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from the if-they-had-only-listened-before dept.
Marketoonist ran a story about marketers saying, "Oops, our bad."
The Interactive Advertising Bureau issued a remarkable mea culpa last week about the state of online advertising. In response to the rise of ad-blocking software, IAB VP Scott Cunningham said digital advertisers should take responsibility for annoying people and driving them to use ad blockers:
"We messed up. As technologists, tasked with delivering content and services to users, we lost track of the user experience....
"We build advertising technology to optimize publishers' yield of marketing budgets that had eroded after the last recession. Looking back now, our scraping of dimes may have cost us dollars in consumer loyalty...
"The consumer is demanding these actions, challenging us to do better, and we must respond."
Nod to pipedot for running this story.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Monday October 26 2015, @10:11AM
Advertising can serve a valuable purpose. There are basically there kinds of advert:
You have a problem. A product exists that can solve (or, at least, help address) this problem. The advert makes you aware of the product and how to find out more about it.
You have an idea of the kind of thing that you want to buy. The advert makes you aware of a product of this type that you might not have been aware of.
You don't need anything. The advert tries to use psychological techniques to persuade you to buy something, or to convince you that the next time you want a specific kind of thing that you should go for a certain brand.
...
I'd also be very happy to have more of the ones in the first two categories.
Actually, what's needed for the first two is something like an interweb trades directory - somewhere to go when you particularly NEED to look at ads. Then there is no reason for any other advertising at all.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TheRaven on Monday October 26 2015, @11:58AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by NickFortune on Monday October 26 2015, @12:16PM
I suppose I could see that if you weren't aware that you had a problem in the first place. If you were, you'd presumably make the occasional attempt to find a solution, and some sort of directory site would then be adequate.
Of course if you didn't know you had a problem ... well making people "aware" of problems that they didn't know they had and then selling them solutions, that puts us back in category three territory.
That said, I remember the days when advertising was a single silent, static banner across the top of a web site. Didn't get in the way of the content, was easily ignored and often looked interesting. I used to click on those from time to time. I don't think advertising is necessarily evil. I just don't trust advertisers not to abuse my hospitality if I let them on to my computer again.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Monday October 26 2015, @04:54PM
That said, I remember the days when advertising was a single silent, static banner across the top of a web site. Didn't get in the way of the content, was easily ignored and often looked interesting. I used to click on those from time to time.
They eventually made those a problem by whisking you away from the sites you were visiting and making it so that hitting the back button on your browser would not take you back to the original page. That and the pop-ups they started using as well. There were manual pop-up blockers (RIP Surf In Peace!) but when Firefox and tabbed browsing came along it was a revelation.
(Score: 1) by SDRefugee on Monday October 26 2015, @06:22PM
Like the endless fucking drug ads on tv... Where they spend nearly the whole commercial rattling off side-effects that would make anybody EXTREMELY leery of using the fucking drug, then a perky voice says "Ask YOUR doctor if zippydodah is RIGHT for YOU!!".... Serious annoying.. And EVERYBODY knows annoying your potential customer is the correct way to sell your product... <sarcasm>
America should be proud of Edward Snowden, the hero, whether they know it or not..
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2015, @05:16PM
Exactly. A dead-tree computer magazine I like has both ads on the text pages, and a separate ads-only section. I've never bought anything from the ads on text pages. But I've explicitly gone to the ads-only pages to look for things.
When I'm reading texts, I'm reading texts. I don't want the ads, and they are only an annoyance (fortunately easy ignored for printed text). When I'm considering buying something, I'm not going to hunt for ads in the text section. I'm going to open the dedicated section.
I have no idea of how typical I am, but I can tell for sure that as far as I am concerned, the money paid for ads on text pages were wasted, but the money for ads on the dedicated pages was not.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Monday October 26 2015, @10:23PM
A dead-tree computer magazine I like has both ads on the text pages, and a separate ads-only section. I've never bought anything from the ads on text pages. But I've explicitly gone to the ads-only pages to look for things.
As some on SN may be aware, I am one of those people who hate ads. However this does not apply to ads-only pages. I receive QST, for example (one of the two dead-tree magazines that I subscribe to,) and it has ad pages. Quite often I like to look through those, to learn what's new is up there. The keyest difference here is that those ads are not interfering with me reading an entirely unrelated article. They are read in a completely different configuration of mind, on my own terms, when I am curious about new products.
In other words, ads on demand are fine. They are useful, as they allow manufacturers to explain what they have. There is time and place for everything. There is time for silence during a brain surgery, and there is time for loud music during a large, wild party. Just don't mix them up. If I want to see ads about bicycle headlights, I want to search for them and be given a collection like Google Images. I don't want to see ads about bicycle headlights when I read an article about glueballs, or about serialization of a class.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday October 26 2015, @06:06PM
Sounds like a nice idea, but assuming that the listing site charged each company a fee to get listed (what else are they gonna do to make money? run ads? ;), it would inevitably devolve into a "first among equals" SEO problem where the companies with deeper pockets pay extra to sort them to the top of the list.
And companies would still run ads the traditional way anyway. The listing site is just an extra place to advertise.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by tftp on Monday October 26 2015, @11:40PM
it would inevitably devolve into a "first among equals" SEO problem where the companies with deeper pockets pay extra to sort them to the top of the list.
This has no effect on a savvy customer who reads the entire list before deciding what to buy. This is also convenient enough for a customer who has to buy something right away, no matter if it is the best or the cheapest. In other words, the order of ads in the ad listing does not bother the customer.
And companies would still run ads the traditional way anyway.
And they will be blocked by everyone, now that the official listing removes the last reason for advertising within someone else's materials.