• marcos@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Not so fast. The idea that “if companies spend that much, they must have a reason” isn’t any good either.

    Some ads obviously work, some ads obviously don’t work, and most of them aren’t in either of those categories.

    • RQG@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 month ago

      Fair point.

      But recently I encountered several people with the opinion that ads don’t ever work on them. And while not all ads work well and some people are more susceptible to them than others, I think very few people if any can claim ads don’t work on them at all.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Meanwhile to me this is another piece of exasperating spam. My Steam account hasn’t been active in close to a decade but they never stop

          • RogueBanana@lemmy.zip
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            1 month ago

            Can’t you just disable steam email notifications or unsubscribe from mailing list? You ideally shouldn’t have to login for the later.

            • AA5B@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              To disable, I’d have to login.

              I usually don’t like unsubscribing because it results in more spam. Even legitimate sites seem to sell your “verified email address”. Nowadays everything has a unique generated email so I can turn it off at will, but that was long before I started doing that

              So, laziness, inertia, excuses

      • howrar@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        Ads don’t work on me CMV

        Though it’s probably because advertisers never promote things I actually want.

  • tyler@programming.dev
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    1 month ago

    Companies spend hundreds of millions on lots of shit that doesn’t work. There have been plenty of studies saying that ads are not nearly as effective as companies think they are. Do you think that companies are somehow smarter than the people outside those companies?

  • flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz
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    1 month ago

    I definitely bought a lot of things because of ads. Not directly though, I don’t go around clicking on online ads even if one slips through the blocker.

    Just being exposed to the idea that some product exists is an ad. Reviews and comparisons. Seeing a brand name in the wild. A product being recommended by someone I consider an authority in that specific field.
    It all provenly works on me.

    And I don’t really regret it, how else would I even find out what exists? Go to the store and just buy whatever the seller recommends? Did people do that in the past before mass advertising?

    Edit: I just realized this is exactly what Amazon is trying to do. Push generic “amazon option” products which have no independent sales outside of the platform.

    • tyler@programming.dev
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      1 month ago

      Being exposed to a product that exists is not an ad. An ad is explicitly something that a company has paid to make visible to people. If a company isn’t paying for it then it’s not an ad, no matter how much it sounds like one.

      And yes, going to a store and trying shit out is exactly how it should go. Reading reviews and talking to others is exactly how it should go. Companies paying to manipulate people of the world using psychology is what ads are. Not seeing a product being used in the wild.

      a paid notice that is published or broadcast (as to attract customers or to provide information of public interest)

      • RQG@lemmy.worldOP
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        1 month ago

        And then there is the whole 'we got all their products for free for review purposes. But it totally did not affect our review score. Even though they will stop sending us free shit ahead of release if we give them a bad review. Pinky promise

      • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        People generally don’t realize how many ads are actually on pages. It’s way more than just some search results. Carousels are entirely ads. Home page is almost 100% ads. The men’s pants page, mostly ads. Product comparison or review sites are almost all ad based. Affiliate links are just a way to make ads not look like ads.

  • Chessmasterrex@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Hard to be influenced by ads if one avoids them in the first place. I do a fairly good job at limiting my exposure to advertisements. Some are unavoidable, like outdoor advertisement, or going to a website with ads, but simply tuning out broadcast TV and radio, free streaming services and cable, with a few exceptions of course, eliminates a lot of wasted time on ads. I do pay money though to keep them away on some services. When someone brings up a funny ad that they saw on TV, I often have no clue what they’re talking about, and that’s great. My adversion to advertisement has been around since at least the early 2000s. I believe it was triggered when I sat down and watched the Weird Al movie “UHF” on Comedy Central and it took 4 hours to the end because of all the ads.

    • Liam Mayfair@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 month ago

      going to a website with ads Use Firefox. Install uBlock Origin. On your phone too. You can now tick that one off the list too.

  • HEXN3T@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 month ago

    I’ve bought one, and exactly one thing from an ad that I have liked, ever. A Purple pillow. Its been years now, and I still use it.

    Everything else is regret.

  • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
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    1 month ago

    I find this so stupid. Yes some people are not influenced by ads. I don’t shop at a food store due to its ads. I never saw an ad for a steamdeck or an acer laptop. I don’t eat fastfood now due to expense but the ads did nothing more than at best tell me of some new item which I might try. Im looking around my house and I can’t think of any ad that correlates to the stuff I own. By and large everything was comparison shopped for aspects I wanted vs price.

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      You saw a steam deck ad, you just didn’t classify it as an ad. People who think ads don’t affect them are lieing to themselves. Not all ads are about immediate action. You stop at Taco Bell over McDonald’s on a road trip because their ad gets associated with happiness subconsciously. Not being able to think of the ads is the point, most ads aren’t trying to directly stick in your brain, it’s about associating keywords and emotion.

      • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
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        1 month ago

        I really don’t think I did. I was not using steam rally till I got one. Pretty sure I heard about it first here. unless you include that as an add. Again why am I not doing fast food like I used to. Did the ads stop. did the ads lose their power. Its just stupid.

    • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      can’t think of an ad

      The point of an ad is sometimes just to get the company name into your brain. Then at some point in the future, you’re thinking that you need a new couch, and your brain knows what couch companies exist. You feel like you came up with the idea on your own and that ad don’t affect you. But it did.

      You are literally describing the middle person in this meme.

      • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
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        1 month ago

        oh yeah. I don’t think adds don’t effect me in terms of knowing something exists over not knowing they exist but its ineffective for purchase decision.

  • Mandy@sh.itjust.works
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    1 month ago

    When I still had ads all they ever made me do was sigh in annoyance, I get a vast majority have zero impulse control but also maybe it’s just:

  • TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works
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    1 month ago

    If you wanna waste Ad companies money use the ublock fork https://adnauseam.io/ that clicks on all the ads to dilute the dataset, it also shows them all in a little ‘collection’ which is cool
    They pay per click on the ad ~1$ for 1 click so by clicking on 2,000 in 3 months for me is a lotta wasted money.

    Also, use https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/trackmenot/ to search random stuff on Google and Bing, and to take their money download the Google app “rewards” and you’ll get surveys on search results and get money in the form of Google play money for them (make sure to actually use it). iirc Bing does the same with their points.
    This one doesn’t waste a lot of money, but it’s money you can use to support a cause you like or just buy something for a game if you want.

    • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I didn’t believe that cost so I looked it up. It’s seriously a dollar per click. That seems SO expensive to me.

  • LANIK2000@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Fuck no, I do my best to avoid adds and shitty algorithms promoting what I “want”, because it never is what I want! It’s always hot garbage! Finding anything meaningful is becoming harder and harder as adds become more prevalent. I ditched Google and YouTube for those reasons. I hate how it picks up on what I search for and shows me similar things in the future. I’m looking up stuff to find new things! Not the shit I’ve already seen!

  • UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    The only ads I’m exposed to are influencers and product placements. I recently bought something because of an influencer the second time in my life (excluding their own merch). I think I can manage.

    I do fall for sales tho. Bad impulse control.