Nobody likes advertising. Period.

spyware ? driven by advertising
spam ? driven by advertising
splogs ? driven by advertising

just about every threat to your average user on the web is in some way attributable to advertising

This Article reminded me of a Simpson's song. To stop those monsters 1-2-3, Here's a fresh new way that's trouble-free, It's got Paul Anka's guarantee... Lisa: Guarantee void in Tennessee. All: Just don't look! Just don't look! Just don't look! Just don't look! Just don't look! Just don't look! Seriously though I've stopped paying attention to ads altogether. Except for those amusing General Insurance ads where you play a car and avoid getting hit, those ads I fully support.

...was the subject line that I expected after reading the summary.

Advertising is fine.. "MARKETING" is what people dont like.

advertising is merely publishing the existence of a product.

marketing is the active, dogmatic, flagrant, imposition of a product to a particular target using the most invasive means possible within the boundaries of the law. An advertisement would be a poster for a revlon product in a department store. marketing would be the woman who blocks your path and burns your eyes out with a well placed blast of a perfume bottle.

your typical toy marketing campaign is not about convincing you and your kid to get this toy.. it's about deliberately manipulating your kids into pissing you off until you pay them temper tantrum protection money.

Slashdot's ads are actual advertising, while those seizure inducing flashers, popup windows, and fake system alerts are marketing.

We all are smart (or many claim to be). We push Firefox and such software so we take control of the web.

Every machine has a hosts file in which machines can be locally defined.

So, lets take what we know and make ads gone.. maybe not all of them.. Lets start with the annoying ones first.

First, get Firefox.
Next, we gets some plugins:
Adblock Plus
NoScript
NukeAnythingEnhanced
Flashblock

What, you dont like being watched? Now get TOR from tor.eff.org and install it, along with accompanying firefox plugin for proxy changing

Set up TOR and now you have ad-free browsing, with optional anonymizing surfing when needed (for performance hit).

Or, you know, use Adblock Plus.

I would definitely agree that advertising is what keeps the vast majority of websites afloat. I suppose my complaint is primarily against bad advertising, the in-your-face MySpace style versus the classier Facebook approach. Ads targeted to certain websites (if I visit a technology site, seeing banner ads for CDW or NewEgg is fine) are certainly reasonable, but if I'm running a search for gardening tips I don't want to be assaulted with ads for seed producers, mulch manufacturers or whatever the heck else goes into gardening (I should have picked an analogy I know more about). Your last point is excellent although I may go a little off-topic talking about it. When people ask me how I condone music sharing I use a very similar analogy, when people shout across a room that information is open. When a radio station pumps out a signal that too should be considered open since they are making it publicly available. You can argue about quality and sampling but that's for a different submission.

Am I the only one? I see it like this - I get content for free. Somebody has to pay those people to create, host and maintain that content. I know the ads are not going away. So long as the ads are there I prefer them to be relevant to my needs. So sure, track away. I'd rather see ads for things I'm interested in than things I'm not. They don't know my name or where I live so no harm done. If ads are too pushy or distracting from the content I'll use another site This is one of the reasons Google won the search engine war - their ads are not annoying and they work for the people trying to sell us stuff.

Sorry, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

True marketing deals with WHO buys WHAT. After that ADVERTISING takes over.

The slashdot crowd may unilaterally hate "marketing", but thats because they don't understand what it truly does. It is ironic that most people here who hate marketing don't sign their own checks.

Confusing B2C advertising methodologies with true marketing is ignorant. Apple is winning due to marketing, not advertising. Microsoft won due to Marketing, not advertising. Sony pwned for 2 iterations of gaming devices due to marketing, not advertising. Band-Aids, Toyota, Whole Foods, Glock, Clorox, Dyson, BMW, Jones Soda - these entities are winning due to marketing, not advertising.

Marketing is an analysis of data....thats it. Those who choose to use tha data to advertise corruptly are the culprits.

Get a clue.

Well it's really a twofold problem. No one is going to implement encryption and digital signatures by default if no one requests it, and most people either don't know or don't care that 95% of all their Internet traffic is transmitted in the clear. I've seen plenty of people stupidly logging into their Facebook accounts and sending instant messages over unencrypted public Wi-Fi connections.

We don't need IPv6 to do this. We just need to get more people to start using current technologies like OTR and PGP so that the minority who use them now don't have to suffer from everybody else's unwillingness to use them.

The people who get the data in the first place are as corrupt as the advertisers. Marketing still is pure manipulation. Apple is a fine example: They offer sub-par hardware (Iphone without 3G, Macbook without great colors...) with an alternative OS to incredible high prices. They use chinese sweatshop-labor, highly toxic chemicals and somehow still have a positive image. That is pure evil manipulation.

Thats called market analysis my friend.

Of course, note that by using TOR, you are essentially telling every web site you visit: "I am a user who is excessively concerned with privacy and knows how to anonymize himself. Statistically speaking, I am probably (though not certainly) college-age, computer-savvy, geeky, single, and male. Effective ads for me are likely to include ads for dating services, computer hardware, nifty gadgets, video games, and Ron Paul." Normally, advertisers would have to do a ton of tracking and data mining to determine these things, but you're just telling them right off the bat.

Just saying.

The fact that you know so much--and are so enthusiastic about jones soda (i think you just advertised for them)--shows how well their marketing is doing. You've bought into jones soda as an "alternative" to Big Soda. Marketing. Jones soda spends quite a lot of money on marketing!

As the saying goes, sell the sizzle, not the steak. p=mc, ingredients, alternative to major bottling houses, not gouging--sizzle. You didn't say a single thing about the flavor! Seems very telling...

And why is that stupid? It all depends on what messages you type and what is on your Facebook page. and the Facebook account is public anyway, encryption or not, everybody can see your page.

isn't the advertising to some extent what keeps some websites afloat?

Perhaps. What's that got to do with liking it? Proctoscopy may make me live longer, but that doesn't make me enthusiastic about having a proctoscope jammed up my butt.

As for billboards being less intrusive, that depends on the billboard and where it is, and how often you happen to visit wherever it is.

True. And not all advertising is obnoxious. Just advertising that is ugly, poorly designed, gaudy, moves on my screen, takes up space on my screen to the detriment of the page, makes the page load slower, or is for things I'm not interested in at the moment. So that includes about 75% of the advertising I see on websites ("ads that I see" does not include anything using Flash or most popups). Most of the other 25% is Google's ads, which aren't too obtrusive yet. If I'm shopping, I might even click on them.

TFA says that consumers want to see more relevant ads. It is very important to note that "more" modifies the word "relevant", not the word "ads".

We like paying for things directly even less. This way we don't feel the pain of pulling our wallet out. It just increases the prices of everything we do buy by a bit.

I like advertising - it keeps websites like Slashdot free to use.

I work for companies that are dependent on advertising to make revenue. I'd prefer to keep those websites free, and advertising is the best way to do this.

I try not to be a hypocrite, so I don't block ads. If a website has horribly obtrusive ads, I simply stop visiting it, but I have pretty high tolerance for it now. I either tune them out or just deal with it, because the comparatively minor inconvenience is often well worth the benefit of having free access to content/services.

Nobody likes advertising. Period.

I'd like to agree with you, but I don't believe that's true.

The reason why advertising exists and is prevalent as it is is that we, the great unwashed masses are happy to tolerate it, and obligingly participate in it, all with little or no thought. You could argue, for example, that the blight that exists on a city's buildings and infrastructure saves a few dollars for taxpayers, but hell, we've gotten to the point we erect building and monuments to the stuff. When we're not queuing up at the Staples Center, we're wearing baseball caps, T-shirts and tatoos with brand names of all sorts plastered on them, sitting through a full evening's worth of advertiser-supported TV (singing along to commercials when inclined), and asking our doctors about the Celebrex. And we like it! You think we'd enjoy our purchases as much if we weren't repeatedly told how good they really were?

There's conclusions to be drawn from an uninformed populace that not only lacks the ability to think critically but also lacks the discipline to practise it, but in the meantime, the entertainment value of being distracted by an advertiser's promises of better things is welcomed with open arms. We don't object to defining ourselves as "consumers", because anything else is, well, we'd rather not go there.

For now, the web is a bit different insofar as screen real estate and technological limitations provide a check to the wholesale acceptance that exists on TV, for example. But I doubt that state of affairs will last indefinitely.

That's a western-oriented and maybe just a US-oriented comment.

When I was living in Southern California and getting my first security clearance, scary men came around the neighborhood asking questions of the neighbors about me (as I was told later). None of them knew me, so much the better.

The situation is much different in the Asian countries I've lived in. Different lifestyle, different culture and it takes some getting used to. After a time, I came to expect that everything I did was watched by someone and gossiped about, getting very twisted by the time it got to my wife at the time which caused a lot of problems.

On a numeric basis, there are more people in the open glass communities in Asia than in the US (perhaps in Europe, I've never been there), where there is some expectation (and reality) of privacy in outdoor day to day activities.

Sure, it adds stress to me, I was born and raised in California, but it doesn't seem to matter to most everyone else.

Well, given what they post: " 57 percent reported that they weren't comfortable their activities [were being] tracked for advertising purposes...72 percent of those surveyed said that they find online advertising annoying when the ads are not relevant to their needs"

Ok, so the consumer wants add targeted to their behavior without tracking it?. Therein is one of the problems - the vast majority of users don't really know what they want - or I guess a better description is that they want something that can not be.

You can not want add at all (that would be my choice) but that isn't going to happen. Unfortunately these things cost money and you either have subscriptions or adds to pay for it. Since I hate subscriptions more than I hate add guess which one I am stuck with. As such we have adds - no real way around it, a few may be wealthy enough to just pay for it but I bet few want to limit themselves to sites that are such (or are totally donation based given how well donations work).

That leaves us with adds. We have three choices.

First and easiest is blanket adds - that is there is no tracking whatsoever. That means me (a conservative in nearly all the sense of the word) will get adds for sexual aides and places for me and my wife (hahaha - I'm a geek also) to swap partners even though everything shows we are not interested. I can't complain because I don't like being tracked - if I;m not tracked I can't get targeted adds.

Second is the track my behavior but do not link it to me individually - well, I have some nice ocean front property in Arizona real cheap for sale too, only a few million and I will transfer my title through E-mail. If they would actually do that then it would be the best case, however I expect to have that e-mail transfer of ocean front property in Arizona first.

This leaves the last option - total removal of any privacy you thought you may have on the internet. This is pretty much how it works now, never ever send anything over the wire that you would never want others to read. Even if there is no issue technologically the stuff isn't legally confidential. So, send some nice trade secrets over E-mail to an unsecured computer and said server (or any of the hops in between) feel like reading it? Oh well, should have encrypted the thing and thought about it beforehand. Same thing goes for browsing history - it can not technically be private as it may very well go over places you have no control over whatsoever (and may not even be in your a country your laws have *any* jurisdiction over).

Such is life on the internet - it was created as a decentralized organization wherein everything is public. Given that don't be terribly surprised when things are, well, public. Further when you agree to things that even further erode your privacy don't be surprised when then do so (say accepting tracking cookies and such). A users ignorance is no excuse especially when the place in question wasn't trying to mislead.

I don't understand the general acceptance of Google in the slashdot community (some verging on the edge of fanboism--a term I don't use loosely) when Google's primary business is to generate targeted advertising. Which is it? We hate targeted advertising or we love Google?

I try not to be a hypocrite, so I don't block ads. If a website has horribly obtrusive ads, I simply stop visiting it, but I have pretty high tolerance for it now. I either tune them out or just deal with it, because the comparatively minor inconvenience is often well worth the benefit of having free access to content/services.

I block all the ads I can find. In fact, I even setup ad-blocking proxy servers for employers so employees don't waste bandwidth or work time on ads.

Know what? If a website disappeared because there was no ad money, another free non-ad supported site would pop up almost overnight. And the internet would be a better place

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the web was mostly clean and there was very little advertising (and no high-bandwith graphics or flash either). It was better back then. Happily, thanks to proxy servers, adblock and Firefox, my internet is still like that.

In fact, every now and then I have to use a non-protected computer and my first impression is generally "how to I turn off this game?" or "what the hell is your computer infected with?" People have become desensitized to having their eyes taken over by the advertisers.

Reclaim your mind!

The issue comes at having their cake and eating it too. I used to work for an online magazine company [mixedmarti...onthly.com] which does not charge our customers for access to content, as people don't pay for online content for the most part. So, we had to turn to advertising to try and keep us in the black. The issue comes, how do you turn a profit if advertising is unwanted, save through underhanded methods like data selling. So, what alternatives are there, if the subscription system doesn't work and customers don't wish for advertising?

And not all advertising is obnoxious.

I disagree. The point of advertising is to get me to want something I don't need (because if I needed it, I could not wait around for an advertiser to "educate me about his valuable product/service"). That is, by definition, a waste of my time.

When I do want to buy something, I go looking for it. To find what I want, I use a wonderful invention called the Yellow Pages, and if I want to get high-tech then there's Google. These are more than adequate for me to find what I want without much effort. When I don't want to buy something, I think it's reasonable to ask the sellers to stay out of my face.

From TFA:
TRUSTe notes that this attitude presents a conundrum for advertisers, who are simultaneously being told that consumers want to see more relevant ads but don't want to have their activities tracked in order to make those ads relevant.

Until the web gave advertisers the ability to track individuals (even if anonymously), the standard way of making advertising relevant to consumers was to advertise in media that reach your target audience. Magazines have sold themselves to advertisers for decades by offering the ability to reach tiny slices of the population collected together by shared interests. What advertisers now want is the ability to target you, not "18-29 yo males with an interest in technology."

You can continue to make advertising relevant by placing the ads where the target audience is likely to be found. You don't need to track me to preserve relevance.

The point of advertising is to get me to want something I don't need (because if I needed it, I could not wait around for an advertiser to "educate me about his valuable product/service"). That is, by definition, a waste of my time. When I do want to buy something, I go looking for it. To find what I want, I use a wonderful invention called the Yellow Pages, and if I want to get high-tech then there's Google. These are more than adequate for me to find what I want without much effort. When I don't want to buy something, I think it's reasonable to ask the sellers to stay out of my face.

Not all advertising is for wasteful consumer crap (it makes julienne fries!!! Apply directly to the forehead!). Quite a bit of advertising is for things that people need, but not right now. When the time comes that one does need a new car/mortgage/personal injury attorney/etc., the knowledge of where to get one is saturated in prior experiences. When we do go to Google or the Yellow Pages, we're drawn to the already familiar items and tune out those that are unfamiliar.

It is still obnoxious, though.

The point of advertising is to get me to want something I don't need (because if I needed it, I could not wait around for an advertiser to "educate me about his valuable product/service"). That is, by definition, a waste of my time.

Man, if I had mod points, and I could mod you up with all of them at once, I would.

MOST INTELLIGENT AND INSIGHTFUL POST EVER, EVER!

Seriously. This is why I surf with Firefox using Adblock Plus, Flashblock, and No Script. I HATE HATE HATE ads! I don't care what you are selling, don't care how great it is, and I do NOT want your ad in my face. I know what I want, and can go find it myself, I do not need some marketing guru shoving crap in my face all day long. Heck, I even mute the T.V. during commercials! The only exceptions I make to this are the particularly clever and funny commercials that are entertaining in their own right. Of which there are vanishingly few.

Frankly I don't care that your website is "Ad supported". While I may enjoy your fine content, it's not my responsibility to create and support a good business model for you. That's YOUR job as the website operator. If you go away because your business model depended on me being assaulted by ads and I didn't see them so you made no money and went under, then fine. There are THOUSANDS of other people out there that are just as good as you and just as smart as you, with just as much opportunity as you that will replace you and your website in a heartbeat. To be blunt, neither you nor your website is really all that important to me. Certainly not so important that I would choose to inconvenience myself by being forced to look at annoying ads. Keep in mind that as far as I am concerned, 100% of ads are annoying. If there is an ad it is annoying SIMPLY BY EXISTING. There is no such thing as a "targeted ad" in my universe, unless the ad is targeted for deletion.

So there you have it. Find another way website owners, or go the way of the dodo. Either way, I won't be looking at your ads.

100% agree. Its not a constitutional right for businesses to try and brainwash me with messages of fear and loathing. Advertising is responsible for lots of evil - try buying cars based on their environmental impact or fuel consumption, you cant. All cars are sold based on whether they kill your children or whether they improve your social status/chance of procreating. So there isn't any data available on anything else. In the end society starts to evaluate everything based on lowest common denominator psychology, the advertising industry is not a good institution. On the whole we would be better off without most of it. See you in Marlborough country.

1. Actually, it's not just an Asian phenomenon. Western Europe too once had their own small villages, and their own village gossips, and their own self-elected pillars of the community making it their business to tell you how to think and what to do.

I guess the best way to explain it, is via Adlai Stevenson's "A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular." For millenia, even in Western Europe and even early USA it wasn't. From Socrates being executed for making himself unpopular, through the witch hunts of the middle ages (even the early Inquisition rules recognzed that some people will be denounced as heretics just because someone hated them enough), to well into the 18'th century, we had just that: it just wasn't safe to be unpopular. Whether you lived or died, depended on your standing in the community. And that sadly included letting some busybodies poke their nose into your life, or they could turn everyone else against you, and you could get hurt badly that way.

It was a long and painful transition to the point where we could start telling the busybodies and self-elected "pillars of the community" to just shut up and go fuck themselves with a cactus. You're now seeing the result of that transition in the west. But the initial state, if you went several hundreds of years in the past, would be no different in the western world either.

But the real point is, that when we finally had that oportunity to essentially go, "fuck off, my life is my own private business", we did it.

Or if you go to the east from there, by the time you get to, say, the Balkans, you'll see that that kind of gossip-driven-community persisted well into the 20'th century in some places. They too got rid of it as soon as they could.

So I'll go on a limb and guess that it's not some peculiar and random quirk of Western culture, but just a universal human trait. Humans will put up with someone else poking into their lives when they _have_ to, but as soon as they have the oportunity to get rid of that, they actually very much like to have a _private_ life instead.

And I'll guess that the Asians are nothing else than, you know, humans too. Sure, in some places in Asia they still are saddled with a culture where your life and worth depend on your "face" in the community. It may take a while to move away from there, but I'll guess that given enough time and the oportunty, they too will turn out to prefer the same things.

And I think we're already seeing them moving in that direction. From what I'm told, China is already gradually turning into a much more western-style society. They're just humans too.

2. Even in public, gossip-driven societies, people tend to have _some_ time to themselves. They might have to put up a "oh, I _love_ it when you poke your nose into my life" mask all day long, but then they have their evening with their family, or with their hobby, or whatever, and can just be themselves for a short while. Then they're ready for another round of that silly groupthink game.

And I'm guessing that if you took even that break away from them, if you put them in a situation where even their computer and their TV and their tires (see the other front page story) spied on them day and night, it might be a lot more stressful than you think. Even in Asia. In fact probably _especially_ in Asia, where "face" still means so much for a lot of people, and where your life could be completely and irreversibly ruined by some kinds of information being leaked.

Quite a bit of advertising is for things that people need, but not right now. When the time comes that one does need a new car/mortgage/personal injury attorney/etc., the knowledge of where to get one is saturated in prior experiences. When we do go to Google or the Yellow Pages, we're drawn to the already familiar items and tune out those that are unfamiliar.

Which is still wrong because you are making your decisions based on the effectiveness of the advertisement rather than the actual merits of the product. Advertisers exploit holes in human physique like the "Exposure effect" [wikipedia.org] to profit. Of course, products should have advertisements ready for whenever we browse for them but as informative tools they are hopelessly vain and misguiding. Really, the only positive effect of advertisement is that it provides for a lot of free products.