Tag: advertising

Tune out, turn off, drop in.

I cut off my cable service about two years ago, and I don’t have access to non-pay broadcast television.  At first, I had a little anxiety about disconnecting myself from the hive, but in all honesty, other than having to wait a day to stream the latest episode of “The Walking Dead,” it hasn’t made that much of a difference in my life.  

One thing I did notice, was how much more peaceful video content became without exposure to advertisements.   One thing about streaming TV shows, you realize how much shorter they are than when peppered with ads.  Many hour-long TV shows are 1/3 advertisements.  I still catch a few ads here and there on HULU and at the free streaming site, Crackle, though it’s usually the same few ads over and over and they are fewer and farther between and of much shorter duration.  But what cutting back my exposure to broadcast advertising has done is made me even more acutely aware of all the other myriad sources of advertising to which my family and I are being exposed.

It’s been years since I’ve listened to the radio.  I never could stand all the advertisements mixed with music so I use a web service (Spotify) to stream whatever I want without ads.  

But turning off the TV and radio have not, unfortunately, made me immune to the bombardment of advertising and propaganda.

Since I’m one of those freaks of society who never learned how to drive, I take a bus, which are often covered with ads on the outside, and strips of ads over the windows on the inside.  There are advertisements at the bus stations and transit centers and on the backseats of cabs, these days, the ads in cabs are broadcast on little screens.  There are advertisements plastered in toilet stalls in bars and restaurants, and video screens in elevators with advertisements.  As you travel along the roadways you cannot avoid the ads on billboards and the sides of buildings.  

The print media, too, lately seems like almost nothing but advertisements.  Have you picked up a fashion magazine lately?  It’s hard to tell where the ads leave off and the content begin.  Newspapers, news magazines, National Geographic, Popular Science, Harper’s, The New Yorker – all crammed full of ads to varying degree.  

But probably the worst and most insidious advertising is on the internet.  Because of the technology of cookies, browsing history, and other “smart” programs that track what sites you visit, what products you look at, what you “like” and even what you post in your Facebook status updates, are all used to expose users to ads targeted expressly to them.  Even on dailykos.com, the advertisement at the top of the page is something I’ve looked at on, for example, Overstock.com.  

When I log on to Facebook, there are ads related to things about which I’ve posted.  Because of my status updates and profile, not to mention the cookies, Facebook knows I live in Seattle, that I’m a mom, that I’m a renter, that I think I’m overweight, and that I smoke.  Since I looked at Rent.com recently, I see advertisements about apartments or for real estate seminars being held in Seattle.  Because I’ve written about quitting smoking my page shows ads about teeth whitening products.  And since I write about getting old and chubby, I see ads that will help melt belly fat.  I belong to one or two groups devoted to Flamenco, so I see ads for the latest Gipsy Kings record, and dance performances coming up in Seattle.  One time my status update contained “goat cheese” and I kid you not, soon after an ad for goat cheese and other gourmet products shows up in my stream.  The ads used to only appear off to the side of one’s feed, but now they are also interspersed throughout users’ feeds as though they were friends’ posts.  

Just like VNRs (video news releases, broadcast segments paid for by corporations or government to look like news segments during a news hour, these advertisements are designed to look like your friends’ posts so that you’ll pay attention rather than scroll past them.  

The internet has overtaken the TV as the number one delivery method of advertising and propaganda and offers a much more fertile ground for ways to intimately track and specifically target certain users.

This bit has been posted to The Stars Hollow Gazette,,Voices on the Square, Docudharma and Daily Kos.

Last year’s slue of Super Bowl commercials put a new spin on tired traditions.  Hyper-masculinity was predictably glorified and exaggerated, women were shown to be little more than sexual objects, and blatant homophobia was present in a variety of ads.  Each catered to an overarching idea that traditional masculinity was under attack from women, homosexuality, and femininity.  The derisive phrase “the year of anxious masculinity” rightfully summarized the general feel and content of much of what aired.  That particular slate of advertisements was nothing terribly novel in and of itself, but it did hearken back even farther than recent memory.  The antecedent for each was, in part, one pervasive story.

This piece was partially inspired by a conversation that I had with Kossack smileycreek in the comments after my most recent Pique the Geek installment.  That commentor’s sig line included words to the effect that all that the Republicans have is fear.

To a point I agree with that, but I would also add greed to it.  Greed has a component of fear in it, since greedy people always have the fear that they will not get enough of whatever their particular greed includes, but is enough of a distinct desire as to be included separately.

On Wednesday past, I logged all of the adverts on two TeeVee shows, Glenn Beck from the FOX “News” Channel, and The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC.  I believe that most would agree that one is pretty right wing, and the other pretty left wing.

There is a battle going on for the hearts and minds of Americans, regarding our Energy Future.

Given the well-funded nature of this Ad Campaign — we probably shouldn’t expect any changes in our “Energy Economics” Future, anytime soon.

The Breaking Point

from AmericanSolutions  188 Videos



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

“Stop the National Energy Tax.”

 — Paid for by American Solutions for Winning the Future.

Who or What is ASWF ???

Sounds harmless, enough …

First Rule of effective Public Relations Branding:

Do No Harm … and sound innocuous.

The Australian actress Nicole Kidman testified yesterday before the House International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight Subcommittee on the subject of violence in film, in particular the sickening amount of onscreen violence against women.  Kidman stated that many roles portray women as weak, as mere sex objects, or as both and that this permissive attitude of debasement contributes greatly to real life acts of violence perpetrated against women.  The actress’ intent was not merely to condemn the film industry for its excesses but also to advance the larger issue of unchecked, infrequently prosecuted violent acts committed against women across the globe.

The Oscar-winning actress said she is not interested in those kinds of demeaning roles, adding that the movie industry also has made an effort to contribute to solutions for ending the violence.  Kidman testified before a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee that is considering legislation to address violence against women overseas through humanitarian relief efforts and grants to local organizations working on the problem.

That notable stories like these get submerged underneath the incessant back-and-forth of partisan or even inter-party bickering surprises me not one iota.  Such stories are often pigeonholed as merely “women’s topics” or moved to the back of the soft news queue, with the tacit assumption that celebrities are incapable of advancing much beyond their own careers or the manufactured drama designed to garnish publicity.  As for this particular example in question, Kidman is notably treading cautiously here, not willing to assign full blame to Hollywood because of her stated belief that it has devoted committed and serious internal efforts towards self-regulation.  Forgive me for being skeptical, because I know that few major money-making industries do an adequate job of policing themselves from within.  Specifically regarding the celluloid conglomerate, it took the Hays Code and then the puritanical Production Code before Tinseltown ever strongly curtailed the content found in moving pictures.          

This diary starts with the IBM slogan, as viewers were exposed to it in the telecasts of the NFL playoffs this weekend, and speculates on what it would really take to “build a smarter planet.”  Thus I will embark upon a critique of the notion that being “smarter” is the same as being more informed, or cleverer, and suggest a version of “building a smarter planet” that has some planetary wisdom built into it.

(Crossposted at Big Orange)

    Harmful If Swallowed

On the heels of his ad mocking Barack Obama as a Messiah-like figure, John McCain has now anointed himself as “The One.”

This new ad declares that “Washington’s broken” and “John McCain knows it.” He admits that “We’re worse off than we were four years ago.” But without acknowledging the brazen hypocrisy, the ad asserts that McCain is “the only” candidate who can fix our broken nation. Then he goes further to seriously describe himself in the same manner he had sarcastically portrayed Obama:

“One is ready to lead – McCain”

In the days leading up to the March 4 primaries in Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island, millions of residents of those states (and of America) saw a now infamous advertisement from Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Brought to you by…

News Corpse

The Internet’s Chronicle Of Media Decay.