this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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I go through significant efforts to block digital advertising at multiple levels. Yet, I do not find it difficult to discover new things to buy (from both small and large businesses).
For myself, I suspect most of that is supported through online communities related to my interests and hobbies. Those purchases feel more informed and often more intentional too.
That is a very well placed observation from a consumer standpoint. Now consider it from a flower shop in your neighborhood trying to compete with the grocery store and FTD.com
How are you going to get your foot traffic other than word of mouth and people seeing you in a stripmall?
Targeted digital ads let you get in front of people in your area. There are very very few local websites anymore.
I block most ads too, but there's no denying that occasionally on facebook, some semi-local brewpub goes hey, check out our new menu items and it turns out to be a win for them and for me.
Advertising is dicey, in a lot of cases, it's in the hands of the enemy but the economy, especially small business doesn't float without it.
The way I see it when it comes to physical ads I see them, I walk past, they're gone. Online targeted advertising is more like if there were a bunch of flying TV screens outside that constantly follow you around and try to take up 90% of your vision while you're trying to cross the road, and some stores become impossible to enter without an ad-blocker because the doorway is literally jammed with flying TVs.
We really need limits on how much advertising can be on the screen and places you can advertise and how often you can be advertised to that would make a hell of a lot of sense. When you have shitty web pages like an index card sized recipe drawn out to 15 pages long to make you click through tons of ads. The advertiser should be able to detect people doing that s*** and not pay them.
But targeted advertising is also a single ad on a social media site for a brew pub or a florist in your neighborhood advertising a mother's Day special or a new cheap arrangement they just made out of an accidental over-order.
When ads go wrong they really go wrong.