and we did online and print ads. The people that bought print ads seemed to understand the concept. They would work with our design guys to get an ad custom made for the paper and the target market (university students). They understood that people could skip over the ad if they wanted, and that even those that read it were highly unlikely to immediatly run out and buy their product. It was just about brand building and recognition.
However online, all that fell out their ears. They'd slather the same banner ad on our site as all the rest of the net, they wanted to spend no time or money on any kind of customization. Then, because customers could click through and buy something, they seemed to think they should, and would get incensed since there weren't tons of people rushing to buy their product.
Then let's take the nature of lots of ads these days. When I browse the paper or watch TV, I see lots of ads offering to sell me real products. Pizza Hut wants to sell me a Pizza, Best Buy wants to sell me a TV and so on. They aren't kidding either, they really want to sell me that. Online I see some of that, but far more often I see "Punch the monkey and win!" or "Your computer has been infected!" or "You have 6 messages waiting!" In other words, fraudlant ads. They are trying to draw me in to a site where they can hit me with spyware, or get me signed up for some bougus deals, etc.
Then of course there is spyware. Look, I don't really have a problem with ad sponsored software, like say Opera. I personally won't partake, but I don't have a problem with the concept. I don't even have a problem with software that sits and acts like a little ad bot, popping up ads when it thinks it's relivant. However it needs to be disclosed that this is what's done, and it needs to go away when asked.
I'm now a computer support guy and let me tell you, spyware is the worst of the worst. Viruses are more benign. When a system gets loaded with spyware (and lots of spyware is such that it opens backdoors for its friends to come in) it becomes unusable. Often it fucks up DNS or the TCP stack, and even when it doesn't the system is so slow, and so many ads pop up all the time, it's unusable. IT's also hard as fuck to remove. It hides itself in every way possible to try and stay on. I've literally spent hours with multiple automated tools, only to find a peice that I missed trying to reinstall a bunch of shit.
I see more scumminess and more invasiveness in online ads than any other kind.
I understand a big marketing push when you create a new brand/product. But afterwards, is it really necessary to advertise so much for established products? I.e. Coke and Pepsi. I drink Coke because I like it's taste, but I like Diet Pepsi when I drink diet since it tastes better than Diet Coke. Advertising these makes no difference to me for these products. The new Pepsi One stuff, sure, I understand the need to market it.
I've never understood this, please enlighten me.
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
Bumvertising.
It's good for your company, and it's good for the bums!
everything in moderation
ok, there have to be some ads or too many useful sites may have to go subscription only, that ThinkGeek ad up there doesn't look that bad.
I wouldn't mind non flashy ads, includes flash and animated GIFs. The semi-tergeted text only and out of the way Google ads are not that much of an eye sore.
Ads for something I'm looking for might have the chance of being useful once in a long while. What if browers have a user definable file telling the advertising site the products you're interested in and are looking for a good price before buying. I wouldn't mind seeing a few ads for a good inexpensive 500GB hard drive or $10 DVDs.
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
What I want to know is how long will it be before we start seeing holographic ads in the sky and all around us (airvertising)? Not sure I like where this is going. Soon we will have to don anti airvertising goggles to block out the ads a la Steven Utley's 'The Real World' http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/original s_archive/utley/utley3.html. Here we go....
So if I don't buy much, would I see fewer ads, since I'm interested in fewer products?
I don't watch TV, and mostly browse the internet for news and programming info. But I guess that if some database knows I go to Slashdot a lot, I'll just see lots of ads for computers all the time.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
says what the advertising people all refuse to hear.
if it ever really does become like minority report, and you dont want to hear your name spouted 6,000 times a day by billboards, just wear sunglasses.
but then again, i shouldnt HAVE to wear sunglasses if i dont want to.
doesnt this new kind of advertising violate some kind of privacy law?
How long until the entire American economy is based on people convincing other poeple to buy cheap stuff made elsewhere at a huge markup for the brand that they believe will bring them happiness/money/love/sex?
Almost everything I buy is the generic, the exact same product made by the same people in the same plant, but at 1/4 the price because a brand isn't printed on it. This way, almost all my money is going to the slaveowners in Asia that made the stuff for 2 cents an hour, instead of an ad agency.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
from TFA : Mod-Pac came to ClearGauge for help in launching a new 24-hour online service specializing in running fast, less expensive print jobs for businesses. Instead of conducting endless brainstorming sessions in search of a clever campaign hook... ...attacked the problem the way a government contractor might set about building a nuclear submarine.
From the article:
Imagine a day when you can text-message a discount coupon to a cell phone user just as she walks past your shop. That day is here.
Wow, a COUPON!!!!! Goodness me, what glorious technology! Heaven forbid you spend 75 cents on paper and a marker to make a "10% off today!" sign for the window!
On another note, I'm sure looking forward to walking through the mall and being spammed by 35,000 text messages from Baby Gap, Cinnabon, and Old Navy. Perhaps they'll even have a price war, with Sears beaming me an extra 5% off as I approach the entrance to Macy's.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
With some fancy printing technology, and some database-work, 40.000 subscribers were delivered a satelite photo of their own house as cover story, and several personalized ads inside.
Kinda creepy, but still refreshingly cutting edge, for a offline initiative..
I agree that advertising can be a good thing for both vendor and customer. Like anything, it can be taken too far.
What I have issues with is the way that much sucessful advertising grabs ones attention by generating some sort of discomfort within the prospect -- Is your breath fresh enough? Are your investments secure? Is your child safe with that baby sitter? Many marketers use techniques of fear to generate discomfort before offering their product as a solution to the discomfort.
I'm not saying that this is always a bad thing, however I do think that it is important to keep in mind that advertising itself has the potential to make one feel bad about one's self. In doing so, it can exacerbate the problems of low self-esteem and depression that are so prevalent in Western culture. We are unconsciously encouraged to turn to products and services in order to fix things that we feel are wrong with ourselves. Often times, we are manipulated into believing that a problem exists where previously there was none.
Not to get political, but this same technique has been used by politicians for years. People on both sides of an issue use hyperbole and fear to create a desire for their version of the solution.
I don't know that we can or should fight this trend. I do however believe that it is important for us to be aware that our environment manipulates us even as we manipulate it. It's a feedback loop.
They didn't need to implant anything. (Biometrics gone bad.)
You could try staring into a high powered laser with both eyes, one after another, but that's an extreme solution. (And even at that, they could read you regardless. You'd have to be deaf to ignore the ads.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
{focused sound beam} "Pssst! You've been glancing at that young woman across the room. She's over 18, so it's OK to ask about her. We know what she likes. Would you like to know what she likes? Nod if it's ok to charge your card. We can get you her phone number. Would you like to have that? Nod if we can charge your card. Would you like to now if she's dating anyone? Nod if it's OK to charge your card. Would you like to see her naked? We have her last airport security scan images. Nod if it's OK to charge your credit card. Our eye tracking security camera system is watching out for what interests you, all the time ....."
"Helpful software from Claria" ?????
Give me a break! Claria is one of the most obnoxious purveyors of Windoze crapware on the planet.
And, because WE go and look, Googling for products when we need them, the sites we find are garanteed a sale.
This gets into media studies but I believe that the future of broad casting is NO future.
What I suspect will happen is that we will have specialized content aggregators that we look at, like we used to look at car magazines for cars and audio magazines for audio components.
But instead of magazines which were mostly waste, we will be able to focus in on what we want, a couple of sites, possibly a podcast or two, backed up by some blogs.
Then we'll be in a position to buy.
Problem with that 'trend' is that its going to put a lot of people 'on the slag heap' of history.
A study of the buggy-whip makers is in order.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
So in summary, I'm not saying there isn't a dark side to our industry (like every single other friggin industry in existence), I'm just saying that everybody seems to focus on the bad and ignore the good.
Most of the industry is "dark": it manipulates emotions and drives in order to increase consumption and profits. Often, you manipulate people into harming themselves. Whether you use viral advertising, pornography, music, comedy, or high art, it all amounts to the same thing.
It will take decades more until psychologists will have worked out what ought to be permissible and what ought not to be permissible, but I have no doubt that most of today's advertising will eventually be considered analogous to toxic waste and harmful drugs and will be banned under stiff penalties. And, yes, we will figure out how to do that without infringing on free speech rights, because psychological manipulation by advertisers is not the same as free speech rights for citizens.
I could try and enunciate my feelings towards you and your industry, but someone who has passed on before me has done a better job of it than I ever will:
By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. Thank you, thank you. Just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day they'll take root, I don't know. You try. You do what you can. Kill yourselves. Seriously though, if you are, do. No really, there's no rationalisation for what you do, and you are Satan's little helpers, OK? Kill yourselves, seriously. You're the ruiner of all things good. Seriously, no, this is not a joke. "There's gonna be a joke coming..." There's no fucking joke coming, you are Satan's spawn, filling the world with bile and garbage, you are fucked and you are fucking us, kill yourselves, it's the only way to save your fucking soul. Kill yourself.
I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too. "Oh, you know what Bill's doing? He's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market. He's very smart." Oh man, I am not doing that, you fucking evil scumbags.
"You know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar, that's a big dollar, a lot of people are feeling that indignation, we've done research, huge market. He's doing a good thing." Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scumbags, quit putting a godamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet.
--Bill Hicks, 1961-1994
All Speilberg did was buy the rights to a story written 30 years ago - by arguably the most visionary writer in this century - Philip K Dick.
;}
Even other amazing writers like William Gibson and Neal Stephenson are simply extrapolating the futuristic vision as envisioned by PKD way before their time.
Beginning with Blade Runner, Total Recall, etc PKD's books have become the foundation of 'futuristic' sci-fi/cyberpunk movies as Hollywood continues to realize it has no creative vision whatsoever...
However, the more people that become aware of PKD's amazing writing and vision, the better
Also check out the upcoming 'Scanner Darkly' by Linklater - it's another PKD story gone movie coming out soon...
Gekido's Lair
If the ad companies can get to the point where they ONLY offer me ads for:
1) Movies I REALLY want to see.
2) Books I REALLY want to read.
3) Comics I REALLY want.
4) Computer hardware I not only WANT, but I can AFFORD.
5) Food I REALLY want to eat.
etc., etc.
THEN that will be really nice.
In other words, NO MORE FUCKING SPAM FOR CRAP I DO *NOT* WANT!
What the ad industry needs to do is realize that there is NO SUCH THING AS SELLING! You cannot convince me to buy something you have just because you've let me know you have it. Maybe you can convince the
I am the one who INITIATES my purchasing decisions. Most of those decisions come from being informed through articles that a product exists and can do certain things that I want done or to be able to do. Almost NONE of my purchasing decisions comes from advertising - and absolutely none comes from spam. (Print)ads may be able to alert me that a product exists, but I don't buy it until I've seen a review somewhere or a positive comment by someone I know. At least not stuff that costs over $5.
So collecting all this "personal" info about me isn't going to do you squat until you really CAN determine what it is I want to do and how much I can spend to do it - and that in comparison with everything ELSE I want to do and how much disposable income I have.
And that ain't happening any time soon, no matter how much data mining and privacy invasion you do.
The ONLY way you could do this is if you set up a Web site where *I* can post what I want, how much I have to spend on it, and then reverse market this information to the companies that have these products at those price points.
This is what the Internet was SUPPOSED to be doing by now - and to some degree it does: when a customer does a Google search for a product, and then self-selects the company he wants to buy from.
In other words, deliver your company's profitability totally into the hands of the consumer.
And since you're primates, I don't think you have the nerve to do that. I think you want to try to FORCE your customers to buy your stuff. Which is why you spam, and use invasive advertising.
Standard primate response. And totally useless to achieving your goal, which is typical primate behavior. Humans will ALWAYS make the wrong decision and take the wrong path to achieving their goals.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
1. Get the Adblock Firefox extension at:
http://adblock.mozdev.org/
Install it and restart Firefox.
2. Use Firefox to visit www.slashdot.org, go to Tools > Adblock > List All Blockable Elements >
a) http://.falkag.net/*
b) http://.tacoda.net/* =I'm not sure if this is ad site, but the first one is for sure
3. Right-click and block individual image-type ads, if any.
The real predictors were surely Pohl and Kornbluth, in their novel The space merchants from the 50s (and yes, the title is a clever pun). I still have a copy. It's wrong about the future - oil and population run out of control much too soon - but (IMFHO) dead right about the unholy alliance of corporations, governments and the advertising industry. It's one of the two books about dysfunctional societies that should be compulsory in the school curriculum, the other one being 1984.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
As much as I agree with the general sentiment of this thread about marketing (which I frequently get sick of), there are times where I actually appreciate it. I don't like marketing and advertising that's in my face, and I don't like marketing that lies to me. But some marketing material is just out there to be informative for people who want it and ask for it, without being in anyone's face.
Better results for me means being fully informed about all the relevant options I have, at a time and level of detail of my choosing. This is also a type of marketing, and it's one that I respect. I do know some marketing people who focus on this goal, and I appreciate it.
I actually like the way that the shoe salesman walks up to sell me a shoe when I walk in. I really have no idea what I want and it's not a decision I want to make. What I care about is trusting the guy to sell me something that works, and that's what will get me to come back again and again. That's also marketing. The guy's job relies on him selling lots of shoes, but he knows that his best approach is just to be honest with people. (and to chat, and joke, and so on.)
I also quite like the way that Amazon suggests books for me to read. It's only there when I ask for it, it often offers good suggestions, and every so often they might get a sale out of it. That's the type of marketing that I like.
I think this, combined with the recent tech allowing the projection of images into mid-air could be a powerful and dangerous tool in the hands of corporations. The type of immersive advertising seen in Minority Report is basically possible now, it's just a matter of whether people would put up with it..
No flame, just a detailed response.
> I happen to be a young ad exec (not to mention a privacy nut, avid slashdot reader, gamer, geek, etc)
> and I'm really getting tired of people not understanding our industry.
I can understand and accept that. Are you prepared to understand and accept that there are some things you don't understand about -why- people hate advertising and advertisers?
> Are there sleezy advertising people? HELL YES! Is it the vast majority of them? HELL NO! You see...
I see, you don't. I don't -care- that the majority of advertisers are not sleazy. We're viewing things from 2 different POVs here.
> What really pisses me off is that everybody assumes that our goal is to just annoy you and
> grab your attention in any way possible.
Actually, we don't. Most industries are pushing the same sort of ill-advised personnel cuts, the "do it cheaper and sloppier" mentality of management, the push to reduce customer service people and turn it over to piss-poor web sites and botched touch-tone phone systems.
When a company I deal with -directly- takes this too far, I can terminate the relationship, which corrects the problem.
In advertising, there is no relationship to terminate. From the very start, I am being imposed upon with no choice in the matter.
Think about it. If my bank screws up regularly, sending me tons of crap, I can change banks. I have -no- relationship with most advertisers. They screw up, and I can't stop the crap.
It's not that advertisers are worse; it's that the nature of the function means that poor performance impacts me more negatively than poor performance in other business areas.
Good performance by advertisers, on the other hand, has very little impact on me.
> Attention Slashdotters: We Are Not Idiots!...the truth is that often times the advertising us geeks
> find offense with is not targeted at us at all, and in fact the target audience has no problem whatsoever with it.
And this is relevant to what exactly?
Fundamentally, this is the problem. I -don't care- that you please 90% of the people with an ad. If I cannot opt -out- of ads by an advertiser (TV, radio, print, etc. as well as internet), I am annoyed.
> New technologies will continue to be developed to target more accurately because that generates better results.
This is part of the problem. You have just admitted that the purpose of the targeting is to increase sales. This can be accomplished best not by removing all misdirected ads, but by reducing them to a level that satisfies 90% of the people (as I mentioned above), and screwing the remaining 10%.
In fact, you can achieve this by screwing over 100% of the people, no more than 10% of the time.
> So in summary, I'm not saying there isn't a dark side to our industry (like every single other
> friggin industry in existence), I'm just saying that everybody seems to focus on the bad and ignore the good.
Yes, we are. And we will continue to. Ultimately, you must understand: I have -no- relationship with most advertisers, nor do I desire one. -Any- inconvenience pisses me off. I am not going to give you any credit for doing it well, and will penalize you severely for doing it badly.
Yes, it's unfair. Tough noogies; I have no mandate to be fair to people who go out of their way to annoy me. I do not care that annoying me is not their intent.
Yeah, right here on slashdot.
...that was supposed to read:
The whole point of targeted advertising is to NOT piss you off with ads about things you have no interest in.
Extremely aggressive adds
I hope the future will bring adds like in Diamond Age. Whith holographic projections rushing at you if you don't pay enough attention. I can just picture a walk in the city at night being pounded by Godzilla because you didn't notice the pringles add. And ofcause in the addcrowed streets the holograms would battle each other for your attention endlessly, the only escape being closing your eyes and making a run for it.
To the best of my abilities, I will resist and hinder any attempt by companies out there to try to pigeonhole me, advertise to me, influence me or lie to me.
I browse the Web with Firefox, Adblock and zero cookies other than the three allowed on my white list. Usually I simply refuse to visit sites which don't force me to turn cookies on, but on occasion to read interesting articles, I've been known to use a service like BugMeNot.com, clear all cookies, then temporarily turn on cookies "from site only" and until end of session before logging in.
I have only one checking account, one saving account and one credit card, paid in full every month. I don't rely on credit except for my car and my condo. I don't hesitate changing bank or credit card company as soon as I feel they've tried to screw me in any way, whether it be dubious charges or an irritating amount of junk mail from their "affiliates" and I have no problem letting them know. I'm always courteous on the phone with customer service but I use precise language to express my disatisfaction with said company and ask for a confirmation # and names of the persons I talked to.
Whenever I find myself having to visit a big box store, I tend to pay with cash, politely refusing superfluous "extended warranty" offer. If the cashier ever ask for my phone number or zip code they're respectively always 12345678 and 12345. It has never happened yet, but if they persisted or asked for ID, I would leave the merchandise on the counter and walk out without arguing. Rebates are filled in, photocopied for reference and placed in the mailbox the same day.
On occasion, interesting credit card offers (like opening a credit card and getting $30 off from buying just $50 worth of stuff) are used, paid off in full and closed ASAP because the card outlived its usefulness. Among the reasons I give when asked why the account is being closed I tell them their privacy policy isn't up to my standards, I can't trust my information in hands of their affiliates citing minimizing my exposure toward rampant identity thefts.
Never trust what comes out of the mouth of a salesperson, the vast majority of them just want their commission and forget you a picosecond later. Inform yourself before visiting the store or the showroom to better test which salespersons are liars, call them on it and demand to see a manager and another salesperson.
I try not to let advertizing sway my reason in selecting a product. If the product is a substantial purchase, I'll refer to consumer advocacy groups like Consumer Reports. I have zero loyalty toward any store or brand. Every product is evaluated on its own merit. If two products are somehow tied, I may do a bit of research, selecting whichever company CEO has the least ridiculous annual compensation, the least scandalous history, the more socially or environmentally responsible behavior.
I'll freely admit I'm able to compare products precisely because they were advertised to me in the first place. It happens. But quite often while researching more on the products I come in contact with additional brands which were never advertized toward me either by being brought up to my attention by a consumer organization or positive word of mouth.
"...shark still looks fake."
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
In other words... Spyware. Do we really want to reward companys for putting spyware on our computers and collecting information about us? You should be able to specify what type of ads you would like to see, not what spyware companys think is good for you.
Also, much of spyware data is not very accurate because of multi-user computers. This is more of a problem with single user environments, like Windows 98, because they have the same cookies for ALL users.
While your intentions are, well, not pure per se but at least on the more transparent side of grey, here's a scenario I would suffer straight out of TFA:
I'm not necessarily a religious geek, however, I do have a digital picture frame and a nice little setup to rotate the pictures every hour. In that rotation is a picture of the last supper, first off I think jesus was a great philosopher and a great man, and I also thought the last supper by da vinci was an amazing peice of art.
According to TFA, the next up in my rotation would be an ad. An ad, had it happened 20 (?!) years ago, would be for Jimmy Swaggert or some crap like that. Do I want to see an ad for a damn preacher just because I have a famous work of art show up? NO! Do I want to see an ad for, what I would consider, one of the 'black hats' of theology? NO!!!!!
While unintentional, your automated advertising will piss off alot of people for many different reasons.
Just IMAGINE if the porn sites start utilizing the advertising services from TFA: Some closet gay geek is walking down the street with a bunch of work associates, when all of a sudden a big ad pops up on a billboard in front of him:
WELCOME JIMMY!
COME VISIT BOYS-R-US.COM! YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO, AND SO DO WE!
Advertising needs to scale-down, not ramp-up, it's intrusiveness. As it stands, I consider any ad on the internet (or on TV for that matter), to be no better then a used car salesman. Why? Because it's in-your-face, and immediately that puts up the deffensive barrier to any consumer. What advertising needs to do is go back to the days of yellow pages and classified ads. In fact, it would be 10 times more effective that way; think about it, SourceForge is an advertising medium (so to speak) for open-source projects. How many downloads a day does SourceForge get? I would pay good money for a service similar to froogle that wasn't subject to false positives (a plasma TV for $0.39? Come on!), or outright fraud. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, consumers willing to pay for advertising if only it could be trusted!
In the majority of cases that I've witnessed, your industry preys psychologically on human psychology and our insecurities. When I think of software, I think of a majority of products that are possibly overpriced but in many cases, useful and worth the expense. When I think of advertising, I think of intrusive tactics on television, though e-mails, at the beginning of movies, and on billboards on highways that get in my face and distract me against my desires.
Why do you think we have such hostility against marketing? In perhaps 1% of cases would I say that advertisements are informative instead of exploitative and obnoxious. In fact, due to advertising, I've had to stop watching TV, stop going to the movies (on time - 20 minutes late seems to be okay), stop reading magazines (of which 2/3rds are often ads), and install ad blockers for e-mail and the web. I get phone calls with live and recorded product promotions, where my sense of politeness and my sense of privacy have to fight one another. I fear answering my door, because about a quarter of the time, it's someone advertising and wanting money out of me. My snail mail box is packed with "coupons" (which are hardly coupons much less promotions) and repetitive flyers. How can you possibly advocate that we should accept advertising like we accept software? It's absolutely ludicrous.
You people should be ashamed of yourselves. It's utterly disgusting how you intrude into our lives. I met someone with whom I was quite compatible, but upon discovering that he was in college for marketing, I refused to date him because after years of having to deal with your bullshit, I can no longer do so. The bombardment of garbage I experience in a day is overstimulating and makes me feel utterly sick.
Do us a favour and get a real job doing something constructive for society instead of capitalizing on the rest of us and making money off of desire and shortcomings. You are reprehensible.
Tell me, in layman's terms, something positive that successful marketers and advertisers bring to the table apart from the ability to make (also possibly useless) already overwealthy stakeholders rich, and I may dispel my notions that your profession is the blemish on the backside of humanity.
I'm sure I'd just use Proxomitron like I do now.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
... because in the future, sneaker-nets will be all the rage again.
Some interesting observations here
Some interesting observations here
1. Die. (It's the only way to be sure - Hicks [Aliens - 1986])
2. Become a hermit in the wilderness with NO contact with the Internet/mass media/society at large.
3. Record media for later consumption and fast forward through the ads upon consumption -- all but impossible to do for audio-only media unless it is digitally edited and re-saved to eliminate the commercials.
Other than options 1 an 2, I see no way of avoid advertising at all. In my opinion, the truly best ads entertain while they inform. The best example of this would be the old 'Where's the beef' commercial from Wendy's. McDonald's may be the bigest hamburger seller on the planet, but I find Wendy's (and White Castle) hamburgers to be the tastiest of corporate fast food burgers out there.
In closing, making all ads illegal in order to stop them all is a utopian pipe dream -- there is just too much money (and too many wallet/purse carrying consumers) at stake to banish them. Free speech concerns are a non-issue in capitalist-driven societies like the 'western world' such as the USA.