Why advertising always works, using science, not bullshit | Hacker News Reader

Why advertising always works, using science, not bullshit

positech.co.uk

45 pointsdoppp49 comments

Advertising only works when you get exposed to it. The sheer maliciousness of the advertising industry succeeded in one thing as far as I'm concerned: I make sure we - as in my family and myself - get exposed to as little advertising as possible, and that we buy as little as possible of those things which are being advertised. How?

- we ditched television and broadcast radio

- we burn printed commercials without looking at them, the exception being the local supermarket's weekly handout

- we ditched our subscription to a printed newspaper and get our news from the 'net through a news reader

- ads are blocked on the router using a local name server with a blocklist, on the router through a net block firewall and on all devices using adblockers and dns blocking

- we buy second-hand as much as possible which a) gives us more for our money, b) leads to less waste, c) the proceeds generally go to some charity and c) provides an extra level of indirection between whatever is being advertised and what we buy

- we don't buy processed food whenever possible

- we don't "go shopping" without having a clear target, when we do go out to get something we generally have a list of things to get and tend to stick to this. Of course this is not a hard law, we sometimes buy things on the spur of the moment but we generally think twice or three times before buying

I probably forgot to mention quite a few things but it already reads as if we live in some kind of sect. We don't, not by a long stretch. We just don't like being used, that's all.

> we burn printed commercials without looking at them

I hope you say that figuratively. If not, why not recycle them instead?

> we don't "go shopping" without having a clear target […] we sometimes buy things on the spur of the moment

What I usually do is go shopping with clear targets for what I need that trip, but I also have in mind a few things that I like to get but are non-essential. After I get everything that I need, I quickly go through the store and zone in on the non-essentials to see if they are at a discount, and snatch them if they are.

> I hope you say that figuratively. If not, why not recycle them instead?

Nope, burn'm we do, mostly. We live on a farm in the Swedish countryside, the house is warmed using a wood burning stove and a wood-burning cooking stove. Those commercials do just fine to light the things, especially those printed on newsprint. The glossies generally get recycled as those don't burn well and are full of nasty chemicals but the newspaper-like folders get "recycled locally".

That's awesome. I'm hoping that in a few years those tasks can all be handled by AI/ML. For example, you can watch television, but it will automatically go dark when an ad shows up. Or even fancier, you go outside with your augmented reality glasses, and all ads (e.g. billboards) will be automatically replaced by e.g. pieces of art.

If ad blockers get popular for TV, I'm pretty sure producers will start heavily embedding advertising in the content, which will make it worse for everybody.

Do you mean like directly within-window advertisements in addition to the already-pervasive product placement?

In many countries it is illegal if advertising is not clearly identifiable as such. That's why in newspapers, you'll often see the word "advertisement" above ads.

even better to replace that with 'consume', 'reproduce' messages

;)

This approach reminds of how to maintain privacy: constantly (as in a process) and damn it can be exhausting over time.

Very cool, though!

Saying "using science" does not mean you can simply appeal to nature as the saviour of your argument.

Like how does this theory of mind he apparently has scientific evidence for (but alas, it does not fit in the finite space of the blog) explain something like curiosity? If we always fear unknown things, is it fear that makes you want to see what's beyond the hills?

Priming might well be what makes ad work, but that doesn't save the text from being almost pure bullshit.

It has become all too popular to take the name of science in vain.

He's using his reasoning to restate old ideas, without any science at all.

It's hunger that makes you want to see what's beyond the hills. A man's gotta eat.

Then why are you wandering out into the woods instead of going back to the car and driving to a supermarket?

'Cause when my dna evolved and hunger engendered the desire to see if there was any food beyond the hills, there were no cars or supermarkets. Or domestic animals or farms. Might have been clothing, not sure.

Facebook now offers the ability to run rigorous controlled experiments on your advertising spending - you basically randomly divide your audience into treatment and control, run an advertising campaign that only the treatment group can see, and compare purchasing behavior between the groups.

On the basis of several experiments with this, I can assure you that advertising does not always work, even if you track the treatment group for months after they were exposed to ads.

I think the author's bigger point is that a lot of the purpose of advertising basically boils down to increasing brand recognition. That's fair, but not anywhere near as novel of an observation as he thinks it is. His assertion that the majority of advertisers don't understand awareness and brand recognition is laughable - they understand it very well, and consistently run campaigns to achieve it.

Am I the only one that finds it insane this wasn't a feature earlier? They seemed to just rest on the idea that their optimization algorithms did everything right, even though they acted incredibly prematurely. They also seem slow in rolling it out since I've been hoping to see some of the known features actually show up in my account, requesting them, etc. and still nothing.

Yes and no. It's not insane from Facebook's perspective. If you're wasting money on Facebook ads, why would they want to give you a tool that helps you figure it out?

What mystifies me is that people haven't demanded more of this. People spend literally billions on online ads, with very little ability to validate whether it accomplishes anything. The fact that they haven't been screaming for rigorous experimental trials of ads for years blows me away.

One useful test of science if the property of falsifiability: what would it take to demonstrate this theory is incorrect?

Without that attempt to prove the theory false, I don't think it should be considered scientific.

So, for instance, expose someone to a lot of advertising and if they don't seek out the thing they are exposed to, then this theory (at least on this basic level) might be false.

Well, you might say, the claim is not that the person will definitely seek out the familiar but is more likely to do so.

Then propose an experiment to test this. Now we have started a scientific discussion.

"So, for instance, expose someone to a lot of advertising and if they don't seek out the thing they are exposed to, then this theory (at least on this basic level) might be false."

I think the article was saying given person A has a goal of G and choices B,C,D with subtle(subconscious) previous exposure to option B they would choose B over C and D. all other things being equal.

Not that you can get them to go after goal G in the first place.

Your test is run every day by every company with a competent marketing team.

Yes, but please read the article I was responding to.

People like to say that they are immune from advertisements. I clearly am not. I like a KitKat. I saw a KitKat ad on MTV as I was bundling up to head to the store about a hour ago. I do like them, and it does sound good. So I went king-size.

I use uBlock Origin in my browser.

I run a chatroom and this afternoon a guy in the room was bitching that McDonalds fucked up the sauce he was supposed to get with his nuggets. This resulted in me wanting McDonalds chicken nuggets and explaining why and in the end led to a few other people acknowledging they are shit and still wanting them.

My point is that even nuggets that were not advertised to us and just a random dude posting he had some for lunch made us want them. And he posted that getting them was a negative experience.

I don't think the problem is that you see an advertisement for a KitKat and then you want one.

It's more subtle than that, and something more than the familiarity the article talk about.

What advertisement does is to change the associated concept in our minds. At some level I know that it's only a piece of unhealthy sweet with plenty of chemical preservatives, too much sugar and, probably, zero chocolate, but what I really perceive it's another totally different thing: It's a KitKat! It's cute!

It's not just a sweet, it's a new category in my mind.

What I, personally, find specially immoral is the advertisement for children.

That's a good insight!

Ironically however, your comment has given me a feeling of fondness for KitKats–despite not having had one in at least 2 years. Sugar + Cute is pretty crazy.

Yeah. The junk food doesn't appeal to me, but I've certainly cooked something for dinner because I heard someone mention it during the day at work or something. Some advertising is meant to make you aware of something new but much of it is just to remind you of the existence of something you already like.

...remind you of the existence of something you already like.

That's why they run Subway ads on TV at night. So you'll remember them the next day when thinking about where to go for lunch.

Well, for sweets there's also the sugar addiction that comes into play and causes sugar cravings.

I used to buy all the sweets that I wanted to try every time I went into a store and was even somewhat hungry. If I would eat beforehand, I would hardly want to try any but I did my best to avoid the sweets aisles, too.

I'm guessing you don't enter a store and can't wait to buy the detergent you saw on TV. At least, I don't do that. I tend to pick the detergent that I've seen works best from trial and error for the least amount of money.

I also stock-up on plenty of it when there's a discount, and then when I'm starting to run out of it, I wait until there's another discount and get it then, even if I still have some left from before.

I'm guessing you don't enter a store and can't wait to buy the detergent you saw on TV. At least, I don't do that.

I buy the same detergent I bought last time, which I bought because it was what I bought the time before that...But at some point, years and years ago, I almost certainly picked up that detergent because I recognized the brand from some ad.

That's not how I shop.

I buy what's on sale, or some luxury (such as washing powder which is less bad for environment, or a luxury grocery). Rest is what I already buy.

For expensive items I read reviews first. Wanna sell to me? Get good reviews. Wanna annoy me by wasting my time about shit I do not need? Advertise

Advertising attempts to influence your sub-conscious decision making, so one tactic I employ is to consciously blacklist companies whoch advertise at me. If a company is prepared to waste my timd shoving their BS ad in my face why should I give them my custom?

I found the post poorly written and wholly unscientific. Even if this is how ads work best (and I’m not disputing the correctness of the premise), there’s no science in the post proving it. It basically says “here’s this thing we know, so I say this applies in a similar manner to this unrelated subject”. I’d expect there to be an actual cited study that verified this is the case, but it’s just conjecture.

The biological example is itself weak. The lion advice is absolutely wrong and following it will likely get you killed[1]:

> The first thing to know about surviving a lion attack is to not run. It should not surprise you that a lion is way faster than you

But even if it were right, by the post’s logic the next time you saw a lion you’d stay in place and relax.

[1]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-to-survive-a-l...

Has anyone here recommendations for research papers on how advertisement works in practice? And how it affects different people?

While the argument used in the article (“you've seen it a lot = you'll buy it”) seems reasonable, it also hides many factors (I'm not gonna buy a new car if I don't know how to drive, even if I see ads for cars every day).

Well, not exactly papers, but this video gives a good introduction to Edward Bernays, the one who figured out modern propaganda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj_UWbifM2U

Tversky and Kahneman, anything from Irwin Levin for framing and consumer behaviour, James Druckman for opinion formation (albeit re. political opinions), Anne Lang for media message processing, Ebbinghaus (very old) for exposure repetition, &c.

Robert Cialdini's book Influence seems to be a pretty good place to get started with this topic. He cites a lot of scientific studies, and also provides some anecdotal examples to keep things interesting.

>it also hides many factors (I'm not gonna buy a new car if I don't know how to drive, even if I see ads for cars every day).

Well, that's kinda obvious. It works in making you more prone to go for a brand/product. It doesn't miraculously make you buy it every time.

That said, after having seen enough ads of happy people in cars, and more car ads, and yet more car ads, more people would be entertaining the idea "perhaps it's time to learn how to drive and buy a car" than before.

So basically he is saying familiarity works. So if you repeat ads often enough, then you will be affected by it?

And calls it science.

Its my life’s work to persuade indie game developers, computer programmers and other ‘smart’ people, that they are wrong and that advertising works.

After reading the article I'm more convinced he is wrong. Which is quite weird, considering even if he would be right, he is doing a bad job.

"Thats not how ads actually work, although frankly 75% of people who actually work in advertising have no idea about this."

Statistic pulled out of his ass.

This linked article contains zero references. Has nothing to do with science.

But it is funny that I got taught pretty much this when I was 14 during economy class at high school.

And I still think it's missing various important marks:

What if the person just is not interested?

I got a sticker on my front door which reads: "no collections, religious, or salesmen. We know the way" (translated). Our phone numbers are blacklisted for telemarketing. Our email addresses run spam filters (possibly the funniest counter example to this "scientific" article). Our browsers run ad blockers. We bought some apps so we don't have to see ads in free versions. In that last regard, yes advertising works because its annoying as hell when people who clearly don't know you are trying to convince you to buy something. This negative emotion I get with regards to ads does not directly or indirectly increase sales. My point isn't that advertising always works or never works. That black and white thinking is extreme and wrong. Email spam doesn't work on you or me either.

Forgot to add we got a no/no sticker on door for folders/flyers or unsolicited mail. In NL you can pick these up for free at the municipal building. We got it for 3 reasons: 1) we never read any of that 2) its an environmental waste 3) IF (I don't, but lets pretend) I want to see such: in 2018 digital, not physical.

Perhaps a bit simplified. But yes, "the purpose of advertisement is to prime our pattern recognition to pick up the logo when we are shopping" sounds plausible. It also offers a model why one needs to advetize when working in market already saturared with advertisements. Without priming the customer your product might get lost in noise.

So it's not only that the product becomes familiar after advertisements - also, it means it is picked up at all by human sensory apparatus among all the other products.

I think the premise is right and I try to minimize my exposure to any kind of advertising.

But if you claim to "using science" how about actually using science?

A heavily-promoted brand name puts skin in the game. Sell crap one time, and it will become something to avoid, and then it will probably be game over.

Empirically, this does not happen.

Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Nike, and countless other big brands have had debacles related to quality or ethics.

Unfortunately, our memory of these complicated situations is shorter than our memory of the vague good feelings that advertising has built up in our minds about certain brands.

After all, they’re all still in business.

Because the masses are brand loyal. Such scandals pop dents in the overall brand loyalty, but they are temporary.

If you run facing a Lion you will probably die first.It's a bad tactics. I wouldn't run, and I don't "run" against ads.

Spam me with that ads and this will result of hate and I will choose another supplier. A great example of this is with the ads of "Carglass" the ads is so stupid and so massive that I have decide that if my windshield break, I will call them and tell them that because of their massive ads I will choose another compagny.

Add value to your compagny / product and I will buy it. Focus on value added not ads.

> if my windshield break, I will call them and tell them that because of their massive ads I will choose another compagny.

No you won't. This is the hubris of someone typing a reply from a comfortable place (much like road rage perpetrators mostly would never be so aggressive, but they're in their familiar little metal box and disconnected from their adversary).

If your windshield breaks and needs replacing by the side of the road and it's cold and wet and you just want to get home, are you going to spend time researching who can come a fix your windshield, or are you going to pick the first brand that pops into your head?

> or are you going to pick the first brand that pops into your head?

The cheapest.

If I don't do research (read reviews or word of mouth) I often end up buying crap. Especially when emotions are tense. So I end up buying the cheapest, and reading a review (or indeed ask around) when I got more free time.

I wouldn't buy the brand which pops up in my mind, heck I got no clue which windshield brands exist.

It's hard to stay mad that long.

Back when they first starting running ads before movies, even before the 20 minutes of trailers, I was ready to rage quit. "I'm paying money to see ads?!"

The first ad was Mt. Dew and I silently vowed, "never to drink it again, you bastards!"

Now I'm down to 6 cans a day, so that's showing 'em.

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