[briancarper]

I doubt it's possible to fix. Advertising is by its nature an attempt to manipulate people, by grabbing their attention, bombarding them with information, and eliciting emotional responses in them. Unsolicited advertisement is inherently disrespectful to the people being advertised at. There's no way to do it nicely, you can only hope people are too apathetic to complain about it.

[axod]

Advertising is actually more about providing information that the viewer did not know.

It's actually a pretty useful service y'know?

[Joboo]

Advertising is about moving product. Just a quick perusal of advertising techniques indicates that just "providing information" is a rarely used methodology. Biased information isn't very useful anyhow.

[briancarper]

Indeed. Putting a scantily-clad lady up on the TV screen isn't giving me any information. It's treating me like an animal, hoping my sex drive overrides the part of my brain that says "You don't really need to buy this crap".

Loud noises, cute kittens, catchy songs, scary consequences, status symbols, repetition until you can't forget the company's name if you tried. That's not any information I need.

[axod]

Those things get peoples attention, and make some % remember you.

Obviously not every advert works on everyone. It'd be silly if it did. But when taken as a whole, they do work. Astoundingly well.

[axod]

It's about telling you about a product/service you might be interested in.

The movie trailers I watch in frontrow on OSX. They're advertising. I love them. They inform me of new movies that are coming out. Useful no?