What's your opinion of advertising?

[Dr Jimbo]

Well, the banning ads to children thread provoked a range of opinions, I thought I'd see what people thought about the broader issue.

 

[Bozo Erectus]

Most advertising is a colossal waste of money. Especially in the age of the TV remote. Internet advertising is even more of a waste, like billboards and magazine ads. Its background noise that most people tune out.

 

[Duddha]

Convinces people to buy stuff they don't need just to satsify the surplus mechanism of capitalism.

 

[addiv]

I hate it, and I always turn off the sound when commercials are on TV, but it pays for a lot of stuff, so it has a good side. I would only like to see it banned from public television, the commercial stations really need it to stay alive.

 

[Akka]

Some adds are funny and inventive.

But basically, adds are lies, they are intrusive, polluting and supremely annoying.

 

[stratego]

Sometimes I pay more attention to the commercials than the actual show. I support advertising.

 

[puglover]

Deceitful nonesense, though sometimes I like making fun of its futile attempts to convince me to buy their junk.

 

[Wolfe Tone]

I hate adverts on television that interupts the shows. I don't watch them, I start flicking thorugh channels.

 

[luiz]

I hate ads.
But then again without them wew would not be able to watch TV for free(and cable TV would be much mor expensive).
They're also a fundamental part of capitalism, even is an annoying part. Bannig or severly restricting them would be a colossal stupidity.

 

[Dell19]

Adverts are interesting. Sometimes they can be funny, the first time you see an advert can be far mor entertaining then an entire TV program however they are promoting a product or service and therefore they are trying to make us want something that we may not necessarily need and its hard to see how advertising allows us to compare products. They do manage to inform us of new products, their benefits may be exagerated but an advert might create enough interest for you to find some more information about the product and end up buying it. I doubt advertising is such a huge waste of money as otherwise we wouldn't see so much of it. The benefit of informing customers of new products may be vastly undervalued and whilst an advert may not lead to huge numbers of sales directly, it might indirectly. I'm sure there are plenty of people who have brought a product because of the image portrayed by an advert, backed up by other sources and then probably regretted it later.

 

[Iggy]

Adverts: A necessary form of receiving knowledge of a product's existence. An example being that without advertising I would not have bought a Civ computer game. The advert raised my curiosity, I went out of my way to read reviews and duly decided to purchase it. I may have come across the game at some point or heard about it by word of mouth, however it was the advert that raised the initial interest.

 

[Nico92]

Advertisement is an understandable annoyance.

 

[Arizona_Steve]

Ban all advertising and shoot all marketing droids. I cannot stand any form of advertising, but those involving sound (radio, TV) are by far the most irritating. I drive Ms_Arizona_Steve crazy when I flick through channels trying to avoid advertising that is often synchronized on adjacent channels.

Even the NetZero advertising box on my dial-up connection drives me to mute the sound and fire up Task Manager so I can place it on top of the advertisement.

Advertising is nothing but lies, exaggerations and half-truths. The world would be a better place without it. If I want to check out a product I will search for information on the Internet.

 

[Dell19]

How do you find out about the product in the first place if you don't know that it exists?

 

[Arizona_Steve]

Two ways. Shopping and Internet. If I want something I will seek it out. I don't need some idiot marketing droid forcing crap down my throat whenever I watch TV.

 

[crystal]

Yep, Internet advertising is becoming utter waste of money. My ad filtering program's statistics say it has filtered 170000 images, 52000 scripts, 13000 frames, 40000 cookies, etc. All of those during about 8 months.

 

[Dell19]

You must do a lot of shopping then to make sure you are not missing out on anything...

 

[crystal]

You must do a lot of shopping then to make sure you are not missing out on anything...

Well, sometimes it filters too much, and non-ad images won't display or desired pop-ups don't work. It is easily corrected by clicking taskbar to turn the program off and then reloading the page. But usually ad images have standard dimensions or very obvious url (banner.gif etc) so they are easily sweeped away. Never mind if couple of advertisers go bankrupt, not my problem.

 

[Arizona_Steve]

@Dell - I see you're in England. I'm English too, and I was brought up on BBC1 and BBC2. Maybe that explains my irrational hatred of all things marketing...

 

[Mapache]

Private advertisment is quite acceptable for me. Kinda Ebay in newspapers. That's OK. I also accept public campaigns. Anything else ist just annoying and intrusive. Many years ago I spent some time in Serbia and I really enjoyed the absence of that pestilence.