Have you seen Sao Paolo before and after banning outdoor ads?
Sao Paolo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0FUY5KI67Y
Grenoble starting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSxCsmdanWA
Where once spaces were for people now they seem to be spaces to shout at the people. Marketing, ads, signs get bigger, brighter and every available surface has been turned into an ad spot. Most high streets and tourist spots have now become as attractive as a Geocities site using every available tag and font.
What also strikes me is how many billboards in my commute route (not long, but still) are blank, or rather, just have the owner's spiel on them about outdoor advertising and how to get your ad on one. A lot of them have looked like that for a long time, maybe we're finally hitting saturation?
If I'm choosing between Product A and Product B and I can't tell any difference between them, but I've seen Product A shouted at me in ads, I'll choose B.
It seems like my process for shopping begins with whitelist search (Does my favorite brand make one?), to domain search (what options are available), to blacklist filter (nope, not that brand), now finally actual product evaluation, then price/value judgement when combined with any emotional(immediate) or future rewards for buying the product.
I then check my balance/wallet, make a second value decision, and accept that I can't afford it and buy the cheap one, if at all. /s
But that is why some bad brands persist, simple economics. The advertising is just a byproduct at that point, there to establish it as 'viable' in our mind for that final desprate decision.
My favorite ads demonstrate without evangalizing, and let me feel like I decided. How hard is that?
An example would be - I need car insurance. I know some vendors are All State, State Farm and Geico (via endless commercials and ads). I will call them and compare prices. Any vendor that isn't in your mind is less likely to get a call.
I suppose it gave them a marginally better shot at my choosing them, but I didn't pick any based on their ads. In fact, the company I ended up going with I didn't see any ads for recently as they don't advertise very hard in my area.
If one has no awareness of a product or brand then they can't recall it to include in their consideration set when deciding on a purchase. The ad industry has done a significant amount of research to determine what kind, and how many, messages for a product or brand a consumer needs to be exposed to such that they are more likely to recall it, aided or unaided.
>the company I ended up going with I didn't see any ads for recently
But you did see ads previously, which put them in your consideration set.
I have severely limited my exposure to ads for a few years now. No regular TV / streaming only, ad-blockers + disabled javascript by default, no daily commute. With all of that I am almost certainly on the low end of the "brand awareness" scale.
Even still, I just do a regular internet or maps search and I am suddenly aware of all the major market players for whatever I am after. In this sense, getting me to buy your product is more a matter of location and market share than the location or targeting of your ads.
I'm sure a lot of people currently operate this way and there's really nothing stopping everyone on earth from operating this way. With that in mind, I don't think it makes sense for ad studies to assume the information needs to be forced into my head or the product won't have a chance.
In other words, I don't want to give my credit card to porn sites.
Wanting everything online for free is, in my opinion, a cultural matter. In the physical world, we're used to paying for almost everything; food, transport, housing, (indirectly) the street lights, etc. very few things are provided gratis through advertising.
Yeah I know it's sad that this is so remarkable, but at the same time, it's one of the rare instances where you're actually getting what you pay for.
There is a tendency to criminalise, censor or otherwise punish voluntary sexual activity between adults, and its coming from all political sides with different excuses and wording.
Monero was designed to solve this problem. I hope that something based on those ideas becomes a popular or dominant means of payment in the future.