> The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is their irrelevance.
That's not true. We don't hate billboards because of their irrelevancy. We hate billboards because they're giant ugly attention grabbers that make the world look worse for everybody in exchange for making someone money. If the billboards were all about driving-related products, they'd still suck.
The YouTube ads are hated because that's the whole point. YouTube has something we want (the video), and they're keeping it from us until they we do something we don't want to do (watch an ad). We dislike these ads almost by definition. If we liked them, we'd seek them out, and we'd call them something else, like "movie trailers" or "Super Bowl ads."
Steel-manning the argument, near where I live, it's not that uncommon to see small to moderately sized advertisements along the road, such as a sign outside/near the entrance of a farm that's selling eggs, meat, etc. I am wholly unopposed to this. In fact, I'm very supportive of this, and used them to find a farm to buy local honey from. Whereas the stereotypical massive slabs whose advertisements get wallpapered on, I think those are distracting menaces, particularly if the primary way you see them is by driving.
And where I live it's an ever growing hell of political signs, dominos pizza, and anyone else who realizes there is no enforcement against this wide scale littering. The signs are never removed and continue piling up. Abandoned / unmonitored lots are also a frequent target.
And it's rapidly getting worse
Glad you're cool with it though, I guess? Cuz I've considered running for office on the sole platform of having them perpetually removed and perpetrators prosecuted.
There are literally signs advertising to hire people to place more signs.
Just to be clear, the advertisements that I'm referencing are ones like this (https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-signs-at-roadside-advertis...), where the goods being sold are sold on the property the sign is on, ie, they're basically shop signs. They are usually pretty small too, with larger ones needing the approval of the local authority. There does seem to be pretty good enforcement on this too. I'm definitely against advertisement billboards: those big slabs that are just there to distract you with any arbitrary advertisement that paid to be wallpapered onto it.
You'd get my vote! These boulevard signs are totally out of control. They are technically against bylaws in my town, but nobody enforces it. Two anecdotes about how insane these are:
1. I saw one last week advertising a halloween party, so it's been in the ground for over 6 months. It is on a sidewalk near the university and is passed by about 1000 people per day, and in 6+ months not ONE SINGLE PERSON said "Oh, I should talk this down".
2. I once saw a city employee get off their riding lawn mower to move one of these signs out of their way, cut the grass, then get off the mower again to put the sign back!
And echoing the GPs comment, what really gets me about these is that we all have our lives diminished so that one person or company can earn a little extra...maybe. Or in other words, 1000's of people are subjected to this and perhaps 1 person might bite?
I'll close with my favorite interpretation of advertising: Advertisers essentially steal your sense of self-satisfaction so they can sell it back to you.
> It is on a sidewalk near the university and is passed by about 1000 people per day, and in 6+ months not ONE SINGLE PERSON said "Oh, I should talk this down".
Weren't you one of those people? Why didn't you do it?
>I once saw a city employee get off their riding lawn mower to move one of these signs out of their way, cut the grass, then get off the mower again to put the sign back!
Why wouldn't they? It's not their job to remove the sign and dispose of it. By leaving it in place, taking up space, eventually enough of these signs will pile up and cause such a problem that the powers-that-be will be forced to deal with the situation.
There is nothing to indicate that the comment was from China, where the is a separate power. In this case, the powers-that-be are the very same people who didn't do anything about it.
Where I live, there are sign regulations (total 30 sqft of road signs per lot, or less for smaller lots, 6ft maximum height, minimum 200 ft spacing, up to 2 temporary signs/lot for a maximum 60 days/year, regulations around needing to look nice, etc.). There are signs, but they are much less noticable and more function as a navigation aid rather than a call for attention.
In Portland, it's against the city code to staple signs to telephone poles.
This is, of course, completely ignored.
There are also signs stuck on wire next to freeway exits or other prime traffic areas. Typically they're on public land because a property owner would want permission or would just remove it.
There are people who angry enough about the sign proliferation that they cut the sign in half so you can't read the phone number or address or whatever.
You should be able to go online and pay a small fee (like $1 or even $.25) per sign that you put up for your garage sale or business. The money could be divided among the city, the pole owner, and people who are paid by the city to remove signs that don't have a QR code or has one that expired.
The fee could be adjusted so that garage sale signs cost much less than business signs. Business signs could only be allowed for businesses who started less than X days ago. Etc.
In Washington state, the law is that signs along the highway have to be things you can actually purchase in the same property.
I think that rule helps strike a decent compromise: Adjacent local businesses can draw attention to themselves, but it blocks the business-plan of erecting a forest of billboards to auction off, flogging cell-phone providers or prescription drugs etc.
Similarly, I’ve found numerous small businesses/attractions thanks to highway billboards while traveling. Yes, I find billboards tedious and a nuisance, but I’m happy with the tradeoff.
Except digital billboards, especially those that can switch to blinding white backgrounds at night. Those can rot in hell.
On a few nice towns here there's no regular advertisements, but shops are allowed to have nice wooden signs matching the aesthetics of the town signs.
You can still find your way around, and discover things, but looking around feels like you are finding things instead of looking at things yelling at you to find them.
> If the billboards were all about driving-related products, they'd still suck.
To be clear, this is my primary point because I’m driving, not shopping. Something that gets close to maybe agreeable (I would still dislike it) would be an advertisement for a gas/charging station on a long highway. But even then we already have official roadsigns that only show logos and are otherwise relatively unobtrusive. Similar ones for fast food, actually.
Such signs seem agreeable given there is some relevance (I legitimately might be low on gas/battery charge/food satiation levels in a context which I am actually likely to have a specific product need from one or more of the advertised businesses) and they are small enough to be ignorable when they are not actually relevant. The biggest issue I think about with that is how a business gets themselves on the sign but it’s probably not that hard once they are operating next to a highway exit.
(I loathe advertisements, so when I say “agreeable” I mean something like “not wholly disagreeable”.)
If you saw a giant, attention grabbing billboard for something you are looking for, you wouldn't hate it. In the context of roads, these are businesses putting their signs on the side of the road. For example I usually find billboards/signs pointing to the nearest supermarket, restaurant or gas station to be useful, because that's the kind of thing I may want do do when I am driving, and I am getting useful information out of them.
Driving-related products like tires are annoying on a billboard on the side of the road because I am obviously not going to look at my tires while I am driving, and it is usually not something you have an urgent need for. They are however relevant (and therefore less annoying) in a gas station, where you can check your tires as you are filling up your tank. It may even give you the idea of checking tire pressure, which is a good thing. One of the most clever driving-related ad was a letter I received from the garage I did car maintenance with, reminding me a couple of weeks before the next scheduled maintenance that it was to be done (with, of course, an offer on their part). It was useful, yet 100% an ad.
And yeah, we usually call things "ads" when they are annoying and by some other word when they are not, and advertisers tend to avoid the word for this reason. Calling it "sponsored" for instance. But it doesn't change that fact.
It's on purpose to make the point that advertising serves a purpose.
If advertising has hammered in to me that Tesco sells food and Screwfix sells power tools then my brain has a ready made map of what those chains sell. I don't have to visit and find out for myself.
> If you saw a giant, attention grabbing billboard for something you are looking for, you wouldn't hate it.
Yes, I would. When I'm looking for something, I search for it until I find it, and then after that I'm not looking for it anymore. I don't go for a drive through the countryside in the hopes that system76 have put up a billboard which blocks the view of the countryside but shows me the specs for their latest laptop model.
The thing is that you are not looking for a new laptop while you are driving, but you may be looking for a gas station because your "low fuel" light just turned on. And how are you going to find that gas station (which may not be exactly on the road you are driving on) if there is no sign advertising for it?
You can tell me you can pull over and look at a map, or program it on your navigation app. Not only it is not the most convenient, maybe even unsafe, but how do you think that gas station ended up on that map? Most likely the business paid for that, making it an ad.
That's the idea, we dislike that laptop ad because we usually don't buy laptops while we are on the road, it is an irrelevant attention grab, especially when that billboard is disproportionately large. But a gas station, restaurant or convenience store is relevant to a significant fraction of the people on the road, and when the sign is reasonable, we don't usually call it a billboard, even though it is an ad and not a sign like a speed limit.
„For next gas station take exit 31“ is not an ad in the sense most people understand ads, just as a „toilet“ sign on a door is not an ad for that toilet. I feel like you are constructing a case of ads that doesn’t really fit the common definition, but maybe I misunderstand.
> And how are you going to find that gas station (which may not be exactly on the road you are driving on) if there is no sign advertising for it?
Well, actually, in all serious travel I do, I tend to know exactly where I'm going to stop for fuel before I ever set off. It's programmed into my gps as part of my route. And I'm going to find it using my gps software.
If I'm doing a less-serious trip somewhere and I don't pre-plan my stops, the way I find places to stop for fuel is I drive along on my route, and if I need fuel, when I see a "gas" station, I stop there. Again, no billboards needed.
> You can tell me you can (snip) program it on your navigation app. Not only it is not the most convenient,
I find it super convenient. Much much more convenient than running out of fuel or not knowing if I have enough to make it to a particular place.
> how do you think that gas station ended up on that map? Most likely the business paid for that, making it an ad.
Well, that's debatable. It's a listing for an amenity of a certain type (fuel station) on openstreetmap. To be in the "Fuel" category that shows up on my gps software, you'll need to sell fuel (or your entry will get edited and you'll show up in a different category). In much the same way as a sign saying "public toilet, this way" isn't an ad.
But the debate about the blurry lines of "what is an ad?" is beside the point: have you noticed how that pattern of: "I want a thing, I search for it, I find it, and then I'm not looking for it anymore" holds true here? And also how no obnoxious billboards were involved?
Even if it is an "ad", it's in an appropriate place - on openstreetmap, in the "fuel" category, and searchable by gps coordinates. I can toggle whether I want things in the 'fuel' category to be visible in my gps software very easily - I can turn that "ad" off with exactly 2 button presses if it bugs me. It's not a huge obnoxious billboard blocking my view of the countryside, lit up with 10000W of lights at night time.
This is the problem. Ads may not work as well for some people (who hate them) but they work great on others. Unfortunately, because the ones it does work on spend money, the rest of us are stuck in advertising hell.
I don’t want AR glasses for productivity or the social media bs they want to push; I want them to blight out every f’n ad that is everywhere. When they can do it in-device with no internet connection and I’ll fork over 1k for glasses immediately.
Given that so far the nearest things to successful AR glasses have been produced by Google and Meta, I think the relationship between wearing AR glasses and seeing ads is unlikely to go the way you are hoping.
(I too would love there to be AR glasses that you can put arbitrary software on, only under your control, rather than that of some rapidly-enshittifying company that has the device locked down. I suppose it's not strictly impossible that that might happen, but it doesn't seem like it's the way to bet.)
You can achieve some of that by moving to a foreign country which language you don't understand. A good experiment to realise what a relief it is to suddenly have all offline advertisements removed (and some online too, when localised based on IP)
You sound like an ad exec. I never want ads ever, they are by their nature intrusive. I have never bought anything from a targeted ad on social media. If one plays and I can't turn down the volume quick enough I will make noise to avoid hearing it.
If an ad is placed in a way that forces you to look at it you have every right to want to remove it. If it's in my personal power, I do.
If it didn’t work on people companies wouldn’t spend hundreds of billions of dollars on ads. Everyone says the same thing that ads don’t work on them but the data says otherwise.
It clearly does. That's why my post was about avoiding it at all costs.
I however can confidently stand by my no purchase claim. I'm guessing you arent actually clicking facebook ads(if u don't run adblock for some odd reason.) It's not difficult to avoid that.
I actively avoid products I see mass market advertising for. It’s a useful heuristic, if you see a YouTube advertising campaign you can basically guarantee the product is poor value for the money. That extends to basically all name brand products like soap.
Cheap signs along the road don’t trip that heuristic because they cost so little it doesn’t change the underlying economics.
I too use the metric of seeing a YouTube sponsor or ad usually means it's bad.
I was actually interested in some of those privacy/info removal services but after doing research found those to - as you said - lack value for the money.
If a product needs to pay people to talk about it, it must not have organic buzz and popularity. Think VPNs sponsoring YouTubers, or those cheap wireless earbuds from a small brand. I wouldn't trust their quality.
Exactly why I do not own any Apple or Google products or have any subscription services. Advertise to me products I can not actually own or control for myself and I hate you.
Genuinely wondering as I would love to say what you did in your first sentence: what devices do you use? Are the Asian built phones better, or do you use a smartphone at all?
It’s an economic argument. The product could be fit for purpose, ie Nord VPN could work just fine.
However when you’re advertising a VPN on a cooking channel the cost per customer is quite high so they need to recuperate that high cost by charging extra. This is more true the longer the advertising campaign runs and the less a channel is related to the product, each of which drive up new customer acquisitions costs.
Obviously it’s not a perfect predictor, but it doesn’t need to be.
I see where you're coming from. I feel it's more like: you've never heard of a product. All of a sudden every YouTuber is shilling raycon earbuds.
Well that's the only place I ever hear of them. They all say they're great! I've never seen them or had anyone else attest to it except ads that all came out of nowhere. Seems like a play to make big moves in the headphone market. They sure did spend a lot on marketing, I hope enough went to design to make em actually good.
Now, I don't own any raycons because as I said seeing this behavior makes me skeptical of the product.
Meanwhile the main headphones I use I've never seen an ad for once. A friend recommend the m50x's when we were djing. I tested em and loved em. After getting them I notice they are basically an industry standard for audio which is my work. I suspect the quality product with savvy ads in appropriate places lead to this situation. No doubt in audio magazines audio technica runs ads.
When every YouTuber has done an incogni, nord, raid shadow legends, or a few others, I have to suspect they spent more on marketing than they did their product which makes me think(and has been shown a few times) that these products kinda suck.
Marketing overall doesn’t need to be effective marketing to me. It really depends on the product and strategy, YouTube can sell anything other options need to be product specific.
Being the value option is enabled by lower advertising spend but it also needs less advertising spend because it doesn’t look overpriced in comparison. PR firms for example may be able to get a few articles written quietly pushing your product. https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html However spending 100x as much doesn’t get you 100x as many articles. Diminishing returns hit hard and YouTube or other mass market advertisers is low on that list.
Companies can employ multiple strategies, Lexis and Toyota are car brands under the same entity targeting essentially completely different customers bases with two completely independent advertising budgets.
Such a claim needs evidence; by its nature, it insulates itself from counter-arguments based on experience.
If person X says "ads don't work on me", the state "I experience no influence from ads because they don't work" is indistinguishable from "I experience no influence from ads because they're so sneaky that they only affect me subconsciously".
Unfortunately, it's very hard to get individual-level evidence. You can get population-level evidence, but sometimes that evidence shows that the ads don't actually work (for instance, The Correspondent's 2019 articles about the subject).
Which is borderline nonsense nowadays. If this were another website, I'd convey it thru the meme of SpongeBob showing Patrick all the diapers* with captions of "sports betting" "pokemon speculation" "monetization in games" with maybe the last panel being "diamonds are valuable"
They have always had powerful psychological tools but they are next level nowadays. Best to just avoid.
I think you are complaining about the signs that happen inside cities particularly on roads where traffic gets backed up and slow. Beyond that it's gas/food/hotels/motels/tourist attractions... and religious speech. But in urban areas where it's AC repair, plumbers, injury lawyers or whatever lets be real: you're not missing much of a view.
No it’s using the common usage of the word irrelevant rather than the ad industry term of art. In common usage, almost all ads are irrelevant unless they simply help you find what you were already looking for (like a search ad leading to the exact website you were searching for).
The ad that convinces you to buy something you hadn’t thought of before (while watching a video related to that topic) would be considered relevant by the ad industry. But that’s still irrelevant in common usage because you were watching a video, not shopping.
> We don't hate billboards because of their irrelevancy. We hate billboards because they're giant ugly attention grabbers that make the world look worse for everybody in exchange for making someone money. If the billboards were all about driving-related products, they'd still suck.
I like billboards when I'm driving down an interstate and I want to decide if I should get off at the next stop and I want to know what food options there are. (example: Driving down I5 from SF to LA). I like billboards when they tell me about an attraction coming up. (Winchester House has a billboard) I like billboards when they advertize concerts/entertainers. (Driving down the I15 from Ontario to Oceanside there are ads for who's playing at Yaamava (https://www.yaamava.com/yaamava-theater), Pala (https://www.palacasino.com/entertainment/upcoming-concerts/), etc...
In the case of advertising that is the million dollar question. Determining the relationship between ad spend and revenue is next to impossible, whatever bullshit ad companies feed you to get you to spend more on ads.
The road signs are also unwelcome eye sores. However, they provide a lot of value by achieving safer road traffic so we tolerate them.
That value still needs to be compared and evaluated for delivering information vs delivering annoyance. If information were delivered by giant, flashing, multicolored road signs every 50 meters the answer would be different. My 2c.
We don’t complain not because road signs, in addition to being an eye sore, are relevant to our current activity, but because they provide significant value.
While relevance has some correlation to value, that correlation is pretty weak; it is easy to find examples of high relevance and very negative value. We should not conflate those.
Your opponent (with whom I agree) argued that the problem with most YT ads and billboards is negative value. Which will stay even if google makes them relevant. My 2c.
Good point. I assumed relevance was approximately similar to the correlation, without a strong assumption on the signs. Which is just my interpretation, not a universal definition.
Nothing is wrong with billboards, I can look the other way. When the billboards show up on my dashboard and I have to stare at it before I can turn off my exit then we have problems
I don’t mind watching a video with an ad. My child and I can preoccupy ourself. When it’s a 90 second ad we are forced to watch just to watch a 45 second video I’m gonna make certain we don’t watch that ad
Benefit of the doubt that perhaps that was the entirety of the comment at the time you posted this reply, but they did elaborate if you could take the time to read the whole thing:
> Nothing is wrong with billboards, I can look the other way. When the billboards show up on my dashboard and I have to stare at it before I can turn off my exit then we have problems
> I don’t mind watching a video with an ad. My child and I can preoccupy ourself. When it’s a 90 second ad we are forced to watch just to watch a 45 second video I’m gonna make certain we don’t watch that ad
How can dissipating be more effective than reflecting? Wouldn't you need multiple dense rows of trees to reach the efficacy of a single pane of sound-reflecting material?
I highly doubt a billboard is thick or dense enough to effectively block freeway sound. It’s not like you have a seamless wall of billboards “protecting” a neighborhood
A solid, tall, wall of wood ... Like maybe a fence? Many small towns put up fences to keep highway noise out. The residents don't see the billboards, not from their side. Only the drivers ripping by notice them.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.[1]
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.[1]
This is some weird shilling for capitalism or weird devil's advocate tbh. Don't feel like you have to find solutions or positive sides to everything you see on the internet. Billboards are visual noise, road noise is audible noise, neither is desireable.
And I'm sure the rural landowners dont care a jot about the opinions of drivers flying past on the highway. Nobody is going to pay them to not put up ads.
That's not true. We don't hate billboards because of their irrelevancy. We hate billboards because they're giant ugly attention grabbers that make the world look worse for everybody in exchange for making someone money. If the billboards were all about driving-related products, they'd still suck.
The YouTube ads are hated because that's the whole point. YouTube has something we want (the video), and they're keeping it from us until they we do something we don't want to do (watch an ad). We dislike these ads almost by definition. If we liked them, we'd seek them out, and we'd call them something else, like "movie trailers" or "Super Bowl ads."