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.

Comments

Re:How is this a new thing?

[Reality Master 101]

No, just a student of marketing and cognitive psychology, with family in the production industry and a partner who has worked with television focus groups. Sorry, I didn't realize I was conversing with someone silly enough to think that anything I've been saying is some kind of secret known only to "high level television executives," since any marketing intern at a major network could explain these things (and would be more likely to.)

The problem is that what you're saying is crap. Of course they use focus groups -- but you seem to think this means it's some sort of programming of people, rather than (duh!) figuring out what shows people like and what they don't. That you can reduce human behavior to such simplistic concepts tells me that you know zip about cognitive psychology. Either that, or you have some idiot professors putting nonsense into your head.

What an asinine thing to assume about a 26-year-old military vet.

Oh, well, if you're TWENTY-SIX... sheesh. Normally an arrogant personality like yours doesn't lose their youthful arrogance at 26. Maybe by 36, but we'll see.

I want to be so old that I feel inclined to write off anything I don't understand as the product of inexperience whenvever it seems to run counter to my well-established worldview, and with a "simple answer," something really uninformed like "I thought it was just a fun show." It seems to work for you.

I'm always willing to modify my understanding of things, but so far, you haven't given me any rational arguments, only paranoid rantings. Sorry, but cynicism is not a replacement for logical thinking.

Re:More than that

[LordSnooty]

This is why I only ever see movies in gold class unless I'm taking the kids.

See, they have you wrapped around their finger. The normally priced seats gradually become full of human rubbish, and there's no legroom. The cinema's solution is to sell you plusher seats with a bit more legroom for twice the price. And you swallowed it. Paying twice as much for the same product you enjoyed many years ago (and the film is probably inferior).