Comment by NeedMoreTea | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NeedMoreTea | Hacker News Reader

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Hmm, I'm with the GP. I've lived through the transition from mostly restrained and controlled (and often very naive) UK advertising in the sixties and seventies, through to today when advertising ate everything. Available in-yer-face on every surface, tracking every move and psychologically trying to manipulate. We can trust nothing whatsoever. I didn't much mind how it was, I detest how it is now.

Probably a very minority view on HN, but I'd like to outlaw and treat as hostile all forms of advertising, except:

+ Yellow Pages style classified magazines and sites - Like old-school Yellow Pages, or the classifieds in the back of old magazines. When I want a new product, I can open the site or book and look for one. Easy.

+ Flat, silent and static magazine and newspaper style ads, locally served.

+ Branding on the packaging.

+ Shop signage akin to say the sixties or earlier - sign on frontage only. Illumination only whilst store open, and it's after lighting up time. No 20m KFC neon topped poles outside. No floodlights 24/7.

Nowt else. I'm fucking sick of the advertising arms race.

Hear, hear. Advertising can serve a function to society if and only if it is opt-in, honest, non-obtrusive and informative. That these characteristics happen to be the opposite of what the industry produces nowadays can not be a coincidence.

Those around here old enough to remember Computer Shopper [1] and other similar phone-book sized ad catalogues might agree that those were an example of a form of advertising which met at least three of the four mentioned criteria, some even might have met the fourth (being honesty). The model seemed to work back in those days given the 30-year lifespan of the magazine, the advent of the 'net followed by the decline of paper magazines eventually did it in.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Shopper_(US_magazine)

The UK has a regulatory requirement for advertising honesty. Magazines and TV would refuse ads they judged made too outrageous claims. Not perfect, but until those regs became mostly powerless in the face of web ads, it worked pretty much OK.

Computer Shopper - the UK version lasted about as long, Autotrader and Exchange and Mart are exactly the sort of thing I had in mind. Advertising as a positive, and nicely self-contained - you bought Autotrader when you needed a new car or van. Sure beats retargeting chasing you with the same ad for days because you briefly read a page on some silly product.

Yes. I've seen billboards as a hazard for years. And now we have digital billboards. Brightly lit, designed to catch the eye, rotating through an array of ads, right in the face of dozens of drivers travelling at 70+ mph.

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