Ignoring political implications here and just on a personal level I wish political ads were banned. Quite possibly my least favorite type of ad to see and I've never felt meaningfully informed by them (generally quite the opposite).
I find this quote from the article amusing.
If EU political ads are anything like USA political ads, the objective of the ad is rarely, if ever, to educate the audience.
The objective of most political ads is to confuse, disorient, and distort the narrative.
Whatever would we do if we didn't have the corporate/billionaire narrative to guide our lives!
Not at all.
Also the scale is no where near.
TV2 in Denmark just ran an article saying that the 24 politicians and parties buying the most ads bought a total of 250k ads ahead of this policy coming into effect.
Note that same month last year the spend was ~1/3.
I know Denmark is small, ~5-6M, but that's doesn't seem like a lot of money.
Spending $1.5 billion on a campaign (and still losing) is near unfathomable.
Perhaps we should be delighted in the fact that political ads can win an election.
I have a hard time seeing other positive outcomes :)
Here's a source, but h/t James Gleick for the comparison: https://www.statista.com/topics/1841/chewing-gum/
Every campaign is going to need largely the same set of skill sets in their campaign staff. Spinning up these groups and also going through the startup time of any new team learning to work together costs a lot of time and money.
So several of these standard skill sets, like data science, marketing, etc have been spun out into companies or consulting firms that are treated like a pool of available resources by campaigns based on their party.
It’s not treated as a slush fund and there’s usually a handful of competitors in your parties pool but you do end up working with a lot of the same faces at different clients/campaigns if you work at one of the servicing companies.
I worked at one of them once and I recall realizing that fact when I asked why a coworkers email had numeral in his name when he had a relatively uncommon first and last name
Btw, they just started categorise their online ads as non political through proxy companies. And they just jump to a new company when one becomes blocked.
Reform should state that campaign ads can only discuss what the candidate's positions are, and not be able to say anything about their opponent. If you can't tell me what your plans are and all you can do is say why the other position is wrong, then you're not showing me you'd be an effective person to hold office.
However, that's what your website is for. Stop interrupting my whatever I was doing.
Very much this. These ads make me very much not want to vote for the candidate which is the opposite of what they wanted.
If your definition is: an ad that explicitly involves a party/politician, why?
It seems like they're going to happen regardless, the difference is the subtly. For example, there's a lot of accounts purposefully pushing ideologies, and focusing on specific events for a political purpose on social media.
Arguably, these are much more dangerous than explicit political ads.
Yes, I am fully aware the next problem in all this is how does the politician then notify the district of the place and time of the next meeting. It would be great if congress, as a body, had a mechanism in place to handle this so that it is equally applied for any registered candidate regardless of party affiliation or primary favoritism.
Seriously, if politicians want cheap media coverage then they should do something worthy of coverage. There is one politician I can think of right now, far outside my local district, that is on one edge of the political spectrum and simultaneously performing the miracle of picking up tremendous popularity from the opposite edge of the political spectrum. They finally learned to tune their messaging from party political theater to rapidly changing opinions on current events in ways other politicians cannot. I am hearing way more about people like that than the person from my district, who isn't doing anything worth of media attention.
They have no shareholders or fudiciary duties, they are formed as non profits 501(c)4's with no purpose except their stated political position (for a policy / candidate, or against a policy / candidate) and this comes with no limitation on what they can own and do with the money
and this is all based on the flawed theory that spending equals votes
it's the dumbest reality that I thought would have been solved by constitutional amendment after Citizen's United but nope! how are you not taking advantage of this stupidity! the spending has only grown from all sides
No quitting your corporate job to start your own business, you’re not allowed to advertise.
And, if you were not aware, how do you think Yellow Pages made money? [1]
You go to Google, type "refrigerator" and you get two buttons
* Please show me only adds, sorted by how much they paid to Larry and Sergey
* Please show me only somewhat organic results, sorted by relevance or whatever, and discount me $1 to pay for the servers and crawers.
2. If a “directory” is the only advertising mechanism allowed it benefits the incumbents because incumbents are the only ones who have existing brand recognition. I don’t need a directory to know about Coca-Cola or Google Maps. You would have had to ban advertising at the dawn of time for this to work.
2. Why? You wouldn't search by business name, but by need. What about "nearby bakeries" or "pop soda" only benefits the better known brands? Indexing by name isn't the only way.
For #2, I think that established brands essentially wouldn’t need to be searched for.
In the status quo I can pay to put up a billboard next to McDonald’s and say “I make a better burger two blocks down.”
But if I’m not allowed to do that a lot of people will just assume that McDonald’s is the place to go for a fast food burger.
2. That's fine, you want something new or something you don't know where to get? Query an index. You want the good ol' experience? Go for what you already know well.
If you worry about the people who would never discover anything new, then it's like they don't talk to anybody or have no desire of changing anything, but that's their decision.
Do you not recognize how this scenario can work to preserve monopolies?
How does Apple come back from the brink of bankruptcy without their iconic iMac and iPod marketing campaigns?
And how do you flip the switch to making advertising illegal when incumbent companies have already enjoyed the benefit of legal advertising for hundreds of years? We ban advertising, and I start my new soft drink company, but Coca-Cola got to advertise for 100+ years already. The cat has been out of the bag for thousands of years.
[1] https://www.overclock.net/threads/teacher-calls-linux-%E2%80...
* not interested in right now.
Showing the same ad to the same person (or cohort of people) works. Eventually, someone in the cohort may be interested in that product/service at some point in their lfie and they are more likely to pick a brand they are familiar with. They are now familiar with that brand after having seen it everywhere all over their internet browsing, sometimes for months or years at a time.
When I want it, ill initiate a fresh search and find whatever I find, at that time. Don't want things leeching into my subconscious just because you want it to be your brand that I use later.
It's the same online, you can fill your own website, or your slot on the "yellow/white pages equivalent" alluded to by GP, with whatever crap you want.
> Where should we be drawing the line
Anything without explicit initiation from the user is not allowed. If I walk in front of your shop, cool, show me your ad. If I am 500m away, don't put up a fucking 5x5m billboard 40ft in the air. If I open your website, or scroll past your slot on an aggregator, cool, show me your logo, otherwise, nope. If I s/scroll/stroll past your s/slot/shelf in the s/aggregator/groceryshop then show me your logo, otherwise, nope. There are maaaaybe a few exceptions to the rule, like on highways I'd be fine with seeing $restaurant 8km away, or whatever, but those are rare situations where you benefit from knowing ahead of time, and even this is not necessary with google maps.
And how do are people informed about new products they may need or changes to existing products that they now may need? What about reminding people about things they needed, but they forgot about? There needs to be someway for companies to reach consumers that isn't initiated by the consumer.
There is already one, it's called a search engine.
I've built a relatively successful professional photography side hussle without "advertising" as in, I've never paid for an ad on any of the social platforms or google ads. Most of my business comes from word of mouth, or hits on my website.
But, is the SEO I do advertising? What about when I share my work to my socials, is that advertising? Post a reel of behind the scenes footage of me photographing a wedding so potential clients can see my process, is that advertising?
I do all of those things with the goal to drum up business, but they fall outside of the traditional meaning of the word. Likewise with product placement in films, influencer marketing, etc.
How do we even begin to draw the line at what is an advertisement and whats not?
Do you want to ban advertising, or ban TV and radio advertising?
They're sold under the counter (literally) / behind shutters, in plain packaging.
They certainly are not advertised on posters.
Sure it’s Unrelated but smoking is now 1 in 8 adults and dropping.
You can ban this type of advertising if you enforce it.
The same way we define what is and isn't political advertising? Or tobacco advertising, alcohol advertising etc.
> But, is the SEO I do advertising?
No, it's SEO.
> What about when I share my work to my socials, is that advertising? Post a reel
No, this is just sharing your work.
> Likewise with product placement in films, influencer marketing, etc.
Is it really complicated though? We already regulate what can and can't be said in all these forms of advertising.
Even with the tobacco advertising ban, tobacco use in movies is still a problem and even if not one specific product, it still encourages smoking and has a real world effect (and this applies to vaping now as well).
Hell, even product placement and merchandising in stores could be advertising. It does influence consumer behavior afterall.
I'm all for getting rid of ads but it the regulation has to have teeth, and be very well defined.
But to enumerate some things distinguishing those from more offensive ads:
* You put effort into making that content engaging and interesting for the audience
* The advertising is at least vaguely relevant to the content around it.
* Someone can opt out of seeing your social media posts, or watching an influencer, or watching the Superbowl. People are annoyed when this is violated, e.g. by coordinated campaigns across many influencers.
* These ads aren't as violently intrusive, with massive volume and color changes or full screen popups.
* These ads are (perceived as) more privacy-respecting than say, Google ads.
* These ads don't displace better content like a billboard does.
In short, they're a more respectful transaction that people have control over.
I think it makes more sense to target what kind of ads should be banned (e.g. politics, alcohol, cigarets, religion, etc.) and what ads format should be banned (e.g. loud ads, ads in the subway, etc.)
Practically all of them unless I've asked to receive them.
I'd absolutely sign up to receive info about new products from certain industry groups, niche product promoters, some stores, et c.
It's not ethical for you to be doing this kind of submarine advertising on HN without disclosure. Please just admit what you're doing rather than pretending.
If this is supposed to be an analogy to how people will argue over what's an ad so a rule is infeasible, it's a bad analogy. If it's literal then you're not making sense.