Hacker News Reader

Comment by tossandthrow | Hacker News Reader

These are ads and in many jurisdictions Also treated like ads.

Weird that This is not the case in the US?

If you grew up in Europe, I promise that when you visit the US for the first time, you will be SHOCKED by America's advertising standards (or lack of them.)

Advertising is everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, to an extent far beyond what you're used to from home. Posters, billboards, fliers, TV commercials, product placement, celebrity endorsements - you can barely step outside without being bombarded by yet another obnoxious advertisement. And "obnoxious" is an understatement: American adverts are noticeably more loud, garish, cheesy, repetitive and attention-grabbing.

It's really quite something. And it's exhausting.

Sometimes I end up watching US TV with US ads on some stream. They are horrifying and amusing all at once.

The idea that prescription medication is marketed to the general public on TV is entirely foreign to me, the descriptions of conditions that 99% of people wouldn't have heard of make me wonder just who they are connecting with.

Then you get to the "side affects may include headaches, vomiting, diarrhoea, haemorrhaging, spontaneous combustion, exploding eyeballs, bubonic plague and instant death - do not take this drug if you are a living breathing human being" bit and you can't help but laugh. Who goes to their doctor after watching one of these?

And "Dude Wipes" - I mean is that a spoof?

The pharma ads are bribes to news stations not to report on them (via being a major funding source for their parent conglomerate).

You get used to it in a few days, and it's part of the reason why businesses grow so much faster in the US (especially online). People who want your product find out about it much faster.

For example I buy SaaS, and the way I hear about most tools are ads. I choose what to buy via references and evaluation, but ads are often how to get things on my radar. Without Ads, I would have bought worse software in the past

> You get used to it in a few days

I don't even know how to reply to that, but I feel the need to call it out as, potentially, the most creepy-as-fuck quote-unquote justification of literally anything.

You got used to blocking all ads back in the "punch the monkey" days, while also wondering about the externalities of flyers put under car windshield wipers, many of such flyers ending up in the drains and gutters as you walked around the unwalkable America. Perhaps America would be less a miserable place with fewer ads?

You remarked to a coworker that it would be a great justice if a Porta Potty truck overturned onto a spammer, and you respond to your coworker —good, hit them with another. Alas that karma does not work that way.

You forgot when the modern web got so bad—indeed, has only continued to, well, you have a term for it now, "enshittification"—as you do not recall the moment of souring. Was it a decade ago, or more like two?

You is here used in the Hindu sense of you being divided from you, as that is a good way to explain you being both a great fan of ads and you holding them in extremely low regard. You may also recall that you sometimes make "you're either with us, or against us" pronouncements.

I don't understand what you're trying to say here

Why do you need ads for that? Why doesn't your research for things that you buy not start with looking up the list of all prominent contenders in that niche?

Where is the list? And what if I don't know the category exists?

You search online. You ask people on Reddit etc.

If you have a specific problem you're trying to solve, then you will find out about the relevant categories.

If your "problem" is so insignificant that you're not even aware that there exists a category of products that might "solve" it, it sounds to me like you don't actually need the product.

And also, all of their ads are THE BEST something. Even if it's showing some greasy microwaved slop billed as food.

Experience it yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6QUsx68DCA

Amazing. Reminds me of a joke from an old South Park episode. The boys are watching something tragic and awful on the news, then it cuts to a ridiculous commercial that completely trivialises the tragedy. I can't remember the details (does anyone know what episode I'm talking about? Got the clip?) but it's a hilarious satire of how the news media operates.

That CNN clip is basically South Park in real life.

> American adverts are noticeably more loud, garish, cheesy, repetitive and attention-grabbing.

I take it that you have not been to Tokyo or Seoul, then?

I have unlocked understanding Japanese and it blew my mind how pervasive advertisements are.

Most foreign people would just gloss over them but even most temples (say in Kyoto) have the names of companies which donated money plastered all over the place.

Even the famous tori gates at inari have cool looking Japanese text which basically says "Applebees", "Yamato Metal Industries", and so on.

Nope!

Their ads make the American advertisers look like teetotalers.

Some of my faves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRLe826lyao

So you're saying the fake advert in Friends wasn't far off: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOy2lrJqKGY

I have been to the US on numerous occasions - and do like it!

My main curiosity was about the legal classification of product placement etc.

They aren't all ads, because the situation gets really muddy. If a website talks about an upcoming movie is that an ad? What if they were shown the movie before its release?

Reviews are ads. Thats why these people call themselves "influencers".

Roger Ebert will be turning in his grave.

It's an ad if and only if it is mixed into an article that is not about the movie. If I click a link that says that the article behind it is about the movie, it's not an ad. If I click on a link to a comparison of PC networking equipment, then it's an ad because a movie is not PC networking equipment.

This doesn't mean the movie article (or indeed the hardware comparison) can't be sponsored. It just means the ad shouldn't be able to be shoved in your face unsolicited.

Ok, so you have a review article about PC networking equipment, sponsored by Cisco. That's an ad for you. Now you go to the homepage of the site that wrote that review. They link to that review from their home page. Is that an ad? Probably, because it could contain an ad-like image as its banner (showing Cisco equipment) and maybe even a slightly ad-ish title ("Cisco outperforms other networking equipment in our recent review of x articles").

So, is another page, that links to that page also an ad? Because maybe the homepage that runs Cisco-sponsored reviews might also have a cisco-sponsored banner. And even if not, maybe over time they become associated as "the thing that reviews things were cisco always wins"...

Oh, and what if it wasn't a sponsorship. What if instead Cisco just gave them the hardware to test at a discount? Or for free? Would you not write a slightly more favourable review for nvidia if they gifted you their top-tier GPU? What if instead of gifting you the GPU, they just give it to you at a discount? Or earlier than normal customers? Or they just have nvidia-stickers for your kids in the box?

Ads are an extremly slipperly slope, they're part of human nature; everyone I ever met is trying to tell me about (=market) themselves, their beliefs, their current hobbies, that new burger place down the road, ....

It's not all that muddy under normal circumstances - if there are payments to the producers then it's an ad. There is the problem in extremis though - a person gets a cameo on a show and then uses that to sell other products and in return helps out the producer in some non-obvious way.

It's an issue but I'd be happy with a 90% solution over a 0% solution.

Ok but what if you're allowed to watch the movie/game/etc. for free before general release? That might not seem like payment, after all it's just necessary to allow the review to happen. But what if review sites that give a few bad reviews are denied this access? And no one wants to read reviews after release?

In the end, on paper, the studio has no editorial oversight, but in practice you need to give them good reviews (essentially, adverts) if your business is to survive.

This is exactly how it works, by the way.

Would they get to watch it for free if they release their review months after the movie is released? If no, then it’s an ad, with just a very low price.

Well most hollywood movie productions are just 1h30 ads nowadays. You can usually see ton of product placement with closeup on logos and products that do not make any sense for the storytelling.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com