[mayniac]

I doubt the only products you buy are cucumbers, tomatoes and gas. You've chosen your phone, laptop, car, and various other branded items. Advertising very likely played a role in your decisions there.

How can you actually be sure that advertising doesn't work on you? Of course, you don't see an ad on TV for a new smart fridge and immediately jump out of your sofa, wallet in hand, to go buy it. But the key thing is that _nobody does_. That's not the point. The idea is that six months down the line when your fridge breaks irreparably and you're deciding between different brands, those ads will have an influence, and you won't realise it.

People who think advertising doesn't work on them _are godsends to advertisers_. This article puts it quite well, although I don't agree with its conclusions[0]:

"If you don’t believe advertising works on you, you are going to be more likely to see good advertising as something else entirely and be more receptive to it and thusly more likely to take the action I want you to take."

There was a study a few months ago which found that people who think they are immune to advertising are more susceptible to it than average, but I can't find a link. It was one of the things that changed my opinion on this: I also used to think I was not susceptible to most advertising, but this is a dangerous mentality. You just don't think you're susceptible. I've come around to thinking Bill Hicks was completely right on this [1]

Also with the Metromile point, that's not bad targeting. Ads are often targeted at existing users of the ads product. The point is to keep brand loyalty and limit buyer's remorse.

[0] https://medium.com/@dahanese/advertising-works-don-t-believe... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHEOGrkhDp0

[pascalxus]

I'm not your typical consumer. I buy the cheapest thing of each category unless there's an overwhelming reason not to. Computer: macbook pro (not because of ads but because I had to in order to develop for apple products), phone: Iphone - got it for free as a handme down from my wife. Very few of the groceries I buy have labels on them: it's all fresh fruit, veggies, things from the bulk section, almost nothing in the grocery store I've bought is advertised. I don't eat processed food or any kind of food that comes in a box or prepackaged bag. When my fridge breaks down I will buy the cheapest fridge I can find unless there's data that shows some fridges are more reliable than others. I buy maybe 2 pairs of pants per decade, and when I do buy clothes it's usually at used clothing store, and I don't pay any attention to what the label says other than the size and type of material.

Brand almost never ever comes into my decision making process. that's why its so hard for me to believe. I buy the cheaper one every time unless there's overwhelming reason not to. Frankly, I don't understand how this isn't the default behaviour for everyone.

The only areas where advertising works on me is on the following (when they actually give me information about products I actually want): occassionally on movies (but even then it's a small percentage ~ most of the time i get whatevers i find on fandango ~ i've even missed some movies i wanted to watch because the ads didn't reach me or I forgot), occassionally the restaurant coupons (half price), metromile, maybe banking (since that actually does require trust) .

Metromile is wasting their money by retargetting me. I'll leave the second I find another insurance that's cheaper - I have absolutely 0 brand loyalty for almost everything. If anything, they're just reminding me to check around for cheaper services that may pop up.

Utility bills -> no choice therefore ads don't matter. Housing -> found on zillow . Zillow itself, someone told me about it (not advertisement).

phone plan - i really had to hunt to find usmobile - 8$/month for 100 minutes, 100 messages. I can't even imagine how much money the telecom industry has squandered on me without any effect at all.

ISP - At&t hits me ads all the time, and everytime I'm just reminded about how evil they are and I check around to see if there's any other better broadband providers besides the one I'm using right now. so their ads are actually having the opposite of the desired effect, same with comcast.

The reason all these ads don't affect me is because they all appeal to Emotion and unverifiable information. And that's not how I generally make my decisions.

For example, when at&t says they have the best network, that's completely useless to me because I can't verify that it's true, or at least it's hard to do so.

Because most ads appeal based on emotion and I don't use emotion to make my buying decisions, it means they simply don't work.

[mntmoss]

Advertising readily exploits low price consumers like you, too.

First of all, they find ways to drop quality. At first they have the good deal for a limited time. This results in social proofing - good reviews and customer approvals - that theirs is the exceptional choice - quality at low price. Then they downgrade it. But because you were already buying it, you won't look the next time.

Second, they find ways to engineer deals that lead you down a path of more expensive dependencies. You go to the supermarket, and you get your veggies, and you see a sign saying "best enjoyed with" - and there's a product. Maybe one you know and are familiar with, maybe one you don't. Regardless, you see the sign and the message and you start wondering, "am I enjoying my veggies less because I'm doing it wrong?"

The dairy industry has succeeded at this for decades, crafting all sorts of narratives about the necessity for milk, the pleasure of milk, how milk lets you have moments shared with friends. It doesn't have to have a brand name attached to reach you and reprogram you.

[asdff]

I don't think everyone is fooled by these types of maneuvers. Ye olde cable bundle model isn't going to fool a truly pragmatic person, even if it manifests itself in the grocery store. The drop in quality thing is something to explicitly watch for and expect, especially when the bait and switch you describe happens routinely on sites like Amazon these days.

Once you are aware of the many different ways an ad can manifest, they become uncanny. It becomes a game to spot them, and to think about why this ad was bought to run at this particular time and place. I see that ad for california walnuts playing out in public, and it feels absolutely dystopian. I think they say "heart-heatlhy, california walnuts" about a half dozen times in the clip, like a mantra. The spell is broken if you ever read about the nut industry's water use, and connect the dots with the ever present threat of drought in california, and climate change worsening it all.

[pascalxus]

It's a fallacy to think that higher priced items are higher quality: people fall for this all the time. Those high priced jeans and that 20$ fancy pizza might be made of equally bad stuff as a 5$ little ceasers, you won't know unless you investigate.

And, low quality isn't always bad. Even the cheapest t-shirt and jeans in the world can last years if not decades: I know because I have them. I don't need to switch to another product because of "low quality".

Maybe I'm just less susceptible, but I've never thought: "am I enjoying my veggies less because I'm doing it wrong?" due to a sign in the grocery store.

As for milk, people talk about the 100s of milk choices. I don't see that at all. I don't drink cows milk. I see there's only 2 types of soy milk to choose from. And both of them contain added calcium sulfate. I have to go to a specialty store just to get unadulterated soy milk.

And, I simply don't let ads tell me what's pleasurable and what's not.

Now, reminder advertising could theoretically work on me. If there was an ad reminding me to buy certain types of veggies (cucumbers, spinach, broccoli, etc) just as I was running out. But my tastes and interests are so far removed from the average person that 99.99% of the ads are for things I would simply never buy and thus they are ineffective (how often do you see ads on the TV for fresh veggies or fruits or beans? ~ I rarely if ever see one).

Almost Everything people know about dairy is false, I've been saying that for years. The list of lies goes on and on: "Great for your bones", "part of a balanced breakfast", "High in calcium" (it is but your body can't absorb most of it), "good for your health (it's actually strongly linked to prostate cancer)", "Vitamin-D" (vitamin-D isn't even a vitamin, it's a hormone your body can produce all on it's own with exposure to sunlight).

So all those messages from the dairy industry are falling on MY deaf ears. Ads don't tell you about their product (at least not honestly most of the time), they tell you more about the people buying the product.

And, on top of all that, for all the talk of ads being everywhere, i don't get many intrusive ads. I don't have cable or any other paid subscriptions. there's almost no billboards where i live. the books i read don't contain any. hackernews has very few ads, etc.

if advertisers knew anything about me at all, they'd avoid targetting me to save money on useless ad spend. lolz maybe that's why I don't get much ads.