At one point in time advertisements were in dedicated sections of newspapers, magazines, posted in business windows and maaaaybe sent out in mailors. And that was about it. If you didn’t want to be advertised to you didn’t read the ads. When TV broadcasts first started there was an dilemma over whether people would tolerate TV commercial breaks, and whether they were even ethical since you couldn’t just turn the page if you didn’t want to read the ad. We’re light-years beyond that mindset and level of consumer respect now. Ads that try to appear to be anything but ads, individually targeted ads, unskippable ads on CPR instructional videos, ads in search results, ads on floating billboards among the beach, ads on your refrigerator, ads on your personal tablet or laptop, ads on the damn gas pump… it’s fucking dystopian.
At one point in time advertisements were in dedicated sections of newspapers, magazines, posted in business windows and maaaaybe sent out in mailors. And that was about it. If you didn’t want to be advertised to you didn’t read the ads. When TV broadcasts first started there was an dilemma over whether people would tolerate TV commercial breaks, and whether they were even ethical since you couldn’t just turn the page if you didn’t want to read the ad. We’re light-years beyond that mindset and level of consumer respect now. Ads that try to appear to be anything but ads, individually targeted ads, unskippable ads on CPR instructional videos, ads in search results, ads on floating billboards among the beach, ads on your refrigerator, ads on your personal tablet or laptop, ads on the damn gas pump… it’s fucking dystopian.
Funnily enough, this is an actual example they use in one of their ad skits!
Video is time-stamped at the ad, but the whole video is pretty great (if it happens to be your type of humor)
Answering Questions Without Knowing the Questions