I think you’re somewhat underselling the bad by saying the thing that usually annoys you is insufficiently targeted advertisements, because it’s downplaying the bad, like auto-play video/audio ads, or ads that expand or move around the screen.
I’m also noticing a trend—Youtube, I’m looking at you—of making advertisements less about actually selling advertisement, and more as a punishment for using the free version of a service as an incentive to push people onto the paid version.
These two things may not be entirely unrelated.
Also, while I think you’re correct, I don’t think your experiences are universal; in particular, targeted advertising just doesn’t work for me.
Years ago, I tried to sign up for Match, and was rejected because they wouldn’t be able to match me to anybody. I feel that the same kind of thing happens with targeted advertisements; I feel like they’re trying really hard, but the targeted advertisements just don’t … connect with me. I think I’ve seen two advertisements in all of twenty five-ish years on the Internet that actually gave me information on a new product I was actually interested in getting.
Nonetheless, now that I’ve basically disagreed with everything you’ve written here—I basically agree with everything you’ve written here. But I think a lot of the objections to advertisements are fundamentally ideological, and the actual good or bad of advertisements tends to be, in a sense, irrelevant to conversations about the good or bad of them, as these conversations are dominated by the bad of the concept of advertising itself.
I think you’re somewhat underselling the bad by saying the thing that usually annoys you is insufficiently targeted advertisements, because it’s downplaying the bad, like auto-play video/audio ads, or ads that expand or move around the screen.
I’m also noticing a trend—Youtube, I’m looking at you—of making advertisements less about actually selling advertisement, and more as a punishment for using the free version of a service as an incentive to push people onto the paid version.
These two things may not be entirely unrelated.
Also, while I think you’re correct, I don’t think your experiences are universal; in particular, targeted advertising just doesn’t work for me.
Years ago, I tried to sign up for Match, and was rejected because they wouldn’t be able to match me to anybody. I feel that the same kind of thing happens with targeted advertisements; I feel like they’re trying really hard, but the targeted advertisements just don’t … connect with me. I think I’ve seen two advertisements in all of twenty five-ish years on the Internet that actually gave me information on a new product I was actually interested in getting.
Nonetheless, now that I’ve basically disagreed with everything you’ve written here—I basically agree with everything you’ve written here. But I think a lot of the objections to advertisements are fundamentally ideological, and the actual good or bad of advertisements tends to be, in a sense, irrelevant to conversations about the good or bad of them, as these conversations are dominated by the bad of the concept of advertising itself.