Ever in Flux The Professional Mental Health Secret for Reducing Unwanted Sanity

10Aug/09Off

“Relevant ads”

I just need to get this off my chest. There are no such thing as "relevant ads." Ads by their very nature are irrelevant. Ads are intended to sell or inform you about a product or service that you didn't even know you needed.

If it was something you needed, you'd already know where to find it or necessity would drive you to locate it. Instead, marketers use advertising to leave you feeling like there's something missing in your life without the wares they're peddling.

I was just thinking today about how adding the term relevant doesn't really make the advertisement any more meaningful. It just means that marketers have targeted my likes and behaviours better than in the past. This is, in part, due to the advent of tracking cookies, referral links, adfarms and other web technologies used solely for marketing purposes.

I would recommend that we remove that particular phrase from the English lexicon. And stone to death any marketers that utter it.

Posted by Bean

Tagged as: , , Comments Off
  • http://www.deadkittieproductions.org Jeff

    Actually, advertising cannot fill that void. If you don’t want a product, you won’t buy it. No amount of advertising can sell you something you don’t want or need and be sustainable. Marketing fills the void by informing you about something you need or want. They don’t call it market research for nothing :P

    Please don’t stone me to death, but Behavioral targeting is relevant and makes advertising more effective. The problem with how is now is there is no opt-in or out. If that was included would you feel better?
    I am a privacy advocate, that’s why having the choice matters.

    • http://papabean.org papabean

      You are correct that NO advertising can subvert one’s will to buy a product they have no interest in purchasing. However, advertising can bring to light products or services that people had no use for prior to the implication that their life was lacking without said product or service.

      Yes, allowing people to opt-out would actually satisfy me. So long as I could opt-out of not only a particular ad set or server, but the numerous other domains/servers owned by that parent company.

      Behavioral targeting is more effective specifically because it targets the consumer’s interests. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the product is one that was needed. It can also exclude something that may be of interest to them based on their browsing habits alone. For me, my browsing habits don’t completely reflect my offline interests.

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