Does advertising really work

@Richard_Littler it's the "mere exposure" effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect

@Richard_Littler there have been studies that conclude it does not. or: not much.

@Richard_Littler I suppose it’s like phishing attacks. Loads of attacks and a small number of results that make it worth it.

@Richard_Littler Much like spam, I assume it must work at least sometimes or people wouldn’t do it. I don’t think I’ve ever bought a product based on a straight-up ad, but I will admit to being influenced by product placement: seeing something used by somebody cool or to do something cool will get me to at least check it out. What actually surprises me is that this channel is not *more* prevalent than it actually is.

@Richard_Littler Oh yeah, those 'turn off your ad blocker to view this site' messages are hilarious. I'm like 'Ok, fuck off then'.

@Richard_Littler It's got to do with the rule-of-thumb that a person needs to be exposed to a message 7 times before they take action. So if you see an add for a product, even without sound, and even for a split second before deliberately turning your attention, that's 1.

If you're browsing the web and you catch a banner ad for the same product, that's 2.

Reading an article and the author mentions that product in passing (even in a negative light)? That's 3.

Driving along the highway and see a billboard for that product, even if you don't consciously take note of it? That's 4.

In the supermarket and see that product stacked on the shelf? That's 5 -- but you're not ready to buy, yet.

On your way home, you turn on the radio and catch an ad for that product, but by that time you're so sick of hearing about it that you change the channel immediately? That's 6.

Turn on the TV and watch a YouTube video, and your ad-blocker fails momentarily and you see an ad for that product? That's 7, even though you spend all your time waiting for the "Skip" button to become enabled.

Something happens in your life that means you urgently need something like that product? Now that particular product is the first and perhaps ONLY one that sticks in your mind, it's cheap enough, and you need a solution urgently, so what do you do? You go out and buy that product.

Yes. Yes, it works. And it works to the *benefit* of the consumer, too. At least, as a consumer, that's what I've often found.

@Richard_Littler I seem to remember it’s not about liking the thing or not, it’s knowing about it. Called something like exposure.
I remember one day, a big international company were signing a contract with where dad worked.
Dad’s place had advertised on billboards all round the pitch at a six nations match at, I presume, a fortune.
All this money aimed squarely at 4 business people in the stands on a bit of a jolly.

@Richard_Littler
Most of my ad burden is for things that I have no interest in or are for quacks.

Newspaper advertisers should know that I will not accept hundreds of cookies so I will never see their product.

@Richard_Littler I remember songs from ads from 40 years ago. We like to say that ads don't work on us, but believe me, they do.

@GrahamDowns @Richard_Littler

This is why hitting the x on offensive quack ads encourages more quack ads. More exposure, even though I feel more nauseous next time.

@Richard_Littler
It's like email spam. 99.9% of it just annoys someone to no purpose, but occasionally it finds a mark to justify the small per-unit expense.

And there's a meta-level scam, which is selling advertising is profitable regardless of whether the advertising works, and selling personal data collected by delivering the ad is profitable regardless of whether the data is useful.

The enshittification is self-fuelling at that point.

@Richard_Littler i shamefully admit that for a brief period where YouTube stopped working when my ad-blocker was running (the latter has since changed to avoid the detection), i was getting bombarded with ads all the time ... and while generally annoyed by them, i did end up buying one specific cheap gadget that one of those advertised. not proud of it. but yes the general principle still stands - advertising is shouting into the void for the most part

@Richard_Littler I go by the principle that if you have to annoy people to sell your products, then the products must be shit.

@Richard_Littler I've done screen sharing with coworkers and gotten screenshots from customers and watched various YouTubers do Internet searches ...... Most of them aren't using an ad blocker. Their brains reflexively close or filter out the noise and they assume that's just the way it has to be.

We here on Mastodon have a sample bias, an echo chamber, a filter bubble, or what have you.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@Richard_Littler It works on those who are hooked, addicted to our sick society. It's their heroine.

@Fasgadh @Richard_Littler Unconscious exposure is still exposure, and as they say, there is no such thing as bad publicity (within reason).

Unless you're previously committed to not patronising a particular company for principled, political, philosophical, or religious reasons. But then, it depends on exactly how strongly you feel. And you could still be swayed, even then. The marketers just need to work harder to convince you, is all.

"I'll NEVER buy anything from Amazon!"

Well, fair enough, but by definition, that means that Amazon is always prominent in your mind. If they continue to do the things that made you detest them, you will continue to be adamant in your decision. But if they start doing things which make you think, "Hey, they might actually be turning around," they could still win you back. Or if all of your friends start telling you how awesome they are, maybe you start gaslighting yourself into thinking they can't actually be that bad. Or you really really want a product and the only place to get it is on Amazon....

And even if not, if you're truly so hell-bent on Amazon, you're going to tell all your friends how terrible and evil they are and how you're never going to buy from them. But that puts them top of your *friends'* minds, which makes them more likely to buy from Amazon, if they don't feel quite so strongly as you do.

It's all deeply rooted in psychology and human nature.

@Richard_Littler Effective Advertising can work. They provoke you (at a not inconvenient time), to make you look, provide a ‘hook’ that relates to something in you, and then an easy to perform call to action. But above all, good enough that you wouldn’t mind experiencing it again. That takes effort and skill and therefore there are nearly zero of that quality nowadays. A guy Dave Trott https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Trott_(advertising_executive) runs a blog often bemoaning the failure of modern ad quality.

@Richard_Littler in my previous life, the marketing lady once mentioned that a 1% click through rate for online ads are considered a great success.

You can do your own math , but bottom line, I would say that by and large, yes, the bloody crap "works" well enough.

you and me and our close circle are but a droplet in a much larger ocean of "normies" who just take what is given.

@Richard_Littler You underestimate how ignorant the average normie is. A lot of them aren't even using ad-block. They have their chrome on windows and consume every single ad the almighty tech overlords feed them lmao

@Richard_Littler That's a great point! It definitely feels like ads can be more of a nuisance than anything sometimes. Have you found any ads that actually caught your attention? I’m curious if there are any out there that break the mold!