Watching You Watching Me

kabayiri

wotsthat wrote: »

...
It's not just the direct ads but the money spent on brand building. It's not spent to get you to rush out and buy stuff but to increase brand recognition so, when you do need whatever it is, their brand is front of mind. If you were looking for private healthcare what would be the very first website you'd visit. I know for me it would be Bupa yet not a single person has told me how great they are. Just them.
...

Indeed.

A recent system I worked on was described as a "conversational marketing" tool.

They have realised the blanket email/postal approaches being used before no longer have the desired impact.

Highly targetted marketing, building on what seem almost personal needs, do have a big impact when done well.

Who gets annoyed with a particularly relevant freebie landing in your inbox?

kabayiri

Generali wrote: »

What do we do about all this?
...

We have 2 main options.

1) We try to deny these systems access - and that is getting trickier (unless you want a smart phone with the "smart" crossed out).

2) We have a positive campaign of disinformation. If millions of people suddenly express an interest in unicycles overnight, then companies trying to harvest usable information for unicycle sales have a very big problem on their hands.

The second option shows more promise...

Generali

wotsthat wrote: »

Maybe we're super rational on this board but I find it almost impossible to believe anyone is not influenced by marketing in some way.

Marketing works and it works on somewhere between almost all and all of us.

There are all sorts of examples.

Branded, heavily advertised painkillers are more effective than placebo or generic equivalents which are chemically identical to the branded painkiller.

A heavier bottle of wine is consistently rated as worth more than a lighter one by consumers.

Behavioural economics is shedding light on all sorts of things: people place more value on something they own than something they don't; people are heavily swayed by time limited offers and by having things that others do and behaving as a part of the pack.

wotsthat

Generali wrote: »

I want to use a laptop and have access to medicine and make phone calls. I pay my bills and I really don't want to become the property of a thousand companies who want to buy and sell me and dissect me and perhaps ultimately deny me life assurance because I looked up a suicide website or refuse to give me affordable health cover because I looked up a site on quitting smoking or drinking less or even because I spend too much time sitting on my Aris watching TV.

I'm opting out where possible. I used digital look to monitor my portfolio but found the targeted ads too intrusive and somewhat sinister.

Never joined Facebook which is a challenge because two clubs I'm a member of use it as their only method of communication.

It's almost impossible to avoid swapping data in exchange for a service and business is way ahead of the legislation. My exercise data is online which might be valuable for my employer, health care provider. I ran a 10k last week and my name, time and club were online within 2 hours.

I think David Icke might have been ahead of his time.

cells

how does your TV link to you?

surely its data such as TV with reference number 394234845723 spends x amount of time watching Y?

cells

Generali wrote: »

Marketing works and it works on somewhere between almost all and all of us.

There are all sorts of examples.

Branded, heavily advertised painkillers are more effective than placebo or generic equivalents which are chemically identical to the branded painkiller.

A heavier bottle of wine is consistently rated as worth more than a lighter one by consumers.

Behavioural economics is shedding light on all sorts of things: people place more value on something they own than something they don't; people are heavily swayed by time limited offers and by having things that others do and behaving as a part of the pack.

if advertising makes it more likely that you buy something is that not an economic good that benefits everyone not just the buyer and seller

also most advertising isn't trying to sell you something its trying to show you something you want to see. eg rightmove is a big advertising platform and probably 99.999% of people who go and look at their adverts want to look at their adverts