Why people think Ads are bad:
— The cached thought¹ that ads are bad.
1.Two things:
(i) The regular use of words within certain contexts biases their meanings e.g 'impregnating' a girl.
(ii) Deliberate framing: death tax vs inheritance tax, pro choice vs pro life, undocumented immigrants vs illegal aliens.
— They may hinder ideal UI/UX.
— Often bear a weak relevance.
What Ads are:
— Ads are tools that aid problem-solving by matching people to tools that solve their problems. People are notoriously bad at solving their own problems, or even realizing they have solvable problems.
Ads should be a net positive for consumers since they (consumers):
(i) are getting a product for free.
(ii) have an opportunity to passively discover solutions to some of their problems.
The only way they might not be is if ads are either poorly designed, or bear a weak relevance to a user. The solution to which isn't castigating ads as being bad; the solution is making better ads by:
— Destroying the cached thought that ads are bad.
— Designing ads that do not disrupt UI or UX, but instead align with the default context within which they exist. Cc: Reddit and Quora's native ads.
— Better data collection to improve relevance.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Plausibly, it depends on how they're used. I would especially draw a distinction between ads as part of the platform's core business model, and ads used partly to annoy people until they buy a paid, "premium" version.
For all Meta's flaws, their ads are actually pretty good. Both Facebook and Instagram regularly show me stuff I actually want to see, and advertise products I would either consider buying, or at least like looking at.
Youtube, on the other hand, seems to be pursuing a strategy of not so much advertising things people might want to buy, as annoying them until they finally give in and buy Youtube Premium. As far as I can tell, Grammerly doesn't care about targeted advertising at all, and is secretly a company developed by Youtube specifically to annoy people with plausible deniability. Despite having a lot of data on me -- I watch reviews on Youtube to see if I want to buy certain products -- they ignore this, and have played the exact same Verbo ad at least 30 times. I'll click on a link to a review of an art product, and instead of the clear and obvious move of advertising an art product, which I am currently interested in buying (clearly!), or even something like Sketchbox, for people who aren't committed to any particular art supply and just want to try them out -- instead of that, they load a Grammerly ad for the 50th time. Video companies seem the most susceptible to this model, and it is pretty antagonistic.
More options
Context Copy link