Advertisements. We see them everywhere.

Generally, Advertisements are produced by “sponsors”; for example, watch a sports broadcast and you will be presented by advertisements from those companies that sponsor the broadcast. For your standard “commercials” the advertiser pays for a short segment.

Now, we all know this; but there is an interesting set of people who quite literally think that it’s “unethical” to block advertisements. Their reasoning is that the pages content and the ads are a “package” deal- essentially, they are telling us we really have no right to block advertisements. I’ve seen this type of thing come up several times, in a few forums; in a rather interesting twist, though, it always turns out that the person calling everybody “selfish” for blocking ads is in fact in the employ of an advertising agency or the advertising or analytics department of a company; I’ve even had people try to say that people should change browsers or disable cookies because it makes their job harder. Right, and we’re the selfish ones.

I find the entire argument somewhat ridiculous. one such argument revolved around Adblock apparently  “not doing” what it is supposed to do; they claimed that it blocks ads “wrong” because it blocks the ad domain (much “loved” atdmt.com, for example) rather then the content provider (which determines what kind of ads are being provided ). Personally, I think such an argument is nonsense. Personally, when I install adblock, I want to block ads. I really don’t give a flying fuck if the ads are for hamburgers, tampons, or weight pills. I don’t want to see the damned things. I find it extremely odd that people will actually subscribe to the thought process that we are “obligated” to view the ads, and the reason essentially boils down to “because they are there”. When somebody, like myself, writes an article,  or blog post- nobody is “obligated” to read the post; likewise nobody is expected to read any advertisements I might have on the site. Truth me told most of the money for keeping the site up comesout of my own pocket, and my experience with advertisers as far as being a portal for which ads can be shown as been rather negative. First, in order to get my ads placed on another site; I pay. this makes sense. However, the amount I paid into AdWords was nearly 75 dollars for merely 5 days; in those 5 days I made 4 dollars off of adsense. Somebody, somewhere, is making a huge amount off of this whole thing and I suspect it’s probably google; charging a lot to display ads through adwords, taking off a heftly chunk and giving the Adsense users a mere pittance; essentially, google is being paid to show ads on my site. In the time I started this site, which has been well over a year, I’ve made only a few dollars. I can only fathom how much google made off of the adwords subscribers whose content I displayed.

In any case, the whole concept of being “obligated” to view advertisements seems rather bollocks. When the commercial break comes on the television- it’s called a “break” for a reason. Nobody is obligated to watch it and nobody feels obligated to watch it and personally I don’t watch Television for that very reason- the commercials are damned annoying. People don’t buy HD televisions so they can see the GEICO gecko in high resolution.

Another problem with claiming such “obligations” is that really it’s not our obligation at all. Let’s think back here, to the original concept of spot advertising. Basically, an advertiser pays the station to show their commercials during the break. Somehow, this translates into us being obligated to watch these ads because we are watching the “core content” that those ads are paying for. This doesn’t make any sense. The advertisers and the station know for a fact  that a good portion of people aren’t going to view the ads, and they keep track of that in their analytics, and it’s in fact part of the whole calculation of how much the advertiser pays the station to begin with. I just don’t understand the logic here:

We pay for the Television, the cable hookup, and all the accessories, and yet we are still “obligated” to watch the advertisements because somehow they fund the very content we already paid to view? Why the hell would we need to pay for these extra channels to begin with if their revenue came from commercials? it doesn’t make any damned sense whatsoever, because the advertising simply supplements the revenue they are making via other means- I imagine cable companies have to pay television broadcasters in order to show their content.

Moving back to internet advertisements; we are all to familiar with them as I’m sure. You’ll visit a site, and at the top of the page will be a flash advertisement that goes something to the effect of “hit three ducks and win” or “spank 14 prostitutes and win a trip to LA” the thing is, these are simply advertisements; the game difficulty is not even close to what one might expect in order to win a prize that they claim; for example, advertisements that go something like “click the ipod to win a free iPod Nano!”, and then it doesn’t matter where you click on it because it’s a GIF or something, and it goes to some “signup” page where you give your E-Mail address. So it turns out that that isn’t advertising as much as it is phishing for information; they have no intention of giving anybody an iPod, they just want to harvest E-mails, and then they in turn sell those e-mails.

So the phisher paid the content displaying site to show thier “advertisement” the viewer felt “obligated” to play the stupid game and in return they are now on spam maillists the world over, and what did they get out of it? a few paragraphs of text, from a blog post or otherwise, framed by yet more advertisements. Somehow the exchange doesn’t seem exactly fair.

No television station is going to go out of business or off the air because people are purposely not viewing the advertisements they are displaying, television stations go off the air because they have shitty content that nobody wants to watch, and therefore nobody is tuned in to watch whatever even worse commercials come on. The same applies to websites. Websites don’t shut down because of some tear-jerking story where everybody visiting the page was using adblock, websites shut down because they suck.

Most often, I’ve seen sites shut down for somewhat similar reasons, in that more ad revenue would have possibly fixed it- that is, lack of funds. but these were sites started and run by individuals, people who even if they got several thousand hits a day would make barely anything from displaying these advertisements.

The problem with advertising isn’t that it exists or that it’s not “context sensitive” or that it’s trying to be “sensitive” to your likes/dislikes, it’s that regardless of where an ad is it’s out of context. I’ve seen blog posts with negative reviews for a product accompanied by advertisements for said product, and regardless of what an ad is for it’s still a “separate entity” from the rest of the site; the rest of the site has images, icons, frames, tables, navigation menus, and so forth, all fitting together perfectly fine and running together beautifully. An advertisement is essentially a “black box” outside of all this content, regardless of how well it’s colour scheme matches the rest of the site, it still, at it’s core, isn’t part of the site. So, what can be done?

In-context advertising. This was and has been done quite a lot- for example, a television character might have Coca-cola in their fridge, or they might have a certain brand of cereal that they pour in a bowl in a scene; These are essentially “implicit” advertisements in some ways; And if you think about it, they are a lot more effective then the standard “black box” ad. Even “targeted” advertisements are still essentially abstract from the content of the site itself, and that is the problem. With in-context ads, nobody truly “notices” that there is a advertisement; (unless you lay it on very thick or have actual character dialog revolving around the product). Truth be told I’m amazed this method of advertisement hasn’t been attempted. In the context of a website, it might be difficult to apply; whereas television and movies are fictional environments which can be essentially manipulated at will, the content of a website is a lot more difficult to manipulate in a way to create in-context advertisements. Additionally, some sites have a goal that might conflict with that, such as hardware review sites. Video games can be changed to suit this quite easily, and being an interactive environment whereby the viewer is an active participant they may be m ore inclined to notice it. For example, many racing games have advertisements in the form of locations, such as, for example, McDonalds restaurants appearing on the game. Need for Speed Underground 2 does this. However, it’s a mixed bag; the player purchased the game already; they paid for the product, not the the extraneous advertising.

A Free and rather popular game, TrackMania Nations Forever, takes a slightly less subtle approach, but I think it works well. In the game, there are various “billboards”, such as the banner above the start/finish line as well as checkpoints, in addition to various pieces of scenery. These bits and pieces are dynamically updated with advertising content; for example, I’ve seen subway advertisements. What makes this even more interesting is that even though they are being less subtle about the advertisements they are in fact more “in-context”; a real race track is often lined with advertisements and banners for companies often appear in locations where they are sure to get prominent display from a particular angle camera; additionally Nascar and F1 vehicles are often adorned with various advertising and company logos, since they are truly the center of attention such advertisements are more likely to be noticed. The end result is that Trackmania Nations Forever, in using these advertisements in this fashion, has in many ways made the racing experience more “authentic”.

Flip-flopping back to internet ads, and, well, advertising in general; discussions I’ve read on the subject generally have one side saying that it’s “morally wrong” or even “stealing” when you don’t watch TV commercials or if you block ads.

Here’s the thing though. Think about it; Why is it immoral? Because apparently that’s how the content you are watching is paid for.

Seriously, How in the FUCK does that make us obligated to watch the ads? The burden of cost should be on the people who produced the content, not on the people who watch it. Yes, it’s a hard world out there and the only way television networks make money is through ad revenue. Boo hoo. As if they are struggling.

Additionally, Why is it morally wrong or stealing for us to not watch and pay attention to ad content that is “paying for the content” when the creators of the advertisers have absolutely no concern for what we do, what we want, our likes and dislikes, anything. They don’t give a flying fuck about us, they use decades of research, and an entire industry is devoted to the pursuit of influencing peoples decisions.

And you know what? That is morally wrong. They claim that if a content provider needs to “pay” for the content you are watching/viewing by showing you weight-loss pills, that you are “morally obligated” to watch said advertisements, based entirely on the fact that you “have to pay back” the person that you “took” the content from. Fucking nonsense. It’s the fucking equivalent of letting somebody watch a television show, and then afterwards, or in “commercial breaks” saying it’s “compulsory” for them to donate. Fuck them. Their entire purpose is to influence our decisions for their own selfish gains. How is it “moral” to tell people that they can lose hundreds of pounds by using some weight-loss pill and it turns out that that pill is just a sugar pill? When did the fucking advertisers get the god damned moral high ground? When in the FUCK did advertisers get any god damned semblance of credibility? I’m swearing a lot, I know, but this topic just pisses me right off. It’s such a load of fucking nonsense. I don’t fucking want Advertisements to be influencing my purchasing and buying decisions, Even if you try to ignore them completely, and they are “in the background” as you go in the kitchen or whatever during the commercials, or they are flashing in a sidebar, they still influence you in ways you not consciously realize. For example, when people think of Cola; generally they think pf either Pepsi or Coca-Cola. Royal Crown and any number of other products are essentially ignored. I am not immune to this; I prefer Coca Cola. The thing is- why? they are all just fucking sugar-water concoctions. I’ll tell you why- advertisements. I like coca-cola better; is it any coincidence that between Pepsi and Coke advertisements I personally highly prefer the more conservative and less “psuedo-hip” ads by Coke? I doubt it. Despite the fact that I wasn’t actually consciously paying attention to them, I have been influenced by them. Is it any wonder that products such as Royal Crown and generic colas, which aren’t “cheap copies” as much as it costs the same to produce and they sell it at a reasonable price, have very few advertisements anywhere and have a far lower market share?

I’m fucking sick of hearing arguments that essentially boil down to “you are morally obligated to have people attempt to manipulate you” it’s utter tosh I say.  This goes double for advertisements, where the content page is a god damned text file, really. Apparently we are “obligated” to have our browsers follow the various URI’s that go to advertisements and show them to us, using up disk space, CPU time, and most of all, being a god damned fucking annoyance. Another “argument” is that we should view ads on the computer because they are “better” then ads on the TV. What a terrible argument. Dog shit Generally smells less bad then Cat shit, but they are both fucking shit, and the same logic applies to advertisements. These same folks say that Internet ads are better because apparently advertisers can see how many people bought products based on the ad. This is utter and complete nonsense. The advertisers place cookies on our computer without permission, you see, because apparently that permission is given automatically without a prompt; you see they say we are “morally obligated” to view these ads based on the premise that we viewed the content. You know what, if the people who produced the content were to fucking piss-poor to finance it going to television, maybe they shouldn’t have made the damned thing in the first place. I don’t fucking care what anybody says. Advertisers aren’t god damned poor. Neither are any people I know that rely on advertisements. They’re all rich fat cat elitist assholes who are really good at messing with peoples minds. People that think they are most immune to manipulation by advertisements are the most susceptible. They put cookies on our PC, track our movements, and “detect” when we buy a product “based” on an ad. the problem is the data is flawed. first off the idea behind advertisements isn’t necessarily to make an instant sale, it’s to fuck with peoples heads, so the next time they need a Screwdriver, they think craftsman, or the next time they want a pop, they think Pepsi. There is no Customer-happiness motivation here, the company just wants to sell you shit and make a profit.

Think about this the next time you buy a brand-name product. Do you truly need to get Coca Cola or pepsi? would not one the 99 cent bottles do? Seriously, it’s not “cheap” soda except in price. Coca Cola probably cost’s no less product wise to produce then the generic sodas, it’s the advertising campaigns designed to convince us that their formula is worth over 1.50 more then the 00% bottles despite the ingredients lists matching nearly exactly.

Whatever the case, as it stands now, advertising is hardly a positive influence on anybody, since the entire purpose is to influence people for the benefit of the company in question; To call the viewers selfish is to take attention away from the fact that the advertiser themselves is in fact selfish; they really don’t care what people actually want, they want to change what they want so that they want what they are selling, and they do this through advertising. Even targeted advertising is no different, they just change who they send the advertisements to so that the person is more likely the agree with the advertisement it’s still basically manipulation.

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