I definitely consume too much dystopian content to be a fair dystopian barometer, but the sheer amount of ads being pushed my way is starting to make me feel legitimately anxious. It feels like a techno-dystopia where all of the neat and artistic elements have been extracted and then ground into dust for our corporate overlords. Even the ‘regular’ people are just trying to sell themselves. The streamers, the funny videos, the pet videos, the porn, the reposts of all of those, so much of it is just monetizing my attention.
Do ads even influence people that much? Does anyone even eat Church’s Chicken?! Do people consider switching their car insurance? I though the postmoderns were jumping the gun a little with the pictures they painted of a future with corporate logos and other advertisements spread across every visible surface, but now I have to see 5 ads and a cookie consent pop up to look up a quick definition. Watching a friend’s youtube video? 30 seconds of rapidfire ads from 15 brands. It’s starting to feel absurd. Are we going to be okay?
I’m not convinced it does work. Freakonomics did a bit on marketing awhile back and the researchers they talked to said ad dollars were pretty inefficient and that companies would probably net a larger profit by reducing TV advertising.
Transcript of part 1
More anecdotally, they talk about two corporate tests in digital marketing (Ebay and P&G) that seem to indicate that digital marketing isn’t paying off for companies either.
Transcript of part 2
Personally this hurts my soul even more knowing the only people profiting are the middlemen who engineer their products to be objectively worse so that they can shove ineffective ads in my face.