Rant 323 18/11/12 Subject: Targeted advertising

Rant number 323

Whenever you get something for free, be it a chocolate bar, a drink or a service - it's easy to forget the fundamental question that applies to so many things:

'Wheres the money coming from.'

This is particularly true when it comes to services and most notably when it comes free internet services - like Facebook (which is source of the inspiration for this rant.)

The internet has changed radically over the last couple of years. Words like PPC (pay per click) have become of huge relevance to how people make money out of the internet - and as a result, how you - the end user are bombarded with information.

Advertising is annoying and almost completely unavoidable - unless you are hermit - and maybe not even then; who knows, people could be leafletting hermits all the time.

Pick up a newspaper, turn on the TV (except the BBC & even thats not fool proof in this aspect,) listen to the radio (except the BBC once again,) go to the cinema, walk down the street or open pretty much any web page and you will be bombarded with advertising. The only reason you haven't been seeing adverts in your sleep so far is because they haven't perfected a Block Consumer Incentive Bursting (Buy Bombs) device like in Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan. This device blasts you with a compressed block of data - which unravels crap into your brain once you get to sleep: It won't be long until we're seeing those I have no doubt.

(Just as an aside, if I got hold of one of those bastards, I'd love to be able to broadcast some kind of bed wetting gene to all our politicians. That'd be some serious entertainment!)

The thing with adverts though is - for the most part, they don't bloody work.
Dime/Daim bars are - completely and utterly & most quantifiably the best chocolate bars ever made. I like others - but I will never be convinced that they are better than Dime (mmmm Dime.)

An advert though - will tell me that Mars bars are the best, or that Yorkie is the best or that bounty will make me feel like I'm on a tropical island. I'll still go to a shop and want a Dime bar though.

That's why the internet has got smarter still - with 'targeted advertising,' which takes the things I like and throws them at me.

Sticking to Dime as an example, it won't offer me Mars bars or Yorkies or Bounties. Instead - it'll show me wholesale Dime bar prices, Dime emporiums and the like. Which is just really irritating.

I don't want them to take the things I love and throw them at me. I love them - and that's why I show an interest in them. I don't want them to be rammed down my throat - that's just irritating and will make me ever less likely to buy the products!

Rant over.