The Search For The Elusive Captive Audience Means No More Contemplation?
from the we-need-meditation-rooms dept
For a while now, we've been pointing out that the captive audience is dead, and anyone who bases their business model on intrusive or annoying advertising to a captive audience is likely to be in trouble. However, Jeremy Wagstaff is pointing out one other unintended consequence of all of this: which is that companies are increasingly searching for that elusive captive audience. He notes that he used to be able to spend time on the bus just looking out the window and contemplating, but now there are strategically placed video screens that make contemplation difficult. These sorts of things are showing up everywhere. I find it increasingly rare to step into an elevator these days that doesn't have a video screen with some sort of advertising on it. Hell, even urinals aren't safe any more. Basically, companies are looking anywhere possible where they might be able to find a captive audience and are shoving some kind of advertising in the way, and that means fewer spaces where people can just be alone with their thoughts. Of course, in the end, this will simply contribute to ad blindness, making all of these efforts a waste of money.
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Filed Under: advertising, captive audience, contemplation
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Gas staions
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As predicted by ...
This trend was apparent to many people quite some time ago. Reality is just catching up to the predictions.
I don't like it, either, but I don't see a damn thing I can do about it. Enough of the sheeple will be taken in by such advertising, so the megacorps will find it profitable.
About the only thing I can imagine that would cut it off would be to train/condition children from an early age to develop an aversion to any product advertised in undesirable ways. Of course the megacorps would fight that tooth and nail (and, probably, assassin), not to mention that essentially brainwashing (or maybe reverse-brainwashing) of children is just as repugnant as the pervasive advertising.
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No Doubt, the Space Merchants have arrived
But probably by now they have intrusive advertising there as well...
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I can understand how it's annoying for people, but posting stuff on the internet isn't going to get it changed. You'll all whine about it, but that's all you'll do.
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So WHOM is the really bad guy? Not the EVILCORP you speak thats for fn sure...
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Captive Audience + Subliminal Adverts
Point is, if you put enough random pictures for people to see on every corner, in the same way advertisers pay huge amounts to put their photos on certain pages of magazines, you can be influenced. Trigger off the sub-mind with the bear, and bingo! Job done.
Brilliant... Check it out for yourself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyQjr1YL0zg
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Re:
Just saying.
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Do those comapnies care? No.
But I do.
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ad blindness and the effects of information overlo
For example, until I thought about it (some where between typing "long" and "time" above) I didn't even realize there was an advertisement in front of me. Now having looked I note there are three staring me in the face.
Now, more importantly:
As some one who spends most of his time "jacked in" I am more in tune with the effect being constantly bombarded with information has than most. While you might learn something new you don't get as many opportunities to analyze and qualify what you have learned. This reduces overall comprehension. What, when, where, and how are no where near as important as WHY. There is a lot to be learned about asking yourself WHY something trivial is the way it is.
It is this information overload that, when you have been working hard on fixing an problem or dealing with an issue and you just cannot figure it out, results in the "obvious" solution to jump out at you after you have stepped back and taken a few minutes break.
It is my opinion that information overload is one of the main influences in generally lowering peoples comprehension. People no longer take time to compartmentalize all the crap they have rattling around in their heads. As a result they often fail to form the links between different things and end up with an incomplete view of the world around them as a result.
Also, while I can tune the ads out, some people can't. My mom for example doesn't seem capable of tuning anything out... perhaps a result of growing up in a world were the main source of information was the library and TV and if she wanted to learn anything she had to go out of her way to do it.
That considered, in a couple of generations ether advertising will become REALLY intrusive or the marketing industry will collapse. Ether way it's probably gonna get worse before it gets better.
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Re:
The change you mention will never happen unless enough people are convinced there is a problem.
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Marketing as a Drug Additction
In "Minority Report" (the movie) as our hero Anderton as he walks around public places the billboards read his identity and give him personalized ads.
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School kids are the captive audience
To the person who said the world will end if we stop buying products and the economy collapses: you could not be further from the truth. If the world ends, it will be due to people mindlessly consuming things they don't need and wasting all the planet's resources. Advertising will be the end of us if we don't make a stand now.
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Minority Report
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Re:
Piss off wanker :-) What should we do, protest and riot in the streets? See Joe's comment, there are people who compose their buying habits to have the opposite effect the ads are intending. I'm one, too.
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Re: School kids are the captive audience
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See Godin's Permission Marketing book
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Protective 'glasses' like from Snowcrash...
The basic idea, though modified, is that the glasses would have a combination of HUD and sections that would also vastly darken the incoming light in key areas. If you combine that with a system that either knows viewing angle and ad locations/distances, or one that can recognise ads on the fly, then you can drive the filter to block out that input. Of course that doesn't fix sounds...
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Ｍ＆Ａコーポレート・アドバイザリー
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