cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/7858415
This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/meme by /u/ProEpikGamer90 on 2026-02-20 05:38:25+00:00.
Too many people here are saying that ads don’t work.
Whether they work or not doesn’t matter. The problem is that ads are literally designed and optimized to manipulate you out of your money, and to cause you to make decisions on emotion rather than reason. This is unethical at its core. How most people are ambivalent towards companies manipulating us is beyond me.
Yeah it kinda blows my mind with politics. Time and again more money means more ads and results in more wins. I mean its not 100% but its enough that if someone wins while spending less and is not the incumbent its a news item. We have an open senate seat here and the front runner with the war chest is the one I least want to win. I really don’t get it as I find most ads turn me off to their subject. I mean even negative ads about the opponent turn ya off to the one its for. But obviously it seems to work overall. I hate it.
People are responding with ad block but as much as I hate them I kinda like being aware of what they are. Anyone who is confused about why our country is where its at go turn off your ad blockers for videos.
Yeah, no. I don’t need an advertisement to inform me that consumerism being propped up by imperialism is why everything sucks
Yes, I am never buying a Tide product again since it seems they were the only ones to pay Amazon for ads. I was trying to watch a show that I was having difficulty pirating and every damn ad was either for tide or bounty for some damn reason so never buying anything from them again since I had to see like 30 of those ads repeatedly. I usually muted the tv and just browsed my phone but for that first second the ad played I could tell it was for one of them.
Adnauseam and Sponsorblock should stop you from seeing most ads on youtube.
Revanced is alive and kicking guys.
So’s NewPipe and SmartTube, which are the ones I use.
Haven’t been able to find a podcast player with sponsorblock, though, so I continue to be assaulted.
Stockholm syndrome
This is the key.
Ads don’t care if you like or don’t like them, as long as you remember them.
The worst thing an ad can do is be forgettable
Every single ad these days go into a memory black hole. They are so irritating, so invasive, so EVERYWHERE; that I instinctively dissociate from anything in them.
They won’t get my conscious or subconscious attention. All of my large purchases are researched a minimum 2 weeks in advance and anything small is done on a case by case basis (of which I intentionally scrutinize anything I might have “heard of” because I’m aware of the phenomenon. Fuck all ads, they are my enemy.
I bet you were thinking about some add when writing this.
I literally pay money to not see ads in my (local) streaming services.
The irritation and mental load from dealing with shitty ads is well worth the about 15€ a month I pay to have them removed.
I don’t know how having me associate their name with a spike of rage is a good thing. There are definitely companies I went from being neutral towards to never considering them again due to their advertising methods. For example I’ve never eaten at Quiznos because of those fucking rat commercials they did like 20 years ago. I’m not even sure if that place still exists or not. I hope not, and I hope whoever came up with those commercials is dead.
Sorry dude, you’re on lemmy. Nobody is here because it’s the easiest or best. Most of us are here because we’re the types who don’t like getting fucked over. I wholeheartedly agree that ads in and of themselves are annoying and fucking detest those Quiznos commercials but we’re the “weird” ones here. Most people loved those ads and Quiznos sold a ton of crappy sandwiches. Sadly advertising works on most people.
Disagree.
I may be in the minority but the more I know about you, the less I ever want you in my house.
I will literally go by an LG Washing Machine out of spite because Sony showed up too much in ads.
They are playing statistics, most people that think they are immune to ads are full of shit and even if they somehow defy common human behavior it isn’t really relevant to an advertising effort that doesn’t care about the minority.
The Yaris ads did this to me. I got so pissed off by their “It’s a car” commercials that I absolutely despised the product.
Were you in market for buying the car when you saw those adds? If you werent then they did not loose a sale even if you hated the add.
Can you honestly say, that if you were in really need of a car and there would be opportunity to buy a yaris with good price and it would be good fit to your needs at the moment, you would pass it just because some add you saw at some point?
Was it so effective you repeat the name of the product years later in some random discussion on the internet?
I think the adds worked pretty much as intented.
If I had the choice of the Yaris or another car, I would choose the other car. Because driving that car would make me at least low-level angry for the time I had it.
The same with podcasts, especially geolocated ads or what they’re called. Here in Norway I always get the same fucking ads on every damn podcast, and they are horrible, like getting raped in the ears. At least I learn which companies to avoid…
I bet i have heard the same add, even living in Finland. I live close enough to border so i get good mix of Finish, Swedish and Norwegian adds. And every single one of those are way louder than the podcast is.
So much this!
Since I use NewPipe and SmartTube, I don’t get YouTube ads, but I do get ads during podcasts and the geolocated ones are by far the worst!
I have learned to hate Designer Outlet Neumünster, Shopify, and Danish paid podcast company Podimo with a passion usually reserved for fascist politicians!
I’ve held this attitude ever since those Mentos commercials used to interrupt my Much Music in the 90s. These type-A marketing types rarely realized they’re just advertising to themselves.
There are many ads on YouTube that are obvious scams. So I just assume that anything being advertised on YT is a scam.
Ads work. Consumer behavior is among the most studied phenomenoms in the world.
It’s almost like there’s a multi billion industry based on it!
Its over 1.3 Trillion per year by now, thats more than the Military budget of the usa. You could buy about 80 aircraft carriers with that. Every year.
Where do they get that money?
Oh yeah, it’s why everything is priced the way it is.
So they can use that money against us.
But I’m sure lemmy geniuses know more about it…
They used to.
Why do you see diminishing returns lately? Because more money into more ads lead to consumer fatigue.
I got real into Zero Punctuation about a decade ago, so I’d watch a load of 5 minute youtube videos back to back.
It would serve me the same goddamn ad for a Mission Impossible movie between every one. The ad had this hateful nasally music that went “ready or not, here I come.”
I have not paid for a movie ticket, a streaming service, or a new DVD or Blu-Ray since then. Brain surgery with a backhoe, cut your pineal gland off at the waist. Fuck your entire sector of industry, Tom Cruise.
Fuck your entire sector of industry, Tom Cruise.
You mean conning people to join the cult or his hobby of mediocre acting?
Yes.
You know I cannot be the only one that will consciously decide to not buy brands that make intrusive adverts. But, they must also know that. So I can only assume that the majority of people don’t think the same and it’s an overall upside for these annoying ads.
That baffles me too. Being annoyed by an obnoxious ad instantly puts the brand in my naughty, to-boycott list.
Like, if I ever need to use a VPN, guess who I’ll go out of my way to never, ever use? That’s right NordVPN, go fuck yourself! I’ve never used you and I already hate you.
How do people care so little that it’s still a beneficial strategy for brands?
I just assume that anyone who needs to spend a lot on bothering me about their product… is either pushing a really shitty product, or offering it at a really shitty price, because so far that has been the case about 90% of the time.
If it was a good value, people would spontaneously recommend it when appropriate, with only light advertising in places where it makes sense (athletic gear advertised on sports websites, for example). Hell, it doesn’t even have to be all that good a product, just better than the alternatives. I mean look at Linux! :p
It’s so clear when you know what’s going on, but I think most people operate under the assumption that if they constantly hear about it and don’t hear bad things to the same degree, that the thing must be good. Propaganda is everywhere saying exactly that in lots of different ways, so hard to really blame them…
or offering it at a really shitty price
Advertising budget has to come from somewhere. If you can afford to inundate me with constant ads, then I know your product costs way more than it needs to.
Correct. Ads work extremely well. The simple and short explanation is that most people are dumb.
Adblockers are not that difficult to install, so I’d guess the slice of people who really resent ads enough to actually make purchasing decisions out of spite but also who still watch them isn’t that big.
There is a third category here: people who also hate ads but pay to turn off the ads, recognizing that a service takes money to operate. You’re not the only one who hates ads, and if you simply eschew them, that’s great. But we have a lot of people here who want to get everything for nothing, and that’s just not a tenable plan.
I mean look at the entitlement in the post. “Your” ads but “my” video.
AdNauseam is great :)
I’ve tried it, but the only “ads” I’ve had it collect in the past are cookie banners, random reddit posts, and thumbnails on a Google search page (only used a Google search page to try and see if it would actually collect ads)
