It’s possible that consumers are happy to have the most minute details of their lives surveilled and monetized in return for seeing ads they might want to click on. This is a hard theory to test, because very few people even know they’re making the trade. However, one organization recently tried to find out. After the European Union’s landmark privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation, went into effect in 2018, a Dutch public broadcasting agency started prompting all visitors to its website to choose, in a clear and straightforward manner, whether they wanted their data shared with advertisers. The result? Ninety percent opted out, and the agency abandoned behavioral advertising altogether. (A Google spokesperson notes that all users can opt out of personalized ads, and that Google has long prohibited personalized advertising based on sensitive information.)
Why don’t we just ban all advertising? It’s a waste of human labor that not only contributes nothing to society but actually makes it worse.
100% this. Marketing has become a dead weight upon society, it’s preventing us from making wise informed choices daily by poisoning our perception with artificial need/demand.
Or just allow on a whitelist-only basis.
Sure, a sandwich board outside your restaurant seems nice, but it seems like the actually-socially-useful examples are few enough that you could get through them all no problem.
Ironically street signage is generally one of the more regulated forms of advertising. Those guys that spin signs were originally there to get around those laws.
Sure. I was thinking of advertising in media but I don’t have a problem with a sign on your business or very basic things like that. So I guess not quite all advertising but the advertising industry needs to go.
I have a problem with those signs, they’re pollution of a public space.
I remember when Sao Paulo banned all outdoor advertising and their city became beautiful again.
Further, when nearly everyone has a GPS map to wherever they want to go in their pockets, do we really NEED giant fuckoff signs so people know where their local McDonald’s is anymore?
i used to live near a suburb that banned billboards as well as ‘great signs’ (the big and usually tall lit-up signs for businesses) over a certain height (they all had to be fairly short and set back from the roadways). there was also no overhead telephone or power lines there. everywhere should be like that.
This seems to be mainly about billboards. I’m talking mainly about a sign on your door that explains what your business is. I hadn’t initially thought of this as a form of advertising but it technically is.
I’d be open to discussing a broader ban but my current thinking is that this very basic type of advertising which is primarily informational may be do more good than harm.
But think of all the poor people working in advertising who will be without a job!
Obligatory: Bill Hicks on Marketing.
Like at least ban ads for giant companies. Everyone fucking knows what Geico and Progressive and Microsoft and Google are. We don’t need fucking ads from these companies. We need ads from companies we have never heard of.
It’s about giving you a brainworm. When it’s time for you to sign up with an insurance company, you’re most likely going to remember the insurance commerical that was the most ridiculous or unique. It’s not even about advertising a product anymore. It’s about jamming that little token into your brain so you’ll remember them later.
Bill Watterson nailed it down 30 years ago in 1994. Because the brain worms work if they’re repeated enough.
PROFIT
