Advertising is just companies saying "This is what you can purchase from me - it's awesome - please consider purchasing it". I have managed hundreds of millions in ad spend for major brands. None of them rely on weird ad magic to persuade people secretly - just showing off different aspects of the product or service.
> Advertising is just companies saying "This is what you can purchase from me - it's awesome - please consider purchasing it".
This is such a naive view of advertising that if you're really this unaware of how manipulative ads are, you can't possibly have defenses against them. You should seriously spend some time looking into the secret magic of dark psychology they use to manipulate people because while knowing about their tactics won't make you immune to them, it really can help to be aware of how they work and to train yourself to recognize when they're being used against you.
I don't know, I just went to find an ad in my feed and the first one was for a house plant that was easy to take care of. I'm not saying I'm the smartest cookie in the shed, but I didn't detect any manipulation. Seems like it was a person who just wanted me to know about their product.
I haven't seen the plant ad, but it sounds like once you start learning about how the ad industry works your mind will be blown. Insane amounts of money have been poured into research by the industry (including some highly questionable research being done on children and infants) and some of the results are fascinating.
The manipulation goes beyond even the content of the ads themselves. For example, one of the reasons companies are spending so much money collecting/buying/storing/securing every scrap of data they can get about you and your life is so that they can target ads at you at specific times when they know you'll be more vulnerable such as times when they know you'd normally be tired, or when they think your medication may be wearing off, or during periods where you're under high stress, or when you might be entering a manic phase, or when you're intoxicated, etc.
Like I said, understanding the many many ways that you are vulnerable to their tricks can help but it won't stop them from working on you. It's kind of like how you can't not see certain optical illusions even though you know you're interpreting them incorrectly. The conclusion I've come to is that it's best to do everything you can to avoid exposure to advertising where possible and to keep an eye out for when those tricks are being used against you elsewhere.
So a company should not be able to recommend therapy ads if I seem stressed? Ozempic if I seem like I want to lose weight? Laxatives if I seem constipated, or energy drinks if I'm sleep deprived?
Trying to moralize ad targeting is exhausting. It's not inherently a bad thing to target an ad to someone who's in a bad spot, or really in general.
People who buy the product are presumably competent enough to manage their own finances. Acting like they're being exploited constantly because ads hinted that they weren't masculine enough, or too fat, or being their peers, etc. is ridiculous. Ads aren't like cigarettes.
It's more like companies recommending an alcoholic who has been sober for 13 months his favorite drink because they know he is going through a divorce and is currently 15 feet from a bar, or a company targeting a person with Alzheimer's right at the time they know they'll start sundowning, or even just cranking up nostalgia in their advertising because they know your last surviving parent died and for the first time you won't be going home for the coming holidays.
Ad targeting these days can be intensely personal and manipulative. There are lots of ways ads could be used that aren't harmful, but also lots of ways that they can. Imagine an ad using a deepfake of your own child who died in a car crash telling you in his voice how he might still be alive if your car only had <insert new safety feature here>. There are clearly lines that can and should be drawn. There are extremely unethical practices happening today because companies are amoral monsters that only care about money and there are almost no laws or regulations to stop them from doing whatever they want.
Ads aren't like cigarettes. You make the choice to smoke or not, but ads are just forced on you. Only rarely are you given any opportunity to opt out of them, and the industry spends a lot of money trying to circumvent any efforts you take to cut them out of your life. You can quit cigarettes, but they wont let you quit advertising.
And it's worth noting that there are laws that restrict advertisement of cigarettes, alcohol, etc.
Meanwhile let's also not forget the post itself on which we are commenting: accusations that social media companies have, in fact, engineered their products to be addictive.
Either you intentionally misunderstood his point and deflected or you honestly seem to think this way. In either case, you misapprehended what he meant.
>Advertising is just companies saying "This is what you can purchase from me - it's awesome - please consider purchasing it". I have managed hundreds of millions in ad spend for major brands
"You're not good enough as you are now, but you will be if you purchase this thing"
"Other people you admire or respect have purchased this thing, and if you do too you'll be more like them"
"Other people will like you more if you purchase this thing"
"You'll be more attractive if you purchase this thing"
"This thing will be worth more in the future so if you purchase this thing it will make you money"
"This is your only chance to purchase this thing, so if you don't it now you'll miss out on this price"
I don't think any of them has to do with how awesome "the thing" itself is. Obviously there's more to, say, an expensive watch, than its ability to tell time
The only products that sell this in advertising actually provide those brand features. Essentially people pay money to increase their perceived status.
Like, if you sell a luxury handbag. When people buy it, they know 70% of the value comes from the advertising saying "this is a high value product" as a status signal. I think that's really dumb, but that's what people want.
It also existed a long time before ads itself did.
> they know 70% of the value comes from the advertising
So, you are aware that advertising is in large part responsible for shaping what is perceived as high-value status signals in society. You're also aware that for certain products the only distinction between those and their alternatives is that specific high-value association.
How come you started out from the position that advertising is "just showing off different aspects of the product" then?
If anonymous billboards or banner ads can convince you you aren't good enough, your life is probably not great with or without ads.
If an ad convinces you to, say, get a gym membership or go on Ozempic, who's to say what happens next? Maybe you do start feeling better about yourself.
They don't consciously convince you directly anymore than a slot machine convinces you to give it one more spin - it's done on a subconscious level. For instance one of the most famous, and effective, ads in history is Apple's 1984 ad. [1] A 59 second ad where the only mention of what's being sold at all happens in about 1 second with a reference to a brand name and then a logo. See: ELM model and peripheral processing. [2] And this is all day one advertising stuff.
Advertising is a horrific industry. It probably always was, but at the modern scales, it's outright dystopic. I think there's simply a large amount of cognitive dissonance around this issue because advertising drives the paychecks of a whole lot of people, and it's rather difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
While I agree with your point about understanding, I think there's also an issue of self-image. "What? Me? Influenced by some ad? Get outta here! I make my own decisions!"
