Advertising

If you advertise reasonably, I really wouldn't care. The problem is sheer greed at expense of the thing I purchased. Long adverts, multiple adverts, adverts smack in the middle of important broadcasts and events, adverts showing over my programs, adverts talking over my program (i.e. any jokes in the end credits are lost), adverts sponsoring the weather (and mentioning it all the time), adverts sponsoring programs (and having splashscreens and even - URGH - product placement in them), having the adverts louder than the program, having the adverts unskippable (on DVD, etc.), having the adverts be annoying / attention grabbing (GoCompare / Cilit Bang, though the Cilit Bang man has learned to tone his voice down a bit now).

All these things just make me AVOID advertising and get in the way of the thing I *BOUGHT* (whether I pay enough for them NOT to have to do these things is another question entirely, I've still paid money for it, so I'm still a paying customer, and I'm still - therefore - entitled to a decent product). So I feel no sympathy about destroying their business by getting rid of their advertising.

To me, modern TV advertising is the equivalent of plastering posters over people's cars and private houses for 100 miles around to tell people about your product, whereas it used to be about having relevant adverts in relevant places quite discreetly and covertly (the equivalent of putting up a poster about a local group in the local community posting board). Making me HATE your brand, before I've even bought one of your products, doesn't help you.

On the Internet, I don't see much advertising apart from that that's done discreetly (looking at this very page now, I see a few "Play Flash" buttons that my browser has disabled by default, and a Jobsite ad which is below the page content, out of the way, discreet, basic and relevant. Do I object to or block Google Ads? No, for the most part they work that same way. Do I object to and block Flash ads, Java ads, popups, popunders, popovers, intermission screens where I have to wait and everything else? Yes. It's unnecessary, and it just puts me off and will stop me coming back to your site. I will also actually INVEST TIME in getting rid of you, which is NOT what you want as an advertiser because it will have a knock-on effect on your brands.

Advertising is not about drowning out everyone else at the expense of the good name of your brand (you won't, all you'll do is annoy me). It's about a subtle, relevant insertion that builds up subconsciously ("Oh, yes, I've heard of Jobsite, maybe try them?") and might even be useful for me (e.g. ads for offers related to dedicated servers when I'm googling for dedicated servers! So long as they get the hell out of the way when I'm looking for "dedicated counterstrike servers with no queue" or whatever).

So I feel no shame in blocking things (except I don't, for the most part, and certainly not because of the ads alone but the stupidity of running Flash/Java by default, etc.), avoiding things, and blacklisting brands that have annoyed me. They do a hundred times worse to me every day.

The problem with commenters' valuable business advice here is this: You, Reg readers, are not the target audience. We're a tiny percentage of the market, and were written off a long time ago.

"I don't watch any ads" is meaningless as far as this issue goes - the question is not what you do. The question is not whether you don't like anything on TV anyway, or whether you use adblock in Firefox, or whether you don't have a TV. Advertisers don't give half a rat's ass about you, because you're not going to be swayed by their ads even if you see them.

Advertisers are concerned about the other 95% of the population, who do watch TV, who don't use adblock, and who do for some reason think that the ability to kill 99% of bacteria is a useful benchmark with which to choose kitchen cleaner.

It's not possible to have a sane discussion about the business decisions involved here if you decide that everyone in the world is just like you, and that therefore the people who make their living doing this are, every single one of them, complete morons who haven't even considered the most basic aspects of their own business. Is it more likely that's the case, or is it more likely that the majority of the population don't behave like the average Reg reader?