This is a very softball question, it is not being asked for some legitimate purpose.
It’s mainly asked as a platform of sorts that serves by being asked so people can answer in the form of reasons for why we loathe advertisements and commercials in general.
My answer is that we don’t like to be marketed to, especially from companies of which we don’t have a single ounce of interest of doing business with. “BUY! SUBSCRIBE! BUY! SUBSCRIBE!” is regularly chanted loudly from any company that pours millions down the drain to make 10 second ~ 1 minute ads of dramatic theatrics of a product we can live without.
And a lot of their ‘research’ or lack thereof, of their product is obviously fabricated to get people to buy. That’s the primary goal, is to get people to buy or subscribe by any means necessary.
Makes me wonder a lot of the time, why we aren’t attacking marketers and salespeople more often. I swear if we all focused on a week or a month by breaking the kneecaps of any salesperson or marketing agent while tormenting their families through harassment because of all of the years they’ve harassed us and fucked with us by relentless advertising.
I bet this shit would slow the fuck down.
I don’t mind buying things, sometimes I even enjoy it. I hate being sold things.
I say it is more the adverts themselves disrespecting our senses (radio adverts being louder than the station music or presenter, TV ads flashing colour) or adverts masquerading as regular content even with sponsored tags
I think tv commercials that disguise themselves as something else can be fun. In the 80s, it would always make you laugh when an energizer commercial would pop-up for the first time.
advertising itself isnt the problem… its the abuse of advertising by MBAs who have been told if their numbers dont increase every quarter, they are failures and their compensation will reflect that. its the requirement that a business is always growing despite how blatantly impossible that is.
but its not just those sales folks… its the entire executive structure up to the top that authorizes such behaviors.
you end up with an enshittified world.
I’m out here trying to save enough money to get by, it’s annoying to keep seeing all the things I can’t afford paraded in front of me constantly. Some of them I wish I could afford, some of them I’d never buy if I had the chance.
It strikes me as companies with too much access and too much money looking to drain my accounts to add it like a drop of water to their swimming pool they already have.
why we aren’t attacking marketers and salespeople more often. I swear if we all focused on a week or a month by breaking the kneecaps of any salesperson or marketing agent while tormenting their families
That escalated quickly.
As much as I hate sales and marketing, salespeople are human beings trying to get by too. It’s another case of worker on worker violence that doesn’t touch the root cause.
I spent far more years than I wanted to in sales and/or advertising. I hated it and everything it stood for, but I had a family to feed, and when your whole resume is sales and customer service, it’s hard to get into anything else.
At the very least, I was honest. If there was a better option for you that made me less money, I would offer it and explain exactly why.
Don’t take it out on the salespeople. Most of them are just people trying to pay bills, but DO BE AWARE there are some REAL slimy pieces of shit out there. I’ve worked with them and they will tell you ANYTHING to make a sale. Do your research before you buy anything, and feel free to slow it down and ask questions. If you get bad vibes from someone, leave and come back another time. Talk to someone else and see if you get the same answers.
We also hate pushy sales people. Same shit different cringe
It makes me waste my time in a way. Even if it’s a five second commercial, I feel like it’s diverting my attention to something else, which could be dangerous in some (albeit extremely) edge cases.
A case that makes me especially angry involves this application I use to consult the arrival time of several train and bus stations I usually go to. If the mission statement is to be able to know which platform should I head to in order to reach my train on time, then adding advertisements is like kicking me right at the balls, because they sure as hell are going to show up at the worst moment possible.
I had a shower thought the other day; what would the world be like if advertising didn’t exist?
No billboards or giant signs everywhere blocking our views. Content would be better because it wouldn’t be interrupted by commercials. But think of how much money is spent on advertising? Companies would have to invest that into other areas to be successful instead, such as cheaper and/or better quality products, or higher wages for their workers. Companies would have to work really hard to get a good reputation so their products could spread through word of mouth instead of using advertising to invade everyone’s space.
I’m sure there’s some downsides, but it sounds kind of amazing.
Check out São Paulo
That’s awesome. I’ve heard of some cities doing that, nice to see an example.
This article has some amazing photo comparisons.
They’re simply distracting.
Because so many of them are poorly done.
They’re engineered to be as obnoxious and often deceptive as possible.
I don’t mind adverts that show what a product is and what it costs, but those ones apparently underperform compared to the flashy/loud/clickbaity shit that’s infested the internet and any other space that has gives them a route to invade your field of view.
Ad blockers are a must now-a-days.; any video that shoves that “and now a word from our sponsors!” shit in the middle of it gets a thumbs-down; and I’ll actively avoid products I see on billboards / physical adverts.
Money could be spent on SEO and useful visibility. Instead it is spam, and wastes my time and resources. It has no value to me. I have never and will never purchase anything advertised to me. I view any product with an advertising budget as massively inferior to any other in the same space. Any consumer product in the present market only has 20%-30% of the cost the end user pays going to the company making the thing. If that company is spending half of that money to advertise, the product manufacturing, packaging, and logistics costs them ~5%-7% of what I am paying. The other companies in the sane space can put ~15%-25% of what I’m paying into the product. So simply avoiding anyone that advertises results in a potential of three to five times more product for my money. Any company than needs to spam market to the world is doing so because they can’t survive on their reputation or merits.
Plus, my data is a fundamental part of my person. Owning a part of me is the latest form of theft of autonomy. I prefer to call it digital slavery, and those collecting and selling personal data as digital stalkers. It is a means to manipulate and alter access to information. This isn’t 1999; no one is using this for banner ads in a trillion dollar industry. Search engines and the internet are no longer deterministic, you have no way of checking and balancing the echo chamber you exist within.
The most simple answer.
Ads or commercials are typically an interruption to the content I was wishing to watch.
Beyond feeling annoyed and manipulated, advertising is a constant reminder of our broken systems. Endless conspicuous consumption. Infinite growth. It’s like a cancer.
I don’t hate them. I just don’t care about them and the only thing they really do for me is let me know that a product exists. After that, I research it if I am interested or move on and forget about it if not.
