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According to The Guardian, one of world’s biggest advertisers — Unilever — says it will avoid platforms that ‘create division’. It further threatens to take its ad purchases off Facebook and Google, if they cannot reign in hate and protect children. Their chief marketing officer says their online spending sometimes is "little better than a swamp in terms of its transparency".
If this finally is it, I say good riddance to surveillance capitalism.
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How Close are we to Peak Social Media?
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Two is not equal to three, even for large values of two.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday February 13 2018, @12:35PM (7 children)
There is so much online advertising that it has become ineffective. How many purchasing decisions do you make each day? How many online ads do you see each day? Enough said.
While Working Software claimed to be a software publisher, really it was a direct mail business. Our software facilitated the direct mail but really the business was mostly about direct mail.
Back then every software publisher maintained a mailing list of registered users that they would rent to other direct mail companies.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Tuesday February 13 2018, @12:53PM
I would not disagree but would toss out another suggestion that there's entire classes of products that seem to only be sold to people on various web discussion board technologies, so you can expect astroturfing and slashvertisement type stuff to increase.
For example does anyone buy a iopteron astrophotography camera mount other than via discovering it from online astrophotography discussions (not traditional social media of my auntie and my coworker, but "legacy" hobby discussion sites)
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Tuesday February 13 2018, @01:11PM (4 children)
I think direct mail is still big, but it has gone paperless by using email. I keep an account that gets only advertisements and purchase receipts, and I check it often. I don't really purchase much based on the ads, but I do enjoy looking at them.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday February 13 2018, @02:17PM (3 children)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday February 13 2018, @03:23PM (2 children)
If they respond to just one offer they're likely to respond to many others.
A really good list consists entirely of names that have responded to at least one offer
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by kazzie on Tuesday February 13 2018, @03:51PM
A fact that is also remembered by scam operators.
(If you respond/fall for one scam, your details may be sold to other scammers as "easy pickings".)
(Score: 4, Funny) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday February 13 2018, @05:28PM
But that poor Nigerian prince said he just couldn't get to his money! I felt so sorry for him and the reward he offered to help was SOOOO generous!
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday February 14 2018, @10:16AM
There is a formula advertisers use to calculate how many repetitions it takes to move consumers to action. If we as consumers limit our exposure to advertising, it's entirely possible to keep ourselves below that threshhold number.
I don't know if there are any other cord cutters around here, but since we cut the cord more than a decade ago and installed Adblocker and other ad-blocking plugins on our browsers, our exposure to advertising dropped dramatically. We live in NYC, too, where the relative amount of what advertising calls "Out of Home" (billboards, subway ads, ads in bus shelters, etc) is greater than other places. Without the reinforcement of TV, radio, and other platforms that greatly augment repetition, the OOH stuff seems anachronistic and laughably ineffective.
To me, that's a hopeful sign. The Facebooks and advertisers of the world are not all-powerful. They are quite vulnerable.
Having worked in advertising at the big houses on Madison Avenue and seen the raw numbers for the biggest of the big brands, their core customers number in the tens of thousands, not the millions; so even in the world of Cable TV and mass media your purchase decisions as a consumer always did matter, and your ability to influence your social circle to buy or not buy mattered even more.
So, speak up, and do vote with your wallet. It matters a great deal.
Washington DC delenda est.