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Comment by leppr | Hacker News Reader

Some new forms of IRL ads do interrupt your flow.

Examples I've encountered:

* In a mall touchscreen navigation kiosk, an ad is shown when you first wake up the device by touching it.

* At multiple points in the McDonald's self-order touchscreen kiosk flow.

* On Starbucks screen menus, the whole menu is periodically replaced with a video ad, forcing you to wait until its end to finish making your choice.

> You also don’t have ads on at the airport timetable screen.

In the biggest international airport in my country, there are now periodical Covid-19 "info spots" interrupting the display of timetables, check-in desk and gate information screens.

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> * At multiple points in the McDonald's self-order touchscreen kiosk flow.

And they've only added (most of) these recently. What they've done for me is is increased the time it takes to check out by at least a third. They're paying for the ads with lengthened lines, which is a little shocking when talking about the automated option, because customers choose the automated option to save time.

It might be a bad expectation for us to have. McDonalds might find it more profitable to start ripping out seats (especially with covid), and adding more automated checkout stations. Have us spend 5-10 minutes ordering. Offer discounts if we spend 10 additional minutes ordering and watching ads. Enter us into a sweepstakes while we order that pays every half-hour in free food.

You could cram a lot of 2-sided touchscreen stations in the footprint of a McDonalds; people standing everywhere like a pachinko parlor, or a storefront full of video poker machines.

They probably did the math: they don't need the order taking machine to take less time than making the meal itself. If they made it so you could place an order in 1 second you'd still be in their store for a while. "Might as well bombard them with ads!"

They can even do A-B testing on the ads. Even if they lose some customers in line they can know they make more sales to compensate. Also they only really care about the 10% of customers who are totally addicted to the product and buy 90% of it. Those ones aren't leaving the line.

Who uses those ridiculous kiosks? Most people I see still just go to the counter, order, and pay. It's much faster.

Don't know what mcdonalds you're in, but most of them combine the kiosk revamp with cuts to the amount of staff hours. It's definitely not faster to join the single line in 5th place than use one of the 3 (of 5) vacant kiosks.

And they wonder why sales are declining

Ah, but the KPI the execs are measuring for the kiosks is probably "self serve orders" so the more awkward they make the alternatives the better the numbers look

The McDonald's nearby doesn't allow counter orders anymore. You can only order through the kiosk, or using the phone app.

Both of them have numerous problems, and it's more time-efficient to order Uber Eats. But that has massive added fees.

I considered signing up to be an Uber Eats driver and filtering for anyone within 1 meter of me so I could pick up my own orders and save time(Uber's app is better), but there's not enough precision to do that.

So I ditched McDonald's and mostly drink Soylent nowadays.

They don't have ads where I live, and as a result they're about as fast as the counter.

I heard some gas stations have ads on the pump display

These pumps with “Gas Station TV” are so annoying that I go out of my way to get my gas at a different station. I’ve wondered if it actively drives other customers away too or if I’m just very sensitive to it.

Where are these gas stations without them? They are everywhere!

Yep, me too. A new gas station was beng built and I drove by it many times. When I noticed it opened, I got gas there, and they had ads on the pump! Shocking at the time. I decided never to go there again.

I also avoid area gas stations with gas station tv. So theres at least two of us.

Three.

I've found you can often mute those screens if you press one of the buttons beside the screen. Apparently it's different depending on the machine, so just mash them all I guess.

I've seen this too. I don't think you can find the option unless you keep swatting at the screen like a crazy person, so irritated at the ad that you're barely paying attention to the slightly dangerous act of fueling your vehicle. I think I've found it on every one I've used. I recall one having a mute that wasn't a proper mute, but instead would unmute itself after about 30 seconds, causing you to have to remute it. I think I screamed.

I avoid them too, and I’ve never found one where pressing any buttons mutes it.

Try pouring water into the speaker.

Ah yes. trying to create sparks near gasoline vapors. What could go wrong?

The gas station tv has never bothered me but I'm also able to tune it out completely. As I think about it, I struggle to even know which gas stations use it around me.

It is annoying, but I ignore it. The convenience of buying gas where I buy it (it's on the way home, etc.) outweighs the annoyance.

The fist time I saw that my first instinct was to set the pump on fire. Pure rage. I'll leave with only fumes when I see that. Fortunately it's not that popular here.

If it ever becomes ubiquitous, something's going to have to be done about it. I'd never convict anyone of destroying one of those ad screens.

Switching to electric and doing 90% of charging at home?

> * At multiple points in the McDonald's self-order touchscreen kiosk flow.

Yeah lately this is really bad. Are you sure you don't want to order another side? And then you have to scroll to the "nope" button which is obviously off-screen. Am I sure I don't want to give 50 cents to the Ronald McDonald stuff? Piss off. I don't trust them to keep most of it themselves for 'overhead'.

> In the biggest international airport in my country, there are now periodical Covid-19 "info spots" interrupting the display of timetables, check-in desk and gate information screens.

Yeah this is really annoying in shops here too. Every minute or so they remind people to use the sanitiser or wear the mask. Yet some of the staff don't even do this. It just serves no purpose, other than virtue signalling. It becomes background noise. If someone doesn't know they have to wear the mask by now they have been living in a cave or something.

>At multiple points in the McDonald's self-order touchscreen kiosk flow.

Sounds like just one more reason in a long long long list of reasons not to go to McDonalds

It's amazing really. There has to be a business school case study there in how you go from being the trail-blazer and biggest success story in fast food, to one of the worst and getting worse with everything you do.

I disagree.

McDonald's hamburgers and fries are way less greasy than most fast food joints, and the kiosk allows easily reducing the quantity of sauce in the burgers and salt in the fries. As such, it can be relatively healthy from a macronutrients perspective, while satisfying fast food cravings.

The vegetable salads are very fresh and pretty good, which can accommodate people on strict diets.

The kiosks also free workers to clean up tables more frequently and assist customers in various ways.

Of course this can vary from location to location, especially as so many McDonald's are franchised. But the actual experience at my local spots is enjoyable nowadays.

It's also a school case study in showing how regardless they've gone down hill in food quality, in service quality, etc, their customers continue to patronize them.

Maybe it's just me getting older, but I used to eat at McDonalds several times a week, at least. I have maybe eaten there once or twice in all of 2021, I'm not even sure I ate there at all. Same with my friends. It's just awful in every way now, from the experience to the food itself.

"A sucker is born every minute"

Of course, people typically "age out", but economics of that $.99 menu put together with their powerful marketing means constant flow of new patrons.

These are all essentially browser ads, it's just not your browser.

Don’t forget the loud advertisements at the petrol pump!

And in airplanes. Airlines like to use those screens in front of each seat as billboards. They're on by default and don't time out, so they keep cycling bright ads while you're trying to sleep. Sure, you can turn yours off, but most of your neighbors won't bother changing the default on state.

Has any American budget airline reached the depths Ryanair goes to make every last cent?

They don't have screens on the seats (too expensive), just a printed advert. But they do play audio adverts on the PA system a couple of times per flight, typically for things you can buy on board.

All of those are on a computer screen.

The fact that people have so much difficulty on identifying blocking ads that are actually in real life (like changing the shafts configuration of a market) is pretty good evidence that they aren't as much annoying.

So basically all digital ads are bad. All analog ads are less bad.

Analog ads have an installation & maintenance cost associated with them. Digital ads don't - if you have a screen anywhere, it can be turned into an ad with little effort and will require no ongoing maintenance.

Exactly. Ads are basically pollution. Digital (and network-connected) ads drive the cost of polluting to near zero, so you see them everywhere: on transit, in gas stations, on your TV's UI, in your operating system, etc. Analog ads actually have a deployment cost, so they don't pollute the space as much.

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