Comment by throwmeariver1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwmeariver1 | Hacker News Reader

Speaking as a creative working with clients up and down the S&P500 in the last years there was a feeling that Facebook got more and more restrictive with creative advertising. In the beginning you could integrate your own apps and interact with pretty much the whole Facebook api you had creative freedom and you could track the effectiveness yourself. After Burger Kings "Sacrifice a friend for a whopper campaign" [0] everything changed. Year after year it got more restrictive even now in their newer offerings you are more and more restricted (Not more than 20% text in ads, no static animations in sparkAR filters the list goes on and on.) AND they are basically just asset flips from other social media or ad networks. Carousel Ads, Stories, SparkAR everything is already there but better from other providers creatives don't like to work on Facebook ads anymore and media companies don't like that they can't sell more adaptions because Facebook Ads are just resells.

There was a lot of hype about the metaverse because everyone hoped that there will be creative freedom again but when talking to their agency representatives it looks like it's even more restrictive. At the moment Facebook is basically the garbage dump for assets you already created for other networks, there is no creative freedom and their AR offerings are lacking behind snap and TikTok. In the 2000s and 2010s you sold whole campaigns because of Facebook, now Facebook Ads are just a chart you spend 1 second in a presentation. I believe it's dying and it can't come soon enough for the creative industry. For us, Facebook is now a waste of time and energy.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq_SbjxNvc8

Sorry to be blunt, advertisers on Facebook have been a major contributor to its decline, driving out content that people wanted to see, masquerading as real people, etc.

Creative advertising like the Burger King ad from the post above are ads people want to interact with because they are fun or if you are really good get people to think. Stuff you would share on your own instead of getting it artificially pushed into your feed. The kind of ads you describe are called "prokbelly ads" because you would find them on the flyers of your favorite supermarket. No creative wants to touch them with a poking stick.

You tell yourself that because you're making money from it.

No, it's because I know there can be different versions of something. There can be good movies, there can be shit movies. There can be good apps, there can be shit apps. The same goes for advertising pretending that it doesn't is hybris.

Are there good con artists and bad con artists? Or is the entire profession bad? Some things don’t benefit society as a whole, just the in-group engaging in it.

Yes, there are good and bad con artists. Do you believe woman like Joan of Arc or similar stories are no con artists? You probably are some sort of con artist yourself without you even recognizing it but I get it ignorance really is bliss and the world is so much easier to understand when everything is just black and white.

Dear diary! Today on HN, some advertising person compared advertising persons to Joan of Arc, and by the way, everyone's a con artist anyway so why worry?

There are nuances, but there is also bullshitting yourself.

Where did I compare myself to Joan of Arc? He said that there are probably only bad con artists and I told him with an example that there are not. Are you so full of bias and prejudice that you lost the ability for reading comprehension? The funniest thing is we know each other IRL Andreas and I would have expected more but alas. That's why you can't tell people in OSS and in CCC circles what you are really doing... can be the most intelligent people around as soon as they hear advertising they tilt.

Okay, so I guess you were intentionally running too far with the question you were asked as a kind of sarcasm. But anyway.

I don't know, but I have two things to say. First, did you consider that it isn't everybody else who is wrong? Somehow, even some people from the advertising industry think it's pretty rotten (Frédéric Beigbeder wrote a book about it). Second, it's healthy to accept why you do what you do. I do work that is morally not great, not terrible, and I'd rather accept that than tell myself it's 100% fine (and I won't work on everything). I like dealing with code, and I like getting paid for it, and I will do things as long as they aren't very (according to my arbitrary definitions) unethical. If you said I like to get paid to come up with wild ideas, fine. Naughty but honest is something that most people can accept. If you are the person that I think you are, that is how you talked about it in person, actually.

Hate to break it to you, but there really are different qualities in ads. The pure crap at the bottom of news articles (which take you to articles that are like 100 clicks) with headlines like "100s of unsold SUVs waiting to be purchased for pennies on the dollar" are both total lies, totally annoying and get you reaching for the ad block.

And there are original creatives (now maybe more on instagram) which are relatively targeted, explain product, good call to action. I click through a few business SAAS type pitches and its been interesting.

I for one appreciate that someone from the "Dark side" gives their view and relatively unique perspective. It's MUCH nicer to hear from them then the same old tired crap about ads are bad. I would ban all billboards and hate ads, but another perspective here is nice to hear. I also know someone in the measurement space, and the reality is folks IN the space are paying very VERY close attention to where users are, who they are, what is working.

Anyways, thanks throwmeriver1 - was nice to hear from the marketing side. Youtube shorts seems to be a dumping ground for tiktok stuff as well - though with youtube scale I could see that changing.

All advertising is bad faith communication. Full stop. There is no justification otherwise. In fact, the more creative advertising is, the more bad faith and exploitative it becomes.

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