[TheOtherHobbes]

Advertising is a form of persuasion, which - if you think about it - is a form of behaviour modification.

The traditional ad industry has understood how to modify behaviour since before the days of Bernays. So have politicians, lawyers, religious leaders, and demagogues.

Online ads are probably the least effective of the behaviour mod techniques, because they mostly just annoy people.

The online ad industry has always been less interested in a measurable ROI - i.e. increased product spend - than the trad ad industry. It preys on ad buyers almost as much as it preys on ad viewers, and I'm not convinced that it isn't a net loss for them.

Even so, let's not forget that ultimately the business is all about conditioning people to take action they wouldn't otherwise do so they can "be monetised."

I wonder if it's possible to have a win-win online ad industry that treats customers as adult equals instead of prey by giving them something back in return for their attention.

The ads on specialist blogs, which are usually sold direct, tend to be far more interesting and clickable than generic banners because they're closer to the ideal trade-off of something-for-something.

Most ads just want something-for-nothing, which isn't a great basis for a customer relationship.

[usrusr]

Ah, finally someone who shares my suspicion that ad targeting is overrated. Yes, it is valuable for sellers of babystuff to advertise to expecting mothers, but pre-targeting brand awareness style campaigns still have their place/value. Those have absolutely nothing to gain from creepy targeting tactics, no matter how old-fashioned that may seem to those responsible.

I guess that at the buying end of the advertising business, just like in software development, many people just want to use the latest tools (ad targeting in this case) to personally stay on top of the game even if their use case would benefit more from a boring old blanket campaign. Think of a campaign for an insurance company: even if it highlights a product aimed at twentysomethings, it will still be nearly as effective when hitting eyeballs from other age brackets. So how much of a premium per eyeballs should they be willing for targeted over blanket? Very little. Yet I see quite a lot of that kind of advertisement in fully targetable channels and I suspect that is due to the same driving force that makes software people always want to play with the latest toys. One that has settled, the laws of supply and demand dictate that the premium for targeted vs untargeted will shrink.

[Retra]

Advertising isn't supposed to be a form of behavior modification. It's supposed to be a means of informing consumers so that they can make good purchasing decisions which will drive a free market in such a way that the _objectively_best_ products get the biggest reward. Any form of manipulation or dishonesty in ads contradicts this, and help undermine the idea that good decisions will be made in a free market.

I think many advertisers have gotten too comfortable under the belief that what they do is legal -- because it need not be. The ability to serve ads is a privilege that society gives companies in exchange for the promise of valuable information, competition, and innovation.

[Intermernet]

> Advertising isn't supposed to be a form of behavior modification. It's supposed to be a means of informing consumers so that they can make good purchasing decisions which will drive a free market in such a way that the _objectively_best_ products get the biggest reward.

That's very idealistic, and not very realistic. That role is filled by genuinely unbiased product reviews and recommendations from trusted friends and families.

Lots of companies who know they don't make the "objectively best products" still try to manipulate people into purchasing their products.

Advertisers very rarely provide value to consumers as they are designed to favor, and generate profit for the seller.

[Retra]

>That role is filled by genuinely unbiased product reviews and recommendations from trusted friends and families.

This is exactly what you would be left with if advertising weren't legal. And in fact, the only good justification for allowing it to be legal is this idealistic view.

But yes, I know what the status quo currently is. I'm saying that it is on shaky moral footing. That it ought not be this way, because it offers no justifiable benefit to society for it to remain as such.

[aninhumer]

>And in fact, the only good justification for allowing it to be legal is this idealistic view.

Well that, and the first amendment.

I tend to agree that advertising is a bad value proposition, for both producers and consumers, but I'm not sure how much the government can do about it without restricting speech.

I can however imagine a cultural shift, such that the majority of people so actively avoid advertising, that the market for it is vastly reduced.

[Intermernet]

I agree with you completely, but I do find the first amendment argument questionable with regards to advertising.

Can advertisers make completely false claims and still be protected by the first amendment? It's still free speech, but the speech translates to other crimes, such as (in the worst cases) fraud. Where is the line in the sand here?

EDIT: To simplify: As an individual, to what degree is my right to free speech mitigated if I use that speech to mislead others? I presume that con-artists can't use "free speech" as a defense...

[aninhumer]

>Where is the line in the sand here?

Well that's kind of the problem isn't it? Sure, you can criminalise outright lying (and perhaps we could do better at that), but things get a lot murkier as soon as you go any further.

Besides, most of the manipulation of advertising isn't about explicitly misinforming people, it's about associations and familiarity. You can't ban an advert saying "Coca cola exists", but it's still going to mean people end up choosing it over potentially better options.

[Retra]

That's the core problem. Generally speaking, when you've got some questionable/debatable restriction like that, you want to err on the side of being permissive rather than restrictive.

But the way we do things now just happens to be the way they are done. For instance, there could be restrictions on where and when you're allowed to advertise, and how you're to present the information. I'm not saying that's the way things should be done, just that alternatives to the status quo are not necessarily infringing on your rights.

[mrob]

If advertising were genuinely about informing potential customers then it would be nothing but specs, prices and independent third party benchmarks. The old Computer Shopper magazine used to be similar to this. People would buy it just for the ads because they provided real value. Modern advertising has much stronger focus on psychological trickery, to the point that advertisers actually use fMRI brain scanning to optimize their ads to be as manipulative as possible. And because manipulative ads are more effective, there's a race to the bottom and minimal chance that less harmful advertising will become the norm again. The only safe option is to block all ads, or to get laws passed restricting what advertisers can do. The latter seems unlikely, so declining to request adverts (the web is a pull medium, nobody "blocks" ads) is the only way to protect yourself.