Advertising: okay or obnoxious?

[Gethelred]

In order to prevent the Liberal Party - How Long? going too far off topic...

It's long been rather common knowledge that supermarkets put chocolates and displays at children's hand and eye level, that McDonalds has long kept their advertising to periods of children's entertainment; staples of 90's culture. But advertising has grown ever more iniquitous; Netflix has over the last few years launched a show called Arcane, which while an excellent science fantasy drama serves as an advertisement for League of Legends; ditto, Edgerunners and Cyberpunk 2077.

The Herald Sun, Sydney Morning Herald/Age have page wide spreadsheets. Business sponsors programming and can co-investigate/fund investigation into quality control. Political advertising - supposedly - has little effect, but if it had as little effect across the board why are parties spending 100's of millions of dollars to disseminate as much advertising to the right people?

What is your opinion of advertising these days? Is it just an inbuilt feature necessary to society? How do you view political advertising or the ethics of advertising?

 

[Gethelred]

Stupid me thought Pay TV would be free from ads given it's a user pays model. Commercial TV stations have to make money so commercials are a necessary evil. But Foxtel is full of ads, even the ABC and SBS seem to be rife.

I think there does need to be regulation of claims being made particularly in political ads but I don't know how that would work. I just trust all advertising with a strong degree of skepticism and cynicism.

That being said this is awesome



Let alone the pure brilliance of Japansese ads

If we're talking clever ads, I've always been a fan of Panda cheese.

 

[Carn The Berries]

Generally I think advertising is a good thing. One way or another, social media and other media services are going to make money off us. That could be from farming our data, advertising, or making us pay to use the services.

The ads on youtube can be annoying, but they're easily bypassed using adblocking extensions.

Kayo could utilise more advertising in the breaks with minimal impact on user experience, and I see that as a plus if they shave a few dollars off the subscription cost as a result.

As others said, gambling advertising should have stricter regulation.

Agree with all of this. There seems to be this mis-conception that we, as a consumer, are entitled to get s** for free. The vehicles for delivery are changing, but the logic is the same. We only have "free" to air TV because of advertising. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Big Footy etc. are providing us a service, there shouldn't be an expectation that this happens for free. Granted, the current environment is harder to police than when the media landscape was simpler, but the same rules apply. It amazes me when I hear people complaining about ads on FB. How the hell else do you expect them to generate revenue.

I also agree about gambling advertising. I love a punt as much as the next person, and it p**ses me off. I can't imagine how bad it is for people with no interest in gambling. Also hearing primary school kids talk about who is favourite and what price they're paying makes me feel uneasy.

 

[Chief]

Not sure what that means, I'll rephrase the question.

Does BF rely on payment from companies to advertise on the BF website?

Yes. It has some big expenses that wouldn't get paid without it. However almost all of that comes via central systems like Google and other ad aggregators. So individual ads you might see have not been negotiated with anyone on BF, they are placed after a centralised bidding process that takes place when the page is opened by the visitor.