so, the thing is that you're wrong. if you were right, i'd probably uninstall adblock. for the record, what i'm trying to do right now is figure out why youtube is only counting about 30% of my hits (and i suspect it's the reason why). to me, that's a better argument.
the average adblock user simply isn't going to respond to the ads. they're not going to go buy the iggy azalea cd that's advertised on the radiohead video. they're not going to go watch the awful movie that is being mass marketed with no concept of demographics.
what people like this guy (and is that really his bedroom?) need to realize is that advertisers are going to eventually clue into this and abandon the format. making me watch a 30 second spot for something i'm never going to buy isn't going to resolve the underlying problem, which is that the advertising doesn't work.
if we want this internet thing to work outside of a model of corporate dominance, we need to come up with better ideas than advertising because, adblock or not, it's days are numbered.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifBpjs36kFs
see, it's actually pretty ironic.
so much of the internet is built on an advertising model - including google. but, google's search function is precisely what has made advertising obsolete. it doesn't really matter what you're advertising for anymore, you're not going to reach anybody under 40. rather, younger people will use google's search engine to actively research anything and everything they're going to buy, from a $5 pack of guitar picks to a $500,000 house. the advertising is just reduced to noise to work through in the research process. it's entirely worthless.
historically, advertising's primary purpose has been to convince us to act irrationally, but all advertising claims are now subject to immediate verification through internet search. it's basis of coercion through emotional manipulation can no longer be effective because it is too easy to rebut.
it might be more than ten years before this becomes understood, but it's happening, so we'd might as well start adjusting for it now, not when it happens.
the way i see it is that advertisers are going to have to shift from actively pursuing customers to being able to provide information. it's going to no longer be about attracting as much attention through volume and whatnot, and going to shift to being about trying to get sites listed at the top of search engines and then creating content on the company's own website that engages possible buyers. this is a really fundamental shift, as it shifts attention away from coercion and towards the actual product.
that reduces traditional advertising to bandying about search terms as buzzwords to try and get the rankings skewed in their favour. and it completely cuts out this clockwork orange style forced viewing that's been pushed so heavily, and is failing so badly.
simply put, the era of the passive consumer that responds to aggressive advertising is coming to a close with the coming irrelevancy of generation x, whom everybody always knew was going to get squeezed between two much larger demographic bulges and have a relatively shorter period of relevancy than the generations that preceded and followed them. what will follow is an era of the active consumer that independently seeks out information and must be advertised to interactively, in a way that responds to their requests for information.
companies that get on top of this will be successful, while companies that cling to obsolete models will fall apart.
SuperkenGaming
You clearly have never been to a school if you think advertisement doesn't work lol.
jessica
yeah. i think it may have worked some time in the early part of the last century, up til a bit past the middle of it. but, we're so saturated with ads now that we mostly ignore them. i think it might have something to do with an extrapolation of the idea of transmarginal inhibition. i think most of us have hit a sort of an ultra-paradoxical phase, where advertising merely produces a negative response.
it's not just youtube. i know where the billboards around my house are, and i walk by them multiple times in a week, but i don't know what they say because i completely block them out as soon as i realize they're ads.
i would consider the literature on it to be very out-of-date, and i'm not aware of anybody that's doing current research on it. that applies both to pro-advertising and anti-advertising literature.
SuperkenGaming
kids buy brand names to fit in... the brand name isnt on the shirt because its a cool name.. its wearable advertisement lol
jessica
i'm not convinced that's actually true. i never knew anybody growing up that thought like that.
the only brand names i ever had on my shirts were stuff my parents bought me because it was on sale, and i mostly avoided wearing them because i felt awkwardly conformist in them.
there was a phase in high school where i wore a lot of band shirts, but i was trying to advertise myself to people that may have had like interests because i didn't have a lot of friends. it's a bad comparison.
SuperkenGaming
you mustve not known many people :P
look at the iphone.. IOS is clearly the lesser OS, but the iphone is an accessory made popular by public and celebrity advertisement
jessica
the iphone's market share was the result of it producing the product first. as android/google and others have caught up, it's market share has actually decreased dramatically.
further, macs are still a novelty item and will almost certainly remain that way, no matter how much they spend on advertising.
now that the market has leveled, the primary factor for people buying a new phone actually seems to be price.
stockingandblossom1
i cam watch an old ad from the 90's like the pentium 3 ads over and over and never get tired of it. but i can't stand todays commercials it's too generic.
jessica
that's probably more your age talking. i'm not saying "you're old", so much as i'm saying "the advertising isn't directed at you anymore".
i think a bigger factor is the saturation. we're just bombarded, and if it doesn't produce that violently negative reaction almost out of reflex (that's what i tend to get) it just gets lost in the low signal to noise ratio.
stockingandblossom
that could be true, also if i have to watch ads and risk getting a virus i would like to be paid to do it. google should pay both sides of the coin if they want people to disable adblock.
jessica
i just want to clarify that he probably means companies tracking him, and it's not a trivial concern.
you can see the price determinant everywhere if you drop the idea of brand recognition, which is probably not accidentally pushed through various literature. there's two commodities i consume a large amount of: mayonnaise and soy milk (not blended together).
with the mayonnaise, the brand name is always stacked to it's highest point on the shelf, until they have to put it on sale. then it starts moving. it follows that the brand name mayonnaise is not marketable unless it's price is reduced to that of the no name mayonnaise. and, it often ends up hitting the store doubly, because they have to reduce the brand name to below the no name to get it to move (because consumers just automatically pick the no name, because they know it's cheaper), which causes the no name to back up, and then have to be reduced even further. they only seem to be able to resolve this by reducing orders.
the soy milk is even worse. the grocery store i go to has simply stopped stocking the no name chocolate soy, which is generally about a dollar cheaper than the brand name stuff. i actually went and tracked down the manager of the store, because i didn't want to pay the extra dollar. he explained to me that the brand name has actually put pressure on the chain (food basics) to stop stocking the no name, because the sales for the brand name were so low.
those are just two examples i can see and understand through direct experience. there's no doubt many others.
Eave
I'm not going to argue, you're selfish and inconsiderate. What if you got less money at your job? It would MASSIVELY cause your life to go on the decline. (provided you don't switch jobs in said situation) This would force the fun things which you pay a subscription to to be no longer available. You'd have no internet, TV, and barely any food. Having nothing but the necessities is a terrible life.
jessica
that's a market society, buddy. i don't like markets, either, but the solution isn't to sit around and complain that it isn't fair that nobody's propping up a failing business model.
one solution to try and get around the inequalities and anti-art biases that are inherent in market capitalism is to argue for a guaranteed minimum income.