Hacker News Reader

> Day-to-day spending also is not swayed by advertisements. There are real reasons behind the choices I make, and those ideas, opinions and motivations don't source their information from advertisers. I'm not charmed by entreaties that pander to my niche demographic.

Two thoughts:

1. I doubt you have enough self-awareness about your unconscious product reasoning (and more importantly, which products you decide to reason about) to be capable of asserting advertising doesn’t “work” on you. Abstractly speaking, if you buy toilet paper, and you don’t search for the the most efficiently priced toilet paper with respect to your criteria, advertising has “worked” on you. Just because you don’t buy the mega brand doesn’t mean it hasn’t worked on you. Buying Kirkland from Costco also implies the advertising has worked (for example).

2. That you believe you are resistant to advertising places you in a predictable demographic that, like all demographics, can be successfully targeted without it being spotted as advertising. Advertising generalizes to delivering a feeling of trust, familiarity and ingroup agreement; which brands do you buy consistently? Which do you trust? Did you do an empirical, feature-driven search for all of the products from these brands? Does any brand stand out? Do you switch brands to extremely similar, essentially indistinguishable products when there are minute changes in price? If not, why?

I think you need to broaden your perspective on what an advertiser considers “working” to mean for an ad campaign, and what they count as a win. Advertising encompasses incredibly more than just click-to-buy decisions, and I think it would be virtually impossible for you to honestly separate confirmation bias from your perception of how impression-optimized advertisements have impacted you. Your “niche demographic” is not the only demographic you fit into, and if anything being part of a niche demographic makes you (very nearly definitionally) easier to target for campaigns.

Ah yes the old "akshually advertising does work on you", a similar argument used by the fervently religious in discussions: "You'll see I'm right in the afterlife".

At some point, if one needs to buy toilet paper, one needs to buy something. Just because you ended up buying one doesn't mean that the one you bought was due to advertising. Advertising doesn't become the reason for a purchase over availability, economic value, etc just by virtue of existing.

> 2. That you believe you are resistant to advertising places you in a predictable demographic that, like all demographics, can be successfully targeted without it being spotted as advertising.

Yes, the "I'd like to be left the fuck alone to make my own decisions" category, that advertising, despite it's apparent infinite wisdom still hasn't managed to figure out.

> Did you do an empirical, feature-driven search for all of the products from these brands? Does any brand stand out?

This is not a feature of advertising. This is a feature of product quality/price/feature-set etc. Advertising is independent of this and will happily lie you to in order to make you buy product x instead of y. To suggest that you actually bought product x instead of y is due to the effect of the advertising and not literally any other factor is disingenuous.

> 1. I doubt you have enough self-awareness about your unconscious product reasoning

This is a bit of a broad and unfair statement, it doesn't require too much concerted critical thinking to be aware of the tactics that advertisers use. Even if you're not fully immune from them, being aware of them can significantly reduce their effectiveness and restore a good degree of agency to you.

Why did you choose brand a over brand b? Price (brand a is cheaper - but is that unit cost, price per sheet, price per use)? Availability (b isn't in the shop)? Ease (b was on the top shelf, a was on the middle)?

I avoid adverts as much as possible, but I'm not naive that they don't have an affect on me, or that I even realise I'm being subjected to adverts. just looking out of the plane window I can see wall to wall Hsbc adverts, they were also on the jetway. HSBC spend a lot of money to say "they aren't going any where", "they're a globally trusted brand", etc.

I don't bank with HSBC, but I don't need to be persuaded by those adverts - if I am asked about a bank, HSBC is one of the first that springs to mind, burnt into my subconscious. That may be worth something in the future. En mass it certainly is.

Brand B was recycled paper, A is not. Both are available and B is slightly cheaper. B wins. Neither of them advertised to me, the decision was made based on product quality and features, not advertising.

I just got back from an overseas holiday, so I too saw a lot of HSBC ads at airports. But I also actively disregarded them, of someone asked me for a bank, they would not spring to mind. Even moreso because I was reading a thread on Reddit the other day where someone was talking about how HSBC's strategy was to advertise primarily at airports even if they didn't operate in that country because it makes people think they're a global brand (even when and where they're not). So now, if I do think about HSBC the first thing that pops into my head is how their outdoor advertising is built on a lie.

> "There are real reasons behind the choices I make, and those ideas, opinions and motivations don't source their information from advertisers."

Ok. Fair enough. But how can you be certain where you do source your info from isn't influenced by advertisers?

Long to short, we are what we consume. Unless you grew up in a Skinner Box and have since kept your mind in a (metaphorical) Feraday Cage, it's hard to imagine you haven't been influenced in some way, at some time; and likely without even being conscious of it.

You absolutely are manipulated, and without even realizing it. That's how it works, because if you did realize it then you wouldn't be.

People are not rational, they buy on emotions and random facts and influences from friends and folks on the internet. You claim to be the perfect objective consumer who never gets affected but the data (petabytes of it everyday in an industry that's absolutely run by numbers) proves otherwise.

They must be working for others. If businesses couldn't profit off of advertising, then they wouldn't do it.

If you've ever done advertising on a small scale, you'll see how effective it is. For example, I worked in an antique shop that saw perhaps ten customers a day in its first month. At the end of that month we had an advertisement in the local newspaper, a full-page puff piece with a picture and about 500 words of text. I couldn't imagine that anyone actually read the little village newspaper it was in, but our foot traffic tripled for the following week, then dropped right off again.

But consumers aren't buying the advertising, they are buying the product. Advertising is an expense for both the producer ($) and the consumer (time) so neither can profit from it.

That's not quite correct. A company spends 'x' amount on advertising, hoping that it will return 'x + profit' through increased sales. The customer obviously doesn't profit from it, but when does a customer actually profit from anything?

You, sir, are technically correct. The best kind of correct.

Meanwhile, the effects of advertising result in a net profit for the producer.

The point I was trying to make was, if advertiser's increased profits were less than the expense of advertising (e.g., a company spends $20 on advertising, but profits grow $10), then they the company would not advertise again, since that would be as effective as burning money in a pit.

No they are not buying the ad but from the producers perspective advertising is the way to get their product in the consideration set or possibly push someone further down the purchase path.

They're buying the product because of the advertising. It's a cost of goods. You have to make the product then market it.

So you're in the "it's not that bad" camp, because people are rational? Three problems with that...

1) Your sources of information are advertisers (Google and facebook) - why are they trustworthy?

2) The huge database in your behavior is so easily exploitable for evil it boggles the mind. Ever read any science fiction?

3) Even if you are rational and unafraid of surveillance (nothing to hide, nothing to fear, right?)... Advertising makes your purchases more expensive. That should make you especially angry, since it is so useless (according to you).

No way dude. Ever shopped for a car, car insurance, mobile phone plans? I almost guarantee you that the first company you thought of was a result of advertising.

When I think of buying a car, I think of Honda. I bought Oldsmobiles because my dad did, until they stopped making them. Then I test drove a Toyota, because a family friend loved hers, but it was pretty ho-hum. Then I test drove a Honda, because it's the other Japanese car (which to me signaled high-quality, not because of advertising but because of the family friend's experience with her Toyota), and loved the transmission. Loved my first Honda and have had no mechanical failures, hence car = Honda for me.

My most recent car insurance was purchased because the banker at the bank where I met the guy selling me his used (Honda) car asked me, and I went with that one. You could argue it was marketing, but it definitely wasn't advertising--I had no idea the name of the company until I got the letter in the mail. I do think of Geico, but that's because I am a fan of Warren Buffett, and his annual reports constantly laud Geico. But the website requires you to request a quote, which is too much hassle ("if you have to ask, you can't afford it," I figure). After I have thought of Geico I think of the commercials, but that's not the order that advertising is supposed to work.

The first mobile phone plan I think of is AT&T because they were the only carrier with the first iPhone. (However, I did subsequently switch to Verizon because I had evidence from talking to people, especially my brother, that "more bars in more places" was actually true, so you could argue that advertising factored in there, but it was really more that T-Mobile had such terrible reception at my apartment and AT&T was too expensive, and my brother said Verizon was the only option in the middle of nowhere where he was living.)

Now I don't watch TV, don't even own one, so I will have less influence than most. But, still.

I don't know about cars, but for phone subscriptions and insurances there are comparison sites where you put in your requirements and just pick the cheapest. That's been at least my mode of operation for a number of years already.

which...is both creepy and magic at the same time.