The Limits of Selling Me Crap

Date
Canonical
3674
Archive
3674 [history]
Categories
Economics

I was paging through Twitter and saw this posted by Gavin McInnes. The story itself is not the point of this post. It is an example of how race is covered in America. If a white guy executed two black guys, the major news companies would devote all of their coverage to it for a year. That’s because it fits into the mythology that animates the liberal narrative. But, that’s a topic for another day.

I was thinking about writing something about it when sound mysteriously started coming through my speakers. For some reason I was using Chrome rather than Mozilla, the former not having the array of pop-up blockers, script blockers and flash blockers installed. I hunted around and found the offending video and stopped it. If you have clicked on the above link, you will be doing the same thing in a few seconds.

The story was actually blocked until you took a survey. The page is plastered with ads, in addition to the video crap in the middle. Just doing a little estimating, I’m going to say that the page is 60% advertisement. The story takes up maybe 10% of the page. The rest is promotions for the site and other features on the site. They are perilously close to the point where the story is so hard to find in the clutter that we’ll need an app to help find it.

This is happening all over and not just on the Internet. Websites have no way to make money other than ads and even then the money is small. They have no choice but to pack their pages with ads. The weaselly tactics some use is not wise, but maybe they are desperate. Breitbart is a useless site, as far as I’m concerned, because it is so cluttered with ads and embedded audio. I really hate the embedded audio.

I was talking to a friend the other day after one of the football games about how a 60 minute game is now a five hour event. A football game is a three hour commercial with a football game woven into it. The promotion of it and other games before and after the game is just more marketing, disguised as content. Even replays have sponsors now so that we end up with “this replay brought to you by Viagra shows…” I’m all for the NFL making money, but do they really need to sell so many ads?

I read the other day that the NBA will start placing ads on the uniforms. It will not be long before technology allows them to have rotating ads on the uniforms. The courts will soon be plastered with ads. The NHL is using video technology to digitally place ads on the ice for TV viewers. During World Cup, they had ads crawling on the screen because there are no breaks in the game to run ads. That means the rules of the game will be changed so they can run ads during games. “This water break brought to you by…”

Getting back to the web page ads, there’s a limit. I don’t go to Brietbart because I hate the ads. Even if they don’t care about old hate-thinkers like me, there is a limit to the number of ads they can post on their site. Similarly, there’s a limit how much crap they try to sell us on our phones and TV’s. What happens when the limit is reached? The whole economic system of the west is based on never ending growth and that includes advertising.

What happens when there’s no more room to grow?

To keep Z Man's voice alive for future generations, we’ve archived his writings from the original site at thezman.com. We’ve edited out ancillary links, advertisements, and donation requests to focus on his written content.

Comments (Historical)

The comments below were originally posted to thezman.com.

8 Comments

Kathleen #3827 January 27, 2015 11:58 am 0
Yes, the countless ads have become super annoying. I don’t think it’s to any site’s benefit, either. If a site has a couple ads, it doesn’t bother most people. Once you reach a certain ratio of ads to content, and I have no idea what that ratio is, you become overwhelmed by the ads and either screen them out or choose not to visit that site. I’ve had to stop visiting certain sites that used to be faves, because of the uptick in ads. I’m usually on my ipad when I’m online, so I’m not usually assaulted by the embedded audio ads, but all that extra “stuff” seriously slows my scrolling down. Frustrating.Unfortunately, I think the future of ads might look similar to what was in the movie “Minority Report”. People would walk into stores and a hologram would pop-up in front of them, address them by name, and begin a sales pitch. Just one more reason not to shop.
guest #3818 January 26, 2015 12:08 pm 0
TryPale Moon, it’s a lightweight fork of Mozilla Firefox.
grey enlightenment #3816 January 26, 2015 8:35 am 0
yeah, way too many ads
Tripletap #3815 January 26, 2015 7:12 am 0
I concur, there are sites I will not visit because of the obnoxious advertising. I also will not pay to view either. There is more than enough free content out there to keep me busy as well as sites that are moderate in their advertising. As always, “the best things in life are free.”
Dindu Nuffin #3814 January 26, 2015 2:48 am 0
If Apple (or anyone else) would ever solve the problem of digital micro payments, I think most websites will go to a subscription/a la carte pay model. For instance if I had to pay three cents to read a story, but all I had to do was hit one button so my account was securely debited, then I’m there. Especially if I know there’ll be no ads. I think that’s the way it’s going to have to go eventually, because the ad-based model is horrible for everyone involved.
UKer #3813 January 26, 2015 2:10 am 0
Football (or soccer) has had ads in the shape of ‘sponsor’ logos on their shirts/uniforms for years and most of them are so trivial or vague there is no danger of even the remotest sell except to perhaps the odd, utterly deranged fan. When it turns out the ‘sponsor’ is a town council — and what an utter wate of tax money that is — the so-called sales message is even more useless.A long time before the BBC became the lefty- loony club they loved showing horse jumping as it was safely middle class and satisfied the Brirish need for caring about animals (in the same period it showed a weekly sheepdog- rounding- up- sheep competition) and was thus inoffensive to all. The BBC at that time however was a hotbed even then of hypocrisy. They fumed about showing football with a sponsors logo on the shirts, particularly one of the first who wove a car maker’s logo shape into their shirt design (it was a large T shape) lest it sullied the pure non-commercial stance of the national broadcaster. At the same time horse-jumping hit on the idea of earning money by naming horses not as Daisy or Samson but as a commercial product. The BBC chose not to notice apparently and would enthusiastically show and repeatedly name ‘Everest Double Glazing’ jumping over fences.The double-glazing company got free national advertising and the car manufacturer’s not-so-obvious T shape about to be obscured in mud offended the high and mighty Beeb. And people wonder why I dislike them so much…
Gerard Van der Leun #3812 January 26, 2015 1:23 am 0
Install adblocker plus in Chrome and most of your issues will, on most of the sites, disappear.
thezman #3817 January 26, 2015 9:09 am 0
I primarily use Mozilla as I have it configured with all my stuff. On it I use an array of ad blockers, script blockers and flash block. Flash block is a godsend. Chrome is stock and I rarely use it.


Back to top