> Trust isn’t something a brand builds with an ad campaign. It’s what’s left if the marketers don’t ruin it.

So much this. Are ads still a measurably good investment for businesses? I'm assuming they wouldn't run them anymore if not, but they feel so out of touch these days that it's really hard to imagine them really working on anybody.

Sorry for the side-tangent, just felt like that last bit of the post really drove home the point best - at least for me.

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graemep 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Its always been hard to know. "about one-half the money I spend for advertising is wasted, but I have never been able to decide which half." dates back more than a century

Some spend is just in case. Some spend is for prestige (we are on TV!). Some is for vague reasons that cannot be measured.

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SoftTalker 33 minutes ago | parent [-]

Except for targeted online ads based on browsing/search history or other spying, most advertising is just brand/product awareness, hoping to create a memorable impression.

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vitally3643 20 minutes ago | parent [-]

What really baffles me is that among people my age in the sorts of circles I interact with, that memorable impression is overwhelmingly negative. Seeing an ad at all creates an immediate negative association. "This brand/company feels they have the inviolable right to assert themselves on me and forcibly take up my attention and time". It's wild that this sentiment either hasn't percolated up to advertisers, or (more likely) they just don't care.

	▲	SoftTalker 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		General, non-obtrusive and non-targeted ads don't really bother me. Maybe because I grew up with ads in newspapers, magazines, billboards, radio and TV. The latter two were most annoying because they interrupt the programming, but I understood that's how broadcasters make money so that they could operate. Deliberately annoying pop-ups, nags, auto-playing media, distracting animation, etc. in online ads does provoke the sort of negative reaction you describe. I block as much of that as I can. I would not really mind a website that had reasonable number of static, inline ads that didn't slow down scrolling or page loads and were relevant to the content of the site. But that's pretty rare.

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hootz 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I guess they can work when no one knows about you. After a certain point, there must be diminishing returns in comparison to just your current customers recommending your product to their friends.

	▲	Hugsbox 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'd imagine so, yeah. Like, I can't imagine what value French's gets out of running mustard advertisements as an example. Feels like some of these companies have entire marketing teams whose main job is to justify their own existence because upper management hasn't yet figured out that they're not going to reach anybody who's never heard of mustard before.

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tardedmeme 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

According to Cory Doctorow, P&G (Proctor&Gamble) canceled $200m of ad spend and saw no change in sales

	▲	rileymat2 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		https://www.reuters.com/article/business/pg-says-cut-digital... > The consumer goods conglomerate said it cut digital spending by more $100 million between April and June of 2017 and continued with the cuts at the same rate for the rest of the year. >P&G, however, has not cut overall media spending. Funds have been reinvested to increase media reach, including in areas such as TV, audio and ecommerce media, a company spokeswoman told Reuters. Looks like they still spent it in marketing and advertising just not digital spending. Also for sticky old well known consumer goods I’d wager sales drop slowly.

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soupspaces 26 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What if ads weren't about money in the first place and that was the excuse used for surveillance?

	▲	andsoitis 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> What if ads weren't about money in the first place and that was the excuse used for surveillance? Care to explain, to pick one advertiser, how Nestlé is primarily running a surveillance scheme when advertising one of their products, rather than trying to get me to buy more of it?

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doctoboggan 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Are ads still a measurably good investment for businesses?

Attempting to measure the effectiveness of ads is basically what drove the creation of the surveillance capitalism monster we all know and love today.