SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the ad-viewing-quota-enforcement dept.
The University of Warwick's Andrew Oswald and his team compared survey data on the life satisfaction of more than 900,000 citizens of 27 European countries from 1980 to 2011 with data on annual advertising spending in those nations over the same period. The researchers found an inverse connection between the two. The higher a country's ad spend was in one year, the less satisfied its citizens were a year or two later. Their conclusion: Advertising makes us unhappy.
Oswald: We did find a significant negative relationship. When you look at changes in national happiness each year and changes in ad spending that year or a few years earlier—and you hold other factors like GDP and unemployment constant—there is a link. This suggests that when advertisers pour money into a country, the result is diminished well-being for the people living there.
HBR: What prompted you to investigate this?
[ . . . ] I can't help noticing the increasing amount of ads we're bombarded with. For me, it was natural to wonder whether it might create dissatisfaction in our culture [ . . . ] In a sense they're trying to generate dissatisfaction—stirring up your desires so that you spend more
[ . . . . ] exposing people to a lot of advertising raises their aspirations—and makes them feel that their own lives, achievements, belongings, and experiences are inadequate.
[ . . . . ] we controlled for lots of other influences on happiness. Second, we looked at increases or drops in advertising in a given year and showed that they successfully predicted a rise or fall in national happiness in ensuing years.
So always take two ad blockers before bedtime.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:16PM (2 children)
No kidding they make us unhappy. Over the last 50 years or so the same tactics used in overseas (and domestic...) propaganda have found their way into advertising. Then there's the fact that ads play louder than the actual content they're bookending, how many of them there are, how fast-paced and insistent they are, and *then* there's the sheer inhuman cynicism of their approach, knowing they have a captive audience. And as at least one other poster mentioned, knowing we're being bullshat or outright lied to is itself stressful. I've not owned a TV in 15 years, use powerful adblocker/script-blocker plugins, don't listen to radio, and in general do all I can to shield myself from ads, and it works.
The thing is, most people are fucking dumb. They won't think "what do I need, who is selling it, where are the best deals?" They are effectively outsourcing decisions about their spending, and when someone is in that kind of suggestible mental state, yes, the high-volume saturation bombing campaigns do work eventually.
I've been viewing ads and what gets marketed to us proles with increasing horror and anger over the last couple of decades. The high-handed disdain in which the ordinary American is held is blood-boiling. The system has long since gotten away from us and our ability to control; even our perception is for sale, it seems.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 16 2020, @04:39PM
Sounds like you need a nice ride in a luxury SUV, friend. Imagine the smooth cornering while viewing waterfalls with dolphins and elephants heralding you as you pass. Nice, cool, and doing your bit for the environment.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Thursday January 16 2020, @06:57PM
We've heard references to the "war for hearts and minds" going on outside of US borders. What isn't mentioned is that it started inside those borders, with the same tactics and the same false "us vs. them" dichotomy behind it, and with much the same disdainful response on the part of those smart enough to see past the smoke show. Respect is earned, and while they may be commercially successful, ad agencies and their clients are failing to earn it, which is why they have to work so hard. If you need proof, look no further than the disclaimers that these ad networks publish about the malware that gets hosted on their distribution systems.
Ads are micro-aggressions in a war against the whole world, afflicting everyone without an effective blocker strategy. How many people do they kill in combined person-years wasted? I have a TV, but I use it only as a 4k PC monitor and gaming console display; I've long since opted out of the mandatory ad-watching ecosystem. I don't doubt the results of this study for a moment.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"