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@FeartnTired It's not an autism thing.

Ads are just stupid.

Also, she said she pays to not see advertising. Pfft. Amateur.

@FeartnTired She said at the start she doesn't see ads because where she watches the services that use ads, she pays them not to show them.

Yes, some ads are well done. Like the one I think, Volvo was it, where a bunch of Finnish men get locked out of their sauna in the middle of snow-covered Lapland.

Or the condom commercials that show toddlers having almighty tantrums.

But most are just same old dreck. And the existence of good ads makes that even more annoying, because they're proof that ads don't have to be dreck.

@FeartnTired I have no idea. They say that brand recognition is a goal in itself, but if I recognise a brand without ever buying anything of that brand, what exactly are they achieving? It's not like I'm going to recommend it to anyone either.

@FeartnTired I actually go out of my way every now and then to not buy something that I see advertised. The more annoying the ad, the more likely I'll do that.

@FeartnTired @Gnomeshatecheese My dad used to go out his way not to buy Charmin. He hated toilet paper being advertised so he'd buy the highest priced brand he didn't see on tv.

My mom refused to buy Baggies because she hated the name.

Marketing doesn't work the way marketing executives think.

Marketing doesn't work the way marketing executives think.

That's probably more true than we even realise.

@FeartnTired I was thinking about this some more, and there actually is a type of advertising that I don't mind, and which can affect my shopping.

The paper leaflets from local shops, saying they now have such and such on this and that sale. Like cordial two bottles for the price of one. Or such and such seasonal product is now available.
That is, if they're showing something I actually do buy or happen to be short on at the time. Most of the stuff that they advertise is just not on my shopping list.

But compared to most commercials or billboards that's downright precision advertising. The vast majority of advertising is compares to that like a sawed-off shotgun does to a derringer pistol.

@FeartnTired Oh and also, when I browse Pinterest on the house tablet, I deliberately hide ALL ads I see, no matter if they are for things that interest me or not. Pinterest always asks for a reason for the blocking, and when available, I choose "offensive" (though haven't seen that in a while). Mostly I opt for "not relevant for me", in the hopes that it might screw with their algorithm.

Because seriously, sometimes a full third of the available spread is ads. That's just Not ON.

@Gnomeshatecheese @FeartnTired You tube became super greedy with their ads too.

My ad blocker was slowing the laptop down, but himself fiddled with it and the new one seems to be ok. They go completely overboard with them now. Same re TV, it isn't ads on the back of a programme it became programme slotted in among ads, and honestly some of them are terrible, well, most of them are. Not sure it was for, he was watching something the other evening and this ad came on, oh my God, the noise, that is all it was, a man making a dreadful noise! He switched it over PDQ, it really was hideous, we both have a touch of misophonia.

@FeartnTired Well, turns out I have a lot more to say about this than I thought (not being tired helps, I guess).

I seem to recall some people talking about how there's a disconnect between the advertising world and the platforms that sell advertising space. That is, the advertisers make what they think are the best ads (leaving aside that they clearly are idiots), but then the platforms will effectively sabotage the advertising, by for example showing the ad dozen times in a row to the same users, and as she said on the video, thus effectively putting them off.

The platforms are apparently, overall, paid on the number of views or placements, and so to them it's irrelevant whether they annoy the viewer or not, as long as the viewer can't get away from seeing the ads. In fact, the platforms that offer paid, ad-free subscriptions would actually be incentivised to make the ads as annoying as possible.
At the same time, the advertisers seem to have little control over this placement, unless they're willing to pay really big money for specific slots.

So the advertising side of marketing industry has, by and large, no idea of how marketing works, and the platform side of the industry has no interest in offering ads that actually work.

No wonder the Internet and streaming services suck.

(p.s. Ublock Origin)

@HebrideanHecate @FeartnTired I don't know if YT still does it, but at some point they were putting ads in between music performance videos.

You'd be listening to a song, or a concerto, or whatever and BAM an ad. Right there. In the middle of the music.

We could scarcely believe it when we saw it.

@Gnomeshatecheese @FeartnTired Yes, they were, it was outrageous!

@FeartnTired Yeah, I was dead-tired last night so I think I zoned out about third of the way through the video. Didn't really take much in beyond the beginning.

@FeartnTired @Gnomeshatecheese Mostly they irritate the hell out of me, I liked the Shetland dancing pony, there was something for a rabid badger the man thought was a puppy, that was funny, but aside from that they really do ANNOY me!

@HebrideanHecate @FeartnTired Problem is, most ads are just same old, tired boilerplate.

Insert a pretty person. Have the pretty person do/say something. Have a voiceover/suitable elevevator music.
Superimpose the brand or picture of the product.

Car (or other such) commercials are essentially this too, except instead of pretty person you have shiny object.

They're all so bloody similar that you won't even need to see the same ad to get utterly sick of the repetition.