Not just global warming, but polution in general. I hardly think anyone would look back on us a stupid if we started to clean up our act. Do we really need "real proof" (as in, it is obvious to anyone just by walking outside)? What "proof" do people need? What will it take for people to realize that humans have a real and measurable effect on the environment on a large scale?
The problem with waiting for "real proof" is that by then it is too late. I hardly think that anyone would look back on us as stupid if we played it safe with the environment. Also, I think you are highly exagerating the consequences of environmentalism. There was a time when businesses thought that they could not get by without cheap slave/child labor. But eventually it was outlawed to no ill effect. It was the right thing to do and the economy adapted. Then again, maybe we just moved the slave/child labor overseas...
Doesn't that mean that areas which are currently dry may become wetter such as North Africa and the Middle East? Perhaps the Arabs are more than happy to pump out the oil not just to make money but to improve their land!
Great, now all we need to do is fix the pitiful state of HTML "widgets" and we will be all set! Seriously, HTML has to be the single worst way to make a "rich" web application. You get like 3 or 4 basic widgets with very little flexibility to make a GUI with, and that is about it. The rest is rather complex CSS. Now, XUL, that is a slick way to make a nice web app. And you can use the very same Ajax technology with it. Too bad it is Mozilla only.
Which will last longer, the embalmed body or the video screen? Am I the only one who thinks this is a really dumb idea? I'm not saying people won't buy it. I'm just saying that the people who do buy it are dumb.:-P
We here this kind of thing from time to time, but last I checked, hardly anyone takes Solaris x86 seriously. It has always been the bastard child of Sun.
Indeed, I'd be surprised if a computer used more than a fist sized lump of coal worth of energy in a day. Coal burns long and hot. When I was a kid, we heated a small house with a few small shovels full of coal per day. Modern CPUs run hot, sure, but not THAT hot.
Darwin is a good example of a modern microkernel OS and it has terrible disk I/O because of all the extra overhead of having a microkernel. Why would we want to cripple all OS's like that? Or did Apple do something that made Darwin particularly slow? Most exploits are user land anyway. What would be the point?
-matthew
Re:Jonathan Zdziarski's DSPAM claims are bogus too
on
Ending Spam
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· Score: 1
No, it doesn't scale well. Have you run DSPAM for 1,000 users? It requires at least one dedicated DB server, maybe even two, with lots of memory and lots of fast disk. It does scale because you can always throw more hardware at it, but it doesn't scale well.
They can tell if you have something hooked up, but they can't tell what channel you are tuned to. And there is most certainly analog cable. Digital cable encodes discrete packets of numerical data into MPEG frames. Analog cable doesn't require any such digital processing to be displayed.
Or even easier, just set firefox to keep cookies "until I close firefox." Assuming you reload firefox every now and then for whatever reason, the marketers will be foiled. There is really no practical reason to block cookies outright. It can cause problems.
-matthew
Re:Jonathan Zdziarski's DSPAM claims are bogus too
on
Ending Spam
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· Score: 1
While I don't get the 99% or whatever success rate that DSPAM is claimed to get, I get at least 96%. It is pretty good. Better than I got from SpamAssassin and don't require any manual tweaking of rules. One thing that does make DSPAM suck though is that it requires a msssive database backend. It does not scale well at all.
Also consider that, as more marketers move to targeted advertising, traditional advertising will become cheaper and there will be more of it (or at least no less). So what you might have is the same amount of traditional advertising PLUS lots of highly targeted ads. Remember, targettign is nothing new. Advertisers are constantly finding new ways to target. There is no reason to believe that any new way of targeting will reduce the amount of ads. Every trend has been for more, on the whole.
It will become easier and cheaper to target ads as the technology matures and people begin to filter them out. They will become less effective. There may or may not be the same number of ads but there will be even MORE annoyance because every single ad is targeted specifically to you and it is taking more effort to filter them out. But you have to filter them out because there is only so much shit one person can buy.
Can you imagine it? 10 ads a day saying something like: "Hey Joe, we know you really like Burger King, but just try McDonalds today. We have a new sandwich. According to our data, it is just the kind of sandwich you would like. Come on. Pretty please?" Ugh! Go so see/read Minority Report and tell me that wouldn't be hell.
The thing is, if an ad were presented the way I'd prefer, I'd probably never see it. As a matter of fact, it wouldn't be much of an ad at all. It would be part of a larger site/index where I could browse at my leisure when I was in the market for whatever is being sold. Like www.pricewatch.com
Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about. I'd like that too. I'm trying to explain how targeting is (or could be) a step in that direction.
But that isn't really advertising at all. Not seeing ads simply isn't an option. They need you to see the ads when you are not explicity looking for them.
So you think that the people who sell ad space are just going to leave blank spaces between ads because the individual advertisers feel that they shouldn't bombard a certain person with ads?
Some of them, yes. If "running" that ad will cost them more than they will gain by not running it.
It costs a ad space provider as much to leave a space blank as it does to fill it (well, almost, ink and bandwidth costs a little). Someone is going to buy the space. And selling the space to someone is better than leaving it blank. Ad space providers have a different set of motivations compared to the actual advertisers.
Me too. I can't stand it either. I suppose you could say that an ad that is more intersting is therefore more diverting and more annoying to you, but if it is a choice between something I wouldn't mind seeing and something I have no desire to see, I know which I'll choose. The point of targeting is all about showing people information they're receptive to when they're receptive to it. I suppose you could choose ads that are more easily ingored by you, but since that defeats the whole purpose of advertising, it would be up to you to find a way to translate that into sales.
Hmm, perhaps I am not making myself clear. I don't want to be responsible for "translating that into sales." I don't want to be subjected to advertising, period. I don't want to be "receptive" to advertisments. I don't need others to suggest what I should buy and when. What you are talking about is MORE advertising. A new form. And I am not buying into it. I don't want it. I am going to do my damnest to filter it ALL out.
For now, maybe; but as things progress it should move more in that direction.
The only "progress" has been towards more advertising in more mediums. If the kind of targeting you are talking about really does prove to be as effective as you suggest, more people will want to do it, and will just end up with just as much, if not more, total advertising and annoyance. There is no solution to it. It is a progressive and essential problem of capitalism.
They don't aim to irritate you, not out of friendship but simple self-interest. If you don't buy from advertisers who irritate you, but do a bit from those whose ads you enjoy, and there will be some, then the latter will prosper, and that's the kind of advertising you will get.
Trends over the last 100 years defy your oversimplified logic. Targeting is nothing new. Advertising has only gotten more intrusive on the whole. Irritation is the cumulative effect of so many individuals trying NOT to irritate me. It is naive to think that targetted advertising will somehow benefit the consumer or change any trends. Clever or entertaining advertising will always be the execption tot he rule. If I was somehow bombarded by ONLY so called "clever" ads, they wouldn't be so clever anymore. They would become just as irritating and annoying as the majority of ads are now.
Well, by my definiton of "targeted" that ad wouldn't have been properly targeted. The presentation is just as important as the subject matter, and something marketers pay attention to (though they may not call it targeting).
The thing is, if an ad were presented the way I'd prefer, I'd probably never see it. As a matter of fact, it wouldn't be much of an ad at all. It would be part of a larger site/index where I could browse at my leisure when I was in the market for whatever is being sold. Like www.pricewatch.com
My idea of a targeted ad for me is one that isn't annoying in and of itself and the product or service is something I am interested in (even if I don't want to buy it). Google's text ads come to mind as a good example of such advertising. They are (generally) related to what I am looking for at the time. Amazon's recommendations are probably even better, because when I'm on Amazon.com, I'm already shopping. I think I've even bought some things that way. You can customize them by removing things you are not interested in. Again, that works for me. Results for others naturally will vary. The point is to use what works by talioring the ads (or even lack thereof) to the individual, thereby making them less intrusive.
There is a context for this, for sure, but it certainly would not satisfy all advertising. I mean, there are so many things to be advertised that they simply couldn't fit into the narrow confines of a "target." So what you are talking about is a kind of advertising that exists IN ADDITION TO more traditional advertising. And this is the real problem. We're not talking about all advertising moving to a certain, presumably less intrusive, format. And even if all advertising did move to a new, highly targetted format, we'd just be flooded with more "less intrusive" ads adding up to just as much cumulative annoyance as we have now, if not more. Can you imagine something like Minority Report where everywhere you go you get bombarded with hightly personalized and targeted ads? Even the most avid car enthusiast can only handle so many car related ads.
No one advertiser can control how much advertising I am exposed to. It just isn't in their power.
True, but they can to some extent control how many of their ads you see. So, theoretically, if you bought inversely proportional to the amount of advertising you saw, the advertising should match that as best it can; those companiess that have products/services you value, and manage no show you no ads or as few as reasonably possible, get business and prosper. Those that don't, get less business, ideally they either get the picture or go out of business due to wasting money on showing you (and others like you) ads, or by showing people he wrong kind of ads. You see, they'll have to be able to keep up with the more profitible companies that are doing it right. Sure, nothing is ideal, so ads won't go away, but if it's being done correctly, you will at least see fewer ads.
So you think that the people who sell ad space are just going to leave blank spaces between ads because the individual advertisers feel that they shouldn't bombard a certain person with ads? Get real, people with space/time to sell want to sell as much space as they can. Amount of advertising is controlled by the medium, not the individual advertisers. I will say it once more, the individual advertisers have no control over the cumulative amount and nature of advertising I am exposed to. You don't seem to understand that there are more factors at play than the needs and desires of individual marketers.
I don't know about you, but I'd much rather see something I'm interested in than something I'm not; therefore I'd be less angered. Logically, I think most people would feel that way.
You know what angers me? The distraction of advertising. Gaps in TV shows. Wasted, flashing space on a web page. Trying to find the actual content in a magazine. Tacky billboards on the freeway. Doesn't matter if I am in
You ought to give yourself more credit, and so should the rest of everyone who shares your view. You seem to subscribe to the idea that consumers are mindless minions under the spell of advertisers. If you think that us advertising folks are controlling the minds of consumers, dictating what they can and cannot drink, eat or wear, you're dead wrong.
Nobody said anything about forcing people to do anything. It is about manipulation. If you are not a manipulator for hire, please describe what you do.
Granted, there are shoddy advertisers out there that give our industry a bad name, but there are those like us who take pride in what we do.
What do you take pride in, exactly?
If you don't believe this then look no further than the script kiddies that gave the hacking community such a bad rap. There's a good parallel for you.
I don't see the parallel. Could you explain it?
See, people tell you they hate advertising and yet when they're in the market for a new house, a new apartment, a new car, a new stereo, a new MP3 player, where do they look? When you're trying to score a deal for a laptop, do you bring competing stores' flyers to compare prices? Do you tell the salesperson that you can get a better deal from Store X? Of course you do. And yet here you are telling us advertising folks we have no integrity.
Perhaps I have a too strict idea of what advertising is, but I don't think that simple price lists and such are advertising. That is basic information that any informed consumer needs to know. Just posting a price list or having an catalog is not "advertising." There is a big different between information that is there to be referenced at will, and advertising which is unsolicited and inserted into otherwise desirable material.
No, he's yelling it because you do not understand that targeted advertising is better (i.e. works better, gets better results for the people who buy the ads, the whole purpose of advertising) precisely because it LESS ubiquitous and annoying.
I think the jist of the article is that targeted advertising is becoming more ubiquitous. Re: annoying... why should targetted advertisement be less annoying? Instead of "punching the monkey" for stuff I am not interested in, I will be asked to "punch the monkey" for stuff I might be interested in gee. I feel warm and fuzzy already.
You want less advertisement. GOOD marketers will use that information and realize that giving you more ads will be a wasted effort,
Too bad it isn't up to any one particular marketer to not flood me. It is a group (gang?) effort. The easier it becomes to target addvertisement, the more flooded by it I will be. Your idea that targetting means less advertising is false.
But they can't do that without finding out somehow that you want less of it (believe it or not, people have different tastes/tolerances for this sort of thing, and marketers are not mind-readers; so they have to ask, or get you to tell them).
Again, it isn't up to any particular advertiser. No one advertiser can control how much advertising I am exposed to. It just isn't in their power. The people who sell advertising space are the ones who control that. Imagine their surprise when I tell them I don't want ANY advertisements.
The whole point of targeted advertising is not NOT piss you off with ads about things you have no interest in.
Why would I be less pissed off getting 100 adverts for stuff I am not going to buy (although I might technically be interested in them) vs. getting 100 adverts for stuff I am not interested in? I'm still not buying (most of) it. It is still taking up screen real estate. It is still interuping my TV viewing, etc, etc. It isn't the specific content of advertisment that pisses me off. It is the presentation.
Better results for me would be fewer ads, in every medium.
And with targeted advertising, that's exactly what you'll get. Instead of a scattergun approach of spamming everyone with everything, advertisers will only be sending you an advert that they think you'll be interested in.
Gee, don't you think it would just be the same amount of advertising, just targetted? Don't you think that instead of getting, say, 100 adverts for stuff I am not likely to be interested in, I would just get 100 adverts for stuff I might be interested in?
In the end, I am not likely to buy any more stuff, so why should I consider one method better than the other? I'm still being subjected to stuff I'm not going to buy. Whether or not I am more "likely" to buy it is irrelevant.
The point is that the more targeted it is, the less annoying it will get.
I dunno. Having seen the movie "Minority Report," I would think it quite the opposite. The last thing I want are advertisement mentioning me by name.
The company that made the clever advertisement is more likely to be bought from.
Yeah? So what? What does "clever" have to do with my desire to be exposed to it? Spammers, for example, are very clever at getting around filters. Does that mean I want to recieve spam? No.
Once the industry understands what you think is clever, every advert you see will be a clever one. Every one will be one you like.
Not bloodly likely.
The bottom line is that advertisers are NOT on my side. For as long as I live in a capitalist society, they will remain the bane of my existence.
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.
Perhaps you are not understanding some us who are complaining. I, personally, find just about all advertising offensive to one degree or another. Whether it is is just wasting screen real estate, interupting my TV viewing, or ruining a perfectly nice view from the freeway. Granted, much of it is benign enough to not actively protest against, but I would prefer it not be there at all.
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.
Good? Sorry, but in my book advertising ranges from bad to neutral. Most other industries have the full range. Advertising is one of those insidious "necessary evils" most people just kinda put up with.
Don't get me wrong, it is always interesting to hear from an advertiser. And I am sure you think that your work in particular has some redeeming social value, but I personally don't see it.
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.
This is exactly what so many IT professionals miss when they evaluate Microsoft's products. They just work for the users, plain and simple.
If you can keep them free of viruses and spyware, sure. Perhaps you take this for granted? Honestly, I think Apple is in the "it just works for the users" slot. Microsoft products still require a good deal of care and feeding.
Slashdot Mirror
But all that is happening right now with oil and it has nothing to do with Kyoto. Gas on the West Coast is over $4 a gallon. Where have you been?
-matthew
Not just global warming, but polution in general. I hardly think anyone would look back on us a stupid if we started to clean up our act. Do we really need "real proof" (as in, it is obvious to anyone just by walking outside)? What "proof" do people need? What will it take for people to realize that humans have a real and measurable effect on the environment on a large scale?
-matthew
The problem with waiting for "real proof" is that by then it is too late. I hardly think that anyone would look back on us as stupid if we played it safe with the environment. Also, I think you are highly exagerating the consequences of environmentalism. There was a time when businesses thought that they could not get by without cheap slave/child labor. But eventually it was outlawed to no ill effect. It was the right thing to do and the economy adapted. Then again, maybe we just moved the slave/child labor overseas...
-matthew
Doesn't that mean that areas which are currently dry may become wetter such as North Africa and the Middle East? Perhaps the Arabs are more than happy to pump out the oil not just to make money but to improve their land!
-matthew
Oh give me a break. Nobody is trying to hide information from you, moron. Just look it up if you don't understand what it means.
-mathew
Great, now all we need to do is fix the pitiful state of HTML "widgets" and we will be all set! Seriously, HTML has to be the single worst way to make a "rich" web application. You get like 3 or 4 basic widgets with very little flexibility to make a GUI with, and that is about it. The rest is rather complex CSS. Now, XUL, that is a slick way to make a nice web app. And you can use the very same Ajax technology with it. Too bad it is Mozilla only.
-matthew
Which will last longer, the embalmed body or the video screen? Am I the only one who thinks this is a really dumb idea? I'm not saying people won't buy it. I'm just saying that the people who do buy it are dumb. :-P
-matthew
We here this kind of thing from time to time, but last I checked, hardly anyone takes Solaris x86 seriously. It has always been the bastard child of Sun.
-matthew
Indeed, I'd be surprised if a computer used more than a fist sized lump of coal worth of energy in a day. Coal burns long and hot. When I was a kid, we heated a small house with a few small shovels full of coal per day. Modern CPUs run hot, sure, but not THAT hot.
-matthew
Darwin is a good example of a modern microkernel OS and it has terrible disk I/O because of all the extra overhead of having a microkernel. Why would we want to cripple all OS's like that? Or did Apple do something that made Darwin particularly slow? Most exploits are user land anyway. What would be the point?
-matthew
No, it doesn't scale well. Have you run DSPAM for 1,000 users? It requires at least one dedicated DB server, maybe even two, with lots of memory and lots of fast disk. It does scale because you can always throw more hardware at it, but it doesn't scale well.
-matthew
They can tell if you have something hooked up, but they can't tell what channel you are tuned to. And there is most certainly analog cable. Digital cable encodes discrete packets of numerical data into MPEG frames. Analog cable doesn't require any such digital processing to be displayed.
-matthew
Or even easier, just set firefox to keep cookies "until I close firefox." Assuming you reload firefox every now and then for whatever reason, the marketers will be foiled. There is really no practical reason to block cookies outright. It can cause problems.
-matthew
While I don't get the 99% or whatever success rate that DSPAM is claimed to get, I get at least 96%. It is pretty good. Better than I got from SpamAssassin and don't require any manual tweaking of rules. One thing that does make DSPAM suck though is that it requires a msssive database backend. It does not scale well at all.
-matthew
Also consider that, as more marketers move to targeted advertising, traditional advertising will become cheaper and there will be more of it (or at least no less). So what you might have is the same amount of traditional advertising PLUS lots of highly targeted ads. Remember, targettign is nothing new. Advertisers are constantly finding new ways to target. There is no reason to believe that any new way of targeting will reduce the amount of ads. Every trend has been for more, on the whole.
-matthew
It will become easier and cheaper to target ads as the technology matures and people begin to filter them out. They will become less effective. There may or may not be the same number of ads but there will be even MORE annoyance because every single ad is targeted specifically to you and it is taking more effort to filter them out. But you have to filter them out because there is only so much shit one person can buy.
Can you imagine it? 10 ads a day saying something like: "Hey Joe, we know you really like Burger King, but just try McDonalds today. We have a new sandwich. According to our data, it is just the kind of sandwich you would like. Come on. Pretty please?" Ugh! Go so see/read Minority Report and tell me that wouldn't be hell.
-matthew
But that isn't really advertising at all. Not seeing ads simply isn't an option. They need you to see the ads when you are not explicity looking for them.
So you think that the people who sell ad space are just going to leave blank spaces between ads because the individual advertisers feel that they shouldn't bombard a certain person with ads?
Some of them, yes. If "running" that ad will cost them more than they will gain by not running it.
It costs a ad space provider as much to leave a space blank as it does to fill it (well, almost, ink and bandwidth costs a little). Someone is going to buy the space. And selling the space to someone is better than leaving it blank. Ad space providers have a different set of motivations compared to the actual advertisers.
Me too. I can't stand it either. I suppose you could say that an ad that is more intersting is therefore more diverting and more annoying to you, but if it is a choice between something I wouldn't mind seeing and something I have no desire to see, I know which I'll choose. The point of targeting is all about showing people information they're receptive to when they're receptive to it. I suppose you could choose ads that are more easily ingored by you, but since that defeats the whole purpose of advertising, it would be up to you to find a way to translate that into sales.
Hmm, perhaps I am not making myself clear. I don't want to be responsible for "translating that into sales." I don't want to be subjected to advertising, period. I don't want to be "receptive" to advertisments. I don't need others to suggest what I should buy and when. What you are talking about is MORE advertising. A new form. And I am not buying into it. I don't want it. I am going to do my damnest to filter it ALL out.
For now, maybe; but as things progress it should move more in that direction.
The only "progress" has been towards more advertising in more mediums. If the kind of targeting you are talking about really does prove to be as effective as you suggest, more people will want to do it, and will just end up with just as much, if not more, total advertising and annoyance. There is no solution to it. It is a progressive and essential problem of capitalism.
-matthew
Trends over the last 100 years defy your oversimplified logic. Targeting is nothing new. Advertising has only gotten more intrusive on the whole. Irritation is the cumulative effect of so many individuals trying NOT to irritate me. It is naive to think that targetted advertising will somehow benefit the consumer or change any trends. Clever or entertaining advertising will always be the execption tot he rule. If I was somehow bombarded by ONLY so called "clever" ads, they wouldn't be so clever anymore. They would become just as irritating and annoying as the majority of ads are now.
-matthew
The thing is, if an ad were presented the way I'd prefer, I'd probably never see it. As a matter of fact, it wouldn't be much of an ad at all. It would be part of a larger site/index where I could browse at my leisure when I was in the market for whatever is being sold. Like www.pricewatch.com
My idea of a targeted ad for me is one that isn't annoying in and of itself and the product or service is something I am interested in (even if I don't want to buy it). Google's text ads come to mind as a good example of such advertising. They are (generally) related to what I am looking for at the time. Amazon's recommendations are probably even better, because when I'm on Amazon.com, I'm already shopping. I think I've even bought some things that way. You can customize them by removing things you are not interested in. Again, that works for me. Results for others naturally will vary. The point is to use what works by talioring the ads (or even lack thereof) to the individual, thereby making them less intrusive.
There is a context for this, for sure, but it certainly would not satisfy all advertising. I mean, there are so many things to be advertised that they simply couldn't fit into the narrow confines of a "target." So what you are talking about is a kind of advertising that exists IN ADDITION TO more traditional advertising. And this is the real problem. We're not talking about all advertising moving to a certain, presumably less intrusive, format. And even if all advertising did move to a new, highly targetted format, we'd just be flooded with more "less intrusive" ads adding up to just as much cumulative annoyance as we have now, if not more. Can you imagine something like Minority Report where everywhere you go you get bombarded with hightly personalized and targeted ads? Even the most avid car enthusiast can only handle so many car related ads.
No one advertiser can control how much advertising I am exposed to. It just isn't in their power.
True, but they can to some extent control how many of their ads you see. So, theoretically, if you bought inversely proportional to the amount of advertising you saw, the advertising should match that as best it can; those companiess that have products/services you value, and manage no show you no ads or as few as reasonably possible, get business and prosper. Those that don't, get less business, ideally they either get the picture or go out of business due to wasting money on showing you (and others like you) ads, or by showing people he wrong kind of ads. You see, they'll have to be able to keep up with the more profitible companies that are doing it right. Sure, nothing is ideal, so ads won't go away, but if it's being done correctly, you will at least see fewer ads.
So you think that the people who sell ad space are just going to leave blank spaces between ads because the individual advertisers feel that they shouldn't bombard a certain person with ads? Get real, people with space/time to sell want to sell as much space as they can. Amount of advertising is controlled by the medium, not the individual advertisers. I will say it once more, the individual advertisers have no control over the cumulative amount and nature of advertising I am exposed to. You don't seem to understand that there are more factors at play than the needs and desires of individual marketers.
I don't know about you, but I'd much rather see something I'm interested in than something I'm not; therefore I'd be less angered. Logically, I think most people would feel that way.
You know what angers me? The distraction of advertising. Gaps in TV shows. Wasted, flashing space on a web page. Trying to find the actual content in a magazine. Tacky billboards on the freeway. Doesn't matter if I am in
Nobody said anything about forcing people to do anything. It is about manipulation. If you are not a manipulator for hire, please describe what you do.
Granted, there are shoddy advertisers out there that give our industry a bad name, but there are those like us who take pride in what we do.
What do you take pride in, exactly?
If you don't believe this then look no further than the script kiddies that gave the hacking community such a bad rap. There's a good parallel for you.
I don't see the parallel. Could you explain it?
See, people tell you they hate advertising and yet when they're in the market for a new house, a new apartment, a new car, a new stereo, a new MP3 player, where do they look? When you're trying to score a deal for a laptop, do you bring competing stores' flyers to compare prices? Do you tell the salesperson that you can get a better deal from Store X? Of course you do. And yet here you are telling us advertising folks we have no integrity.
Perhaps I have a too strict idea of what advertising is, but I don't think that simple price lists and such are advertising. That is basic information that any informed consumer needs to know. Just posting a price list or having an catalog is not "advertising." There is a big different between information that is there to be referenced at will, and advertising which is unsolicited and inserted into otherwise desirable material.
-matthew
I think the jist of the article is that targeted advertising is becoming more ubiquitous. Re: annoying... why should targetted advertisement be less annoying? Instead of "punching the monkey" for stuff I am not interested in, I will be asked to "punch the monkey" for stuff I might be interested in gee. I feel warm and fuzzy already.
You want less advertisement. GOOD marketers will use that information and realize that giving you more ads will be a wasted effort,
Too bad it isn't up to any one particular marketer to not flood me. It is a group (gang?) effort. The easier it becomes to target addvertisement, the more flooded by it I will be. Your idea that targetting means less advertising is false.
But they can't do that without finding out somehow that you want less of it (believe it or not, people have different tastes/tolerances for this sort of thing, and marketers are not mind-readers; so they have to ask, or get you to tell them).
Again, it isn't up to any particular advertiser. No one advertiser can control how much advertising I am exposed to. It just isn't in their power. The people who sell advertising space are the ones who control that. Imagine their surprise when I tell them I don't want ANY advertisements.
The whole point of targeted advertising is not NOT piss you off with ads about things you have no interest in.
Why would I be less pissed off getting 100 adverts for stuff I am not going to buy (although I might technically be interested in them) vs. getting 100 adverts for stuff I am not interested in? I'm still not buying (most of) it. It is still taking up screen real estate. It is still interuping my TV viewing, etc, etc. It isn't the specific content of advertisment that pisses me off. It is the presentation.
-matthew
And with targeted advertising, that's exactly what you'll get. Instead of a scattergun approach of spamming everyone with everything, advertisers will only be sending you an advert that they think you'll be interested in.
Gee, don't you think it would just be the same amount of advertising, just targetted? Don't you think that instead of getting, say, 100 adverts for stuff I am not likely to be interested in, I would just get 100 adverts for stuff I might be interested in? In the end, I am not likely to buy any more stuff, so why should I consider one method better than the other? I'm still being subjected to stuff I'm not going to buy. Whether or not I am more "likely" to buy it is irrelevant.
-matthew
I dunno. Having seen the movie "Minority Report," I would think it quite the opposite. The last thing I want are advertisement mentioning me by name.
The company that made the clever advertisement is more likely to be bought from.
Yeah? So what? What does "clever" have to do with my desire to be exposed to it? Spammers, for example, are very clever at getting around filters. Does that mean I want to recieve spam? No.
Once the industry understands what you think is clever, every advert you see will be a clever one. Every one will be one you like.
Not bloodly likely.
The bottom line is that advertisers are NOT on my side. For as long as I live in a capitalist society, they will remain the bane of my existence.
-matthew
Perhaps you are not understanding some us who are complaining. I, personally, find just about all advertising offensive to one degree or another. Whether it is is just wasting screen real estate, interupting my TV viewing, or ruining a perfectly nice view from the freeway. Granted, much of it is benign enough to not actively protest against, but I would prefer it not be there at all.
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.
Good? Sorry, but in my book advertising ranges from bad to neutral. Most other industries have the full range. Advertising is one of those insidious "necessary evils" most people just kinda put up with.
Don't get me wrong, it is always interesting to hear from an advertiser. And I am sure you think that your work in particular has some redeeming social value, but I personally don't see it.
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.
Trivial.
-matthew
If you can keep them free of viruses and spyware, sure. Perhaps you take this for granted? Honestly, I think Apple is in the "it just works for the users" slot. Microsoft products still require a good deal of care and feeding.
-matthew