I was working in this space! And I got fired for refusing to work on more upsell features for clients like Coca Cola and such.
I don't want to work on adding fucking ADS into checkout. That is fucked up.
Another interesting disconnect is that sometimes a person is both the “us” and the “them” in different contexts. i knew someone who would complain about some of it on other sides but when pointed out that his site used some of the same tricks he'd respond with “yeah, but I need that because …”.
It's much more related to maturing on this or that axis than being smart IMO.
Let me guess, when you are convinced that it is time to buy something that you need, you tend to buy from brands that you trust are of high quality or value — in a way that’s totally disconnected from and unrelated to any advertising or marketing efforts though?
As for brands, obviously that's a thing but it's not always due to propaganda / ads -- often it's also about trying a few and sticking to what you have observed works best (or is longer lasting, or both).
I worked in the adtech space for almost 10 years and can confirm this is where we landed, too.
>The short story is that they didn’t want a better algorithm. They wanted an upsell feature.
This is why I got out. No one cares about getting the right ad to the right person. There's layers upon layers of hand-waving, fraud, and grift. Adtech is a true embodiment of "The Emperor's New Clothes."
The only thing I can think of is to use things like influencer ads on places like Instagram or Youtube which ironically sound like much better value for money as you actually know what you're getting for the money.
They are not in business to prioritize the employees point of view.
They are in business to maximise revenue, and profit.
If you work for a business, your job is to work on their priorities. By all means object or quit if you don't agree with them. (And yes, assume you'll be fired for refusing to do their tasks.)
If you're a customer, and you font like their behavior stop being their customer. You have agency. Use it.
[1] good customer service, good customer experience, are all good for revenue. Happy customers are the ultimate success. But maximizing the revenue from those happy customers is very much the business goal.
It’s just that they always seem to lose to those that optimize for money.
Most small businesses fail of course. Usually because while they do a task well, they're bad at the business part.
Once you get large (McDonald's in the parent thread) the focus is necessarily on the business part. At that scale it's not "doing the thing as well as possible " - it is "making money as well as possible".
Clearly lots of people use McDonald's. So they provide customers with satisfaction. But that doesn't mean they aren't out to maximize revenue.
The hard truth is that American consumers care only about price, and so businesses optimize for that (or go under). Which means they lean into other sources of revenue, or ways to reduce costs.
Elsewhere people care about value more than price, and are willing to spend more to get more. Restaurants post the real price (including service) because that's what it costs.
Ryanair exists to fill the need for those who want low price above all else. KLM exists for those who want a better experience and are prepared to pay more.
It can happen locally. Farmers markets are a thing. Supporting local owner-run, not chain, restaurants is a thing.
But in big cities, or nationally? Probably not in pur lifetime.
But it doesn't really matter what others do. It starts with what you do, for yourself. Look around, find small-scale suppliers. Support local producers where you can, and so on. The quality is usually better.
Also, there may not be sufficient people in your area to support independent businesses that believe in providing more value at a higher price.
But it's worth looking and asking around. They may exist, but you won't see them on TV. Ask in local Facebook groups, look out for weekend markets and do on. Asking in those places can give you clues.
But I agree that the vast majority of Americans care only about price, so there will be lots of places where quality simply doesn't exist outside of what you cook yourself.
I think in any case, this is an entirely different qualm than the other issues, like taking orders only via kiosk, or constantly up-selling you during the order.
Personally, I hate the McDonald's app. All the vouchers seem quite plainly optimized to encourage you to come back. I hate this kind of psychological micro-optimization of human behaviours. I would take a ten minute order every time if they stopped trying to manipulate me.
behind the counter-guy, in that wide silver opening, is a black plastic slope with with burgers queuing up. The cooks are constantly cooking, even when nobody has ordered anything, and that means they can get the efficiency boost of making 5 Big Macs at the same time - laying out 5 boxes, 5 buns, 5 patties cooking, etc. - and with no customer waiting on them, there need be no immediate rush[1]. The cashier only picks one up and puts it on your tray, much less than 60 seconds and no stress[1]. Contrast with Subway where the cashier has to assemble one custom sandwich at a time while the customer and queue of waiting people all watch (stressor); they can not get custom sandwiches into muscle memory, or the efficiency of doing several at once (slow), and the cashier delaying for a moment doesn't relieve pressure by letting the buffer fill, it just adds more pressure.
If McDonalds is now taking 5-10 minutes for a typical order, what has gone wrong with their fast-food-factory-production-line design?
[1] Maybe it isn't actually low stress or no-rush in McDonalds, but that design of food service could be.
Allows for easier customisation and less food wastage (and you don't have to keep track of when something was made), at the cost of time for 'easy' orders.
Some small businesses fail because larger ones see their initial success and compete by making a slightly worse product a bit cheaper. Sometimes a significantly worse product. Once the superior but smaller competition is either out of business or has been forced to reduce their quality to try compete on price, the bigger business can either reduce the quality & price further (the big business will usually win in this sort of race-to-the-bottom because they can afford to take losses on individual products for a time, where a smaller business cannot) or bump their price up to improve margins.
It sometimes isn't that the small business is bad at the business part, but that they refuse to play dirty even if playing dirty is the only way to compete. It is easier to rationalise some tactics in a bigger company, because there is no one who has to look the customer in the eye who is also making product quality affecting decisions.
There are lots of alternatives to McDonald's.
There are lots of alternatives to most things. Some cost more money though. That's kinda the point.
Eating at a restaurant is a luxury. If you don't like the experience, don't go (or don't go back). You're free to make your own food with stuff you buy at the supermarket, and you'll most likely get something healthier and much lower-priced. The entire point of a restaurant is to pay more money, frequently a LOT more, for a combination of convenience, service, ambiance, and food that might not be so easy for you to make at home (e.g. pizza) due to skill or equipment limitations.
That special offer Tesco has on Pepsi products? Tesco is probably making exactly the same markup on each sale and the saving is actually coming from a supply price deal they have arranged with Pepsi in exchange for their products getting extra shelf space and end-isle displays.
High-shelf space (too high for customers to safely reach, so otherwise empty or used to store boxes of product to open when it is time to replace sold stock on lower shelves) often has advertising hoardings for products on other isles these days, again this is effectively paid ad space for the suppliers. If no external supplier is currently paying for it, the space is used to advertise own-brand ranges.
I don't know why you think that.
I don't know why you think that.
If an "alternative" to McDonald's forces you to drive excessive distances to reach it, or it costs much more, or it sells Thai food instead of burgers, then it isn't a real alternative to McDonald's.
A suitable alternative to McDonald's would be one similar enough to McDonald's for your purposes that you can use it to replace McDonald's. I'm sure some people have that, but I'm also sure many people don't.
There are lots of things that don't actually have suitable alternatives. There are entire product categories that are completely filled with consumer hostile garbage, with zero competitors offering a suitable alternative, because sometimes it will always be more profitable for companies to refuse to give consumers what they want.
Or pay a bit more to go to a nicer joint.
Quality does cost more. As long as you keep signaling to MD that you'll tolerate more and more crap for lower prices, they happily oblige.
Many people have stopped going to McDonald's by the way. But not enough for McD to hurt.
Then what? What does our agency change in the world in this situation?
You are using cop-outs as well.
If making your own meals is literally out of your reach then I feel really sad for you. That must truly suck to be so dependent on companies just to eat...
For example, I don't much care for the McDonald's experience, so I go elsewhere. Indeed on occasion I find going 'nowhere' to be preferable if there's no alternative. I haven't been to MD in 30 years.
I'm not trying to be on a high horse. I follow a path that works for me, and I don't complain about it. You choose the path that works best for you.
EXTREMELY OBVIOUSLY I meant this part of your comment:
> As long as you keep signaling to MD that you'll tolerate more and more crap for lower prices, they happily oblige.
That is the trope many use, yourself included. A lot of people signal their displeasure with various status quo. Still nothing changes. I wonder how does the one-dimensional quote above addresses the messy and complex real world out there.
I'm not really trying to "win" anything. I'm telling you that you have agency. Whether that means anything to you, or if you do anything with it, I guess that's up to you.
Personally I'm not looking for my agency to change anyone else or how any company behaves. I don't do it for them, I do it for me.
I choose to support companies that align with my requirements. If a company makes me feel like crap I go elsewhere. I'm not out to change the world, just choose how I live in it.
It's OK, of course, and yes I take a number of stances out there by supporting one and not supporting another, company.
My point however was that nowadays that's mostly a feel-good measure. Not the unquestionable actual agency many make it out to be.
I would assume that most people in this thread are not working 3 jobs to survive etc. My context is not their context.
I'd also guess they are far less invested in concepts like whether or not the server offers fries with that. In my long ago, limited experience, I couldn't have cared less about how many adverts there were, there were more pressing things to worry about.
Back to your point - I choose personal time over more money. My spending is modest, my income is likely much lower than most here. Frankly I have more than enough. Living is a lot cheaper when the goal isn't money.
E.g. Yes, I hate that McDonalds (like tons of other companies) is incessantly bugging me and quite blatantly trying to upsell me. As a result, I rarely go to such places anymore. So they lose my business. But I will also complain out loud. This is part of the deal with bullshitting your customer base. This is part of my agency. Losing me as a customer, as well as getting badmouthed left and right is the cost of extracting that 3 additional cents from me. Now the company also has a choice.
Correction, "they" are not a hivemind with one goal, they are a collection of individuals with individual goals to maximize their own profit. If some marketing employee can get a bonus or promotion by showing ephemeral monetary gains at the expense of the long-term integrity of the product, they'll jump all over that.
Just look at EA vs Nintendo for one. And I'm not even a Nintendo fan.
So you can pay for “McDonald’s without analytics” by paying list prices in cash at the register.
Now, if there was an option when booking a flight to pick a fare class not subjected to the stupid branded credit card offer walk of shame prior to landing, I would sign up in a heartbeat.
I didn't know they took orders at the register still. I've only been in once (last year) in the past 20 years, but they seemed to insist on kiosk-only. Not sure if the drive-thru is like that too.
I went inside and complemented the worker on their pumps being so easy to use. I go back there occasionally, even though the station with the ad screen is cheaper.
I think e-readers are not that high on the list of technologies most at risk to be taken over by ads
But you’re right. Via email is easy. And I’m mostly thinking of epubs/mobi — but drm free.
The readers work perfectly fine without an account and the Poke 5 I have is a fair bit smaller than the last Kindle I had with the same size screen.
It runs Android and I also use Termux plus a bluetooth keyboard with it for a rather nice minimal writing experience.
At first I was determined I would purchase the ad-free version (I think the price difference was like ~20€), but after talking to my friend they kind of convinced me that the ad version is not so bad.
2 points on this: 1. The ad appears only on the lockscreen of the device, so you see it once and then never again until you reopen it. The ad is also only for a book in the Kindle store, never anything else (this might seem trivial, but I think one of the negative aspects of advertising is being blasted with stimuli about so many different things you don't care for)
2. The ads are personalized on books you bought and therefor a sort of recommendation engine. Both my friend and my partner told me they got some inspiration from those ads to find books they liked.
So all in all while I despise ads, I gave this one a try. Personally (and yeah, I know – subconciously) I have never looked at the lockscreen apart from the first time I launched it. It's a relatively non-intrusive ad about a book that I don't even need to engage with. And in case something relevant is on there, it leads to a good outcome for me.
This is advertising done well for me at least.
[1] One example: https://boston.conman.org/2002/12/31.1
Paper magazines still have "blow ins", though - advertising cards that are injected into the magazine with compressed air after printing. They're not bound in. They fall out.
I refuse to use them, and (annoyingly, I know) let the cashier know why each time as they're checking me out. I feel bad for the poor cashier but unfortunately for them, they're my only interface to the company.
Yes. Our local IKEA recently started doing this. During self-checkout, you have to click through hot dog, ice cream, cinnamon buns and drink offers, and the inevitable offer to get an IKEA family card before you are actually able to pay for your furniture.
Seeing this after waiting in line for 10 minutes, navigating a sluggish, unresponsive touch screen terminal and unsuccessfully trying to scan slightly bend bar codes while 10 people are watching you doesn't exactly increase my desire to return to this store.
I really think a huge part of the problem is that there isn't a direct interaction with a human anymore. If IKEA would ask their cashiers to advertise all this crap to customers before accepting their money, they would revert this after a single day because many customers would very, very strongly complain, and the cashiers would care and threaten to quit.
But you cannot complain to a self-checkout-terminal, which makes this even more frustrating. As another comment has pointed out, there is just a "No thanks" button. I want a "I am seriously offended that you try to milk me like a brainless cash-cow, you should be ashamed to even advertise this to me after I bought a couch for 1,400 EUR, and I will not return anytime soon" button.
I'm actually chuckling at it -- just the sheer passive-aggressive childishness of its attempt at shaming users. I mean, what did they think writing that on the button would achieve? It has literally no effect except to infuriate people who were already going to opt out. Labelling it "I suck" would have been better.
The fact that this part of the UI is not escapable by the user is hostile and breaks the interaction model. If the “webpage” is asking me this question, why is the browser acting as a middleman and forwarding me this message without letting my continue unless I answer. Let me respond to the webpage or ignore it as well.
Maybe a little bit TOO sophisticated
Not my proudest _engineering_ achievement, but as an R&D project? I consider it a success.
Ethical outcome? Success.
i can almost feel the meeting where someone managed to sell this idea to shareholders... "decouple everything, more efficient !"
I don’t see how kiosk/tablet ordering would change that significantly.
I feel like your comment falls under "Nobody cares"
I love the touch screens and having the time to order what I want. I used to rush my order at the checkout and never got exactly what I wanted.
If you did a start-up 'ethical ordering' you'd care, made money, and probably forced McDonalds to change it's touch screens. In South Korea it asks the user are you sure, here's the extra kJ, when it does an upsell.
I did not succeed.
It's ran by business people who want to make money. Not by philosophers.
Also, TFA sounds like something I could've written.
Anyway, besides other anecdata, I don't have anything to add.
But I wanted to thank you, azeirah, that at least you tried
Really? I guess I've just never taken up such an upsell, but I'll try to remember it next time I go just to see the UI. Barely ever go there now that ironically Lotteria has more veggie burger options here (1) than McDonalds (0), and their chicken burgers are imo worse than KFC's.