Ask HN: Why are today's consumers not discerning what is ad and what is not?
Today's audiences are attached to brands more than ever. People, me included, watch several 1-2 hour informercials by Apple every year. We watch Marvel movie after Marvel movie where each one is advertising for the next movie.
It's like being trapped in a hamster wheel. Why have we as consumers become to addicted and depended on brands? Are these companies exploiting something innate in us? A need that needs to be fulfilled?
64 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 139 ms ] threadI think product placement is particularly rife and problematic, today in a reasonably new form especially since it bleeds into the culture of social influencers and in many nations is not regulated to enforce disclosure.
However, I think you might struggle to make a case that "today's audiences" are any more susceptible to advertising than any other audience throughout history. I would suggest (and personally believe) that the idea of "ick, ads" is our own personal niche that moves us away from the centre of the bell curve. Many people don't appear to respect the harm adverts do to the mind, or perhaps I am one of the few that overstates their detriment, depending on one's perspective.
I personally believe this too, which is why I think there is a legitimate case for advertisers to give audiences the ability to opt-out of advertising. Some of us hate adverts so much it puts us off the product you are advertising. I know it does for me. It's probably better for your company not to advertise to me, or people like me.
The intent of any advert is to associate the given brand with some sort of positive experience. Be that visual (pretty people), social (people having fun) or aspirational (expensive looking) or some other positive. By associating the brand with a negative reaction one can invert that intent and thereby give the advertiser the opposite outcome that they intended by catching your attention.
https://www.npr.org/2005/04/22/4612464/freuds-nephew-and-the...
This is an absurd statement - the movies in of themselves are entertainment and not solely an advertisement.
This is literally any entertainment product
All entertainment wants to get you ‘hooked’ but that’s mostly a good thing since it makes it enjoyable. Even Homer wrote a sequel!
Both are designed influence behavior and retain your attention. They are for all intents and purposes the same thing. Virtually everything is a wolf in sheep's clothing.
The only reason any product exists is to make money.
Something being made with money in mind doesn’t exclude its other properties. Apple makes iPhones to make money, but they make phone calls. Disney makes movies to make money, but they provide entertainment.
They aren’t doing it to make the world a better a place. They are doing it for the same reason that most people go to work - to exchange labor for money to suooort their addiction to food and shelter.
And consequently these movies are mostly irrelevant because they only appeal to a tiny fraction of people.
That is my point. They are analagous and equally relevant: no more. No less.
See also, every other company that produce goods and services for profit by getting people to spend money on something they desire.
Starting to wonder if the problem is more than just education or social media. Perhaps a combination of the lifestyle illness medications.
Not that the average intelligence has ever been stellar, but lately; wow!
Yes because back in the good ole days kids didn’t watch cartoons that were meant to sell characters and Star Wars didn’t make billions selling merchandise.
Disney has been selling and licensing merchandise based on movies since the 50s.
People have been buying Coca Cola based on marketing for a century.
Hey speak for yourself! Avoiding ads is difficult, but skipping mainstream movies goes a long way.
This can't possibly need explanation? People want/need pacifiers. Cigarettes. Coffee. Alcohol. Twitter. Music. Movies. Taylor Swift. Youtube influencers. TikTok. All of these things are exactly the same.
At a certain scale you can capitalize on this and steer the narrative. You create fear of missing out. You create pop stars. You create addicting doom scroll behaviors in apps.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Opinion_(book)
Once you make well more than you need for pure survival, buying and consuming is the next step? Consuming is entertainment.
I don’t work my job to survive, I work it for the fancy toys. I could survive on a fraction of the hours I’m working, but then I would have a lot more hours I’d need to fill, desirably with some sort of consumption.
- Learn a new language/instrument/craft
- Hike/bike/run down a new trail
- Work at a soup kitchen
- Raise funds for your charity of choice
- Influence local politics to raise the quality of life for everyone
- Buy nice things, be comfortable with having/maintaining nice things that are a little out-of-date, and put the savings into retirement
- Retire and do more of the stuff listed above
1) People are attached to brands
2) People consume advertisements interchangeably with content.
For both of these, I believe they are consequences from "too many choices". This article [1] from the American Psychological Association covers it well, "In fact, some researchers find that too much choice can actually lead people to take less positive risks in making selections and to use simplifying strategies in lieu of more considered choices."
I view "brands" as a pretty reliable way to take a mental shortcut to minimize risk. Instead of making a choice "I want to buy a product in X category, let me compare and contrast each individual item to see which one is the best", you can say "I want to buy a product in X category, let me see if there's a brand I trust which sells it". Note: You can replace "buy a product" with "choose a movie" for your Marvel example and the result is pretty much the same.
With respect to the blurring of content and advertisement, there are entire teams of people working hard to make that distinction not only blurry, but also irrelevant from the consumers perspective. I really enjoyed Johann Hari's book "Stolen Focus" [2], where he explains the point of a medium (books vs TV vs twitter vs instagram) is actually more important in how the content is shaped and how your brain process it, than the actual content being pushed over that medium. Warning: it's extremely possible I am absolutely butchering this point, so if you completely disagree with it, take that more as "tom is bad at explaining it" instead of "Hari is peddling garbage ideas". :)
1: https://www.apa.org/monitor/jun04/toomany
2: https://stolenfocusbook.com/
I'd describe myself as allergic to advertisement. During ad breaks, I turn off the radio or TV. When I do that around other people, the reactions I've gotten are fascinating.
Some people seem uncomfortable like I've done something illegal. I've had people tell me I'm cheating the system or somehow stealing. Others appear genuinely hurt, like I'd just yelled at them or something. Almost universally, it's regarded as taboo, and I don't know exactly what to make of it.
How is a Marvel movie an ad for the next movie any more than a chapter in a book is an ad for the next chapter or an Act in a play is a an ad for the next act?
The entire idea of the MCU is an integrated universe.
And please don’t go off tsk tsking “people today”. What do you think all of the cartoons in the 80s were except for an ad for toys?
And next up the false meme that “cable use to be ad free”…
Because that is the goal of advertising operations. Hence, it's just working as expected.
Branding lets me use my past experiences to make that decision process easier. I don’t want to have to look at technical specs and try to SAT solve for the optimal choice in my head or play secret hitler and read 1000s of ratings.
Maybe the Chinese light boxes work just fine, but I'd rather spend an extra $10 on a brand name knowing I'm not going to get something that'll break or work poorly. Brands equate to reputation.
Because we are poor and got addicted to getting apps for free.
We used to pay for services like email, messaging, and web hosting. Then advertising companies started giving us that software for “free”. But we didn’t know they were advertising companies then because (1) the companies hadn’t decided that yet and (2) they framed themselves as app companies.
Want ad free radio? Pay for audio books and music. Want ad free video? Pay for YouTube premium or HBO MAX. Want your personal website to be add free? Pay Wordpress. Want an add free smart TV? Pay a little extra and buy one.
Got any actual data to back up that claim, or is that just what it “feels” like to you? Maybe before making broad assertions about what’s ailing consumers, reality check your assumptions first.
With ads, brands find a new strategy to disguise ads, consumers get used to it and learn to recognize them/be aware of them, brands find a new strategy. The lease discerning X percentage of people will always be unaware of the more sophisticated ads, the most discerning X percentage will always be aware.
I think it's bad for human psychology, almost by definition, to have all these corporations/entities bombarding your senses with content designed to influence you in a specific way that is beneficial to them / not beneficial to the people. Without regulation/disincentives they corporations will be driven by their profit motive to use any means to get you to by their products and the consequences are horrible for the population, especially when it's so many thousands of companies all fighting for pieces of your psyche with no regard to it's wellbeing.
I also really don't regulation in concept, and in practice it's often at largely ineffective(not always though / it's not INHERENTLY that way). This is one of many problems with capitalism / free market that are often waved away by pointing out the problems with the alternatives to capitalism, which are often also fair criticisms. It's an extremely hard problem, finding a system that minimizes the consequences to catastrophic levels(let alone the difficulties of implementing a new system).
Sacrifice of wellbeing in some ways might just be a necessary tradeoff for any system that leads to "progress" - a possibility I've considered but can't really grasp yet(would love anyones input on this). I know I've gotten a bit off topic but I think advertising and it's consequences are a very clear example of this kind of tradeoff which makes it a useful topic for discussing this kind of thing. In theory it's possible to imagine a system that allows for progress but in reality any non-free market system requires concentrated power somewhere to enforce regulations which seems gives the possibility of corruption, and it seems the possibility of corruption at scale always leads to corruption
No!
You just opening world. Approx to 1950, people satisfy only most important physiological needs (in east Europe/USSR/Asia this was longer), but from 1950s, got resources to have more.
If you look on primitive model of Maslou Pyramid, even there are more levels than just physiological.
Century ago, people engaged with religions, but now most (classic religions) considered valueless, and are in deep crisis, so appear huge void, and entrepreneurs see it and try to use it.
And Apple is just play dolls, comparable to others.
For me very mind-shaking was movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Founder
Watch it, it's really joy.
I think, md system will appear, even more paradoxical for you, because there are religion for investors, but customers see just pure performance, and central administration of franchise takes care of things.