It's easy to ignore the ads if you know they are ads. What about sponsered content in movies, music, tv, news, etc? We have seen all of these used. The drive to promote a message to someone goes waay beyond advertising.
This discussion is veering off course. Well made adblocking removes 'native' ads as well. Product placement is irrelevant to my point, as it does not utilize my stolen demographic info to drive marketing decisions. And though you delude yourself into thinking that you are successfully ignoring ads they are still influencing you in subtle ways.
Exactly. Or that innocuous Medium post that just seems like some guy talking, when in fact it is a carefully crafted piece of psychological manipulation.
Lifestyle marketing isn't a new idea. It's part of what made tabacoo successful. But they were making educated guesses on what might work, i.e. the cowboy smoking.
The difference I see is that there is feedback on the ads other than sales and it seems like you could closely tailor ads to specific demographics.