Thrilling Content Goes Here

It’s a bank holiday hereabouts, so before doing other things, I thought I’d share this guide to online advertising.

Provenance unknown. Also, open thread.

Comments

[David]

Another quality hire, not juvenile at all.

Via Darleen

[Jen]

I thought I’d share this guide to online advertising.

That. :-)

[David]

That. :-)

I’ve often thought it odd that many companies and publications seemingly believe that the way to charm customers, or ostensible customers, is to make them resent pretty much any interaction with their websites.

[JuliaM]

The other bugbear is the close ad button that triggers a ‘are you really sure you want to leave?’ pop up.

Dante would have to invent more circles of hell were he writing now…

[David]

Or, “You’ve just this second arrived here and haven’t had chance to read even a full sentence, so here’s a barrage of pop-ups inviting you to subscribe and be notified about content you haven’t yet seen and know nothing whatsoever about because of all the bloody pop-ups…”

[Stephanie Richer]

Also, open thread.

Is there a difference between "Also, open thread" and "Share ye links and bicker?"

[David]

Is there a difference…?

I’m just making it clear that in addition to the aforementioned guide, you’re also, as a bonus, getting a chance to provide further content of your own devising.

I’m generous that way.

[Sam Duncan]

“I’ve often thought it odd that many companies and publications seemingly believe that the way to charm customers, or ostensible customers, is to make them resent pretty much any interaction with their websites.”

I recently started watching YouTube on my living room TV via an old Sony PS3. So there's no adblock. Do people actually put up with this? I'm making a list...

“Is there a difference between "Also, open thread" and "Share ye links and bicker?"”

You can't sing “Also, open thread” to the hymn tune Wir Pflügen.

[asiaseen]

The ephemeral nature of foreskins in the Philippines
https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3146858/circumcision-season-returns-philippines-after-pandemic

[David]

You can’t sing “Also, open thread” to the hymn tune Wir Pflügen.

[ Rolls single olive along bar to Sam. ]

On the house.

[asiaseen]

Meanwhile in Hong Kong children's books are seditious and a threat to the national security of China
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-crime/article/3146852/hong-kong-childrens-books-trio-charged-conspiracy

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Meanwhile in Hong Kong children's books are seditious...

Fortunately nothing like that would never happen in the west.

[John D]

[ Rolls single olive along bar to Sam. ]

Doesn't she mind?

[David]

Doesn’t she mind?

I’ll set ‘em up, you knock ‘em down.

[pst314]

I’ve often thought it odd that many companies and publications seemingly believe that the way to charm customers, or ostensible customers, is to make them resent pretty much any interaction with their websites.

I read, decades ago, that many in the advertising industry believe that any customer attention can be good--anything that increases awareness of the existence of the advertised product/company: Perhaps the theory is that people will tend to forget which products had annoying ads.

[pst314]

Dante would have to invent more circles of hell were he writing now…

Niven and Pournelle included advertising executives in their Inferno, although I forget the particulars.

[WTP]

That. :-)

Even since the early days of the web, I've had this paranoid fear that clicking a close button on a window that I did not myself ask to appear will launch a virus or lock me into some ransomeware or magically drain my bank account. I often wonder if I would actually be less paranoid if I hadn't had a career in tech.

As for the ubiquitous popups...I understand that news organizations, no matter how benign nor how evil do need to make money some way. But given that the web exposes us to media from across the planet, do they really expect us to buy a year's subscription for $19.99 to each of the Deseret News, Sacramento Bee, Times-Picayune, and on and on and on just to read one or two articles a year?

[WTP]

The ephemeral nature of foreskins in the Philippines

...but if you rub it, it turns into a suitcase.

[Sam Duncan]

“Doesn't she mind?”

Nah. We go way back.

The jar says “Best before 7/2005”.

“I read, decades ago, that many in the advertising industry believe that any customer attention can be good--anything that increases awareness of the existence of the advertised product/company”

Yep. Those badly-dubbed Unilever ads for washing powder and dishwasher tablets? It's all deliberate. (The thought occurs that the very fact I remember that it always seems to be Unilever would suggest they're on to something. Although why they think it's going to make me any better disposed towards buying their products is a mystery.)

[Captain Nemo]

As it's an open thread, I present the "joys" of Communist housing:

https://twitter.com/YIMBYPoland/status/1432204806714585093

[Darleen]

This seems entirely reasonable.

[pst314]

Nice thread, Captain Nemo.

[pst314]

This seems entirely reasonable.

In Nazi Germany all school textbooks and curricula were made to advance the Nazi ideology. Thus, word problems in arithmetic class might contain pejorative references to Jews or Poles or Russian Slavs.

Plus ca change...

[Daniel Ream]

make them resent pretty much any interaction with their websites

Your mistake was assuming you're the customer. You aren't. The customer is the advertiser who pays them every time you click or reload the page. Therefore, the more often they can get you to click or reload the page, the more their customer pays them.

an old Sony PS3

I buy these from the local pawn shop and resell them as streaming BluRay players. Since Sony didn't actually shut down the PS3 online store, you can still get digital-only games, too.

You can't sing “Also, open thread” to the hymn tune Wir Pflügen.

Something that made me laugh was the observation by the director and lead writer for the Superman animated series that to be a good Superman theme, you had to be able to sing his name to it. I was surprised by how consistently true it turned out to be.

anything that increases awareness of the existence of the advertised product

There's a ton of empirical evidence for this. It turns out that consumers, broadly, do not think at all rationally. My favorite example was the experiment where they put the exact same washing powder in two different boxes, one with spiky triangles in the logo and one with large bubbly circles. Consumers consistently reported that the powder in the triangle box made their clothes scratchy and uncomfortable while the powder in the circle box made them soft and fluffy.

[David]

Your mistake was assuming you’re the customer.

Indeed. Hence “or ostensible customers.”

[Governor Squid]

ostensible customers

Even with an understanding that readers are product rather than customer, one still questions the wisdom of such site designs. I mean, if I'm a rancher whose livelihood depends on delivering cattle to the slaughterhouse, how successful will I be if I run my ranch in a fashion guaranteed to cause half my cattle to flee?

[Eric Brown]

May I recommend Pi-Hole? If you have a spare Raspberry Pi and a bit of network knowledge, it's a fast and easy way to block ads across your entire household.

[WTP]

I saw an experiment once where marketing people collected data from one survey and then simply made up data for a second one. When presented with the results, different groups of executives couldn't tell the difference.

There was another one involving psychologists...

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Can we get a henchlesbian ruling on this, please?

[WTP]

Also...just in passing... I find it kinda cute how my iPad spell checker cannot imagine what word I'm looking for when I misspell 'supremecist'.

[pst314]

Monty Python's John Cleese to release documentary series opposing Cancel Culture and hate speech laws.

Has Cleese learned any other belated lessons about the Left?

[Sam]

[headlines from the Future]

HBO's Bill Maher to release illegal substack article opposing the placement of Muslims in Unvaccinated* Concentration Camps, only viewable in Nigeria.

*those with fewer than 86 doses

[Ian]

Another quality hire

They always sound like children.

[Sam Duncan]

“I buy these from the local pawn shop and resell them as streaming BluRay players.”

Yeah, it's still surprisingly useful. Far more so than the PS2 was 15 years after its début. Amazon Prime's a little janky but that's obviously down to the app, because – adverts aside – YouTube is more than fine.

“May I recommend Pi-Hole?”

I was running something similar, but I never got around to setting up the PS3 for it. Mainly because it's running on an original Model B (not even a B+) that really needs upgraded, since it's also trying to be a PVR for broadcast TV and a media server. Performance is... not the best.

“A pride flag for lesbians who don't like women”

Leaving aside... yeah, that... people who don't like women are called “misogynists”. You made a pride flag for misogynists.

Well done. Have a Nobel Peace Prize or a World Heritage Site or something.

[David]

They always sound like children.

She’s so immensely self-satisfied. For ‘accidentally’ misplacing the national flag. It’s basically “I said ‘poo’ and got away with it, tee-hee.” But from a supposed adult, a grown woman.

[Sam]

But from a supposed adult, a grown woman.

Take your kids out of the camps.

[Daniel Ream]

an original Model B (not even a B+)

People I know who do a lot of Pi hacking are starting to recommend the RockPi as a better option. I should probably invest in one, take some of the load off my router since my storage server can't run containers.