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Consumer Ad Blocking Doubles
Dotnaught writes to tell us about an InformationWeek article reporting that, according to a Forrester Research report, consumers are fed up with ads. From the article: "In the past two years, the number of consumers using pop-up blockers and spam filters has more than doubled.. More than half of all American households now report using these ad blocking technologies to block unwanted pitches... Today, 15% of consumers acknowledge using their digital video recorders to skip ads, more than three times as many as in 2004." The study would have been more meaningful if it hadn't conflated spam blocking with ad blocking.
Consumers have been fed up with ads evr since Cable TV was promising to make television "ad free". What consumer cares at all about ads? We don't, it's the sellers that care about ads not the buyers.
Say bad words about my book, in cold oatmeal, or I shall sue!
What I'd really be interested in is a study on how effective advertising is, and the trends over time, on several types of advertisements. I can't remember ever buying a product based on an advertisement. At the same time, I can recall many times when I've promised myself NOT to buy a product as a result of a terrible, or invasive/unwanted advertisement. As ads permeate our lives more and more, I imagine I'm not alone. Personally, when I'm looking for a product, I pointedly search for reviews on it, and descriptions of features. Generally I look at the company website and, if available, third-party ratings and tests. With the Internet coming into more and more prevalent use in our daily lives, perhaps the old paradigm of "push it till they are sick of it, and will remember it" should trend towards "give them a place to find it, and information on it, if they want it."
No, I generally take 2 minutes to tear out the annoying ones before I read the magazine.
I realized after I posted, however, that I should have also noted that I am only *really* bothered by annoying or super-frequent ads. Popup blockers and ad blockers were developed AFTER the audience was over-inundated with advertisement. If they had just kept things at a reasonable level, we'd still be watching the ads instead of blocking them. But they get more and more greedy and have to fit "just one more" ad in.
Access, as in access to the content. You want SciFi's content, you have to pay SciFi to access their content. That's why it costs more if you have more channels.
Actually, I believe cable operators have to pay the stations in order to broadcast their content. They can't just stick up their own antenna and funnel that to their subscribers.
Also, arguably, you're paying for the convenience of accessing broadcast stations over cable with great reception. Remember one of the complaints about satellite was/is that you can't get your "local stations" so you still need an antenna.
By the way, the reason there are ads on basic cable stations is that they wouldn't sell enough subscriptions at a price that would make it worthwhile. How much does HBO charge? $9.95/mo? $12.95/mo? Would enough people pay $9.95/mo for, say, commercial-free Sci-Fi channel to make it worthwhile?
Because they're all different things. Apples to oranges. You have to pay for each movie in theatres, and sit through ads, but from what I've been noticing they've actually reduced those lately and most likely in response to declining ticket sales.
DVD's with unskippable commercials, do you think those are really subsidizing the industry?
The fact is, while a certain part subsidizes the industry, the rest is just pure greed and power trips on the part of the corps. They can force-feed you ads, and most people will choose to accept them, so they do so. Again the reference to decreased ad content in movies, because if people show they're fed up enough to drop the service entirely, it might actually get cleaned up for awhile.