A random idea about ads
I was chatting with a good friend, and the topic of marketing and ads came up.
We all use adblockers, right? If you don’t, go get uBlock Origin. Thank me later.
Anyhow, the first thing that came to my mind were two articles by Leo Babauta, namely the future of advertising and minimal web.
But then I remembered about a random ideas I had a few weeks ago. Here it is.
My random idea
There should be specific spaces only for advertisements and announcements.
- Need anything? Go there and search.
- Feel like shopping? Go there and get inspired.
- Wanna hurt yourself? Go and look at shit you’ll never be able to afford.
The difference is that you are in charge. The issue with current advertising is that we are literally spoon-fed. Not to mention the ethics of manipulation.
In fact, the rules I would put in these places are essentially two:
- Make clear that stuff is being promoted – to contain conflict of interest.
- Stick to factual, verifiable information – to avoid psychological pitfalls.
Final ramblings
This is mostly what I came up with, just lightly edited.
I usually polish my posts a bit more, but this idea is pretty rough instead. It may deserve more thought, but today I don’t have time to think it through.
As I was writing an intro, though, ideas kept flowing. And since I didn’t want to write a long and boring introduction, I decided to move my ramblings here.
After a life spent hating ads, I came to realize that they too are neutral. The real problem lies not in what they are, but in how they are made.
From the top of my head, I identified two main issues with ads:
- They’re unsolicited, interruping us and trying to monopolize out attention.
- They’re often deceitful, overtly lying in our face so we buy useless shit.
But who says it has to be like that?
Yes, I do realize we live in a consumerist society, that companies are soulless, that people are greedy, blah blah blah.
But we are people too. We have a say in this, however little. I argue there’s a time and space for proper, ethical, respectful, factual, even useful ads.
And no, I’m not talking about Bullshit Attention Tokens. What I mean is unobtrusive, open, intentional ads that make our lives better instead of worse.
Could this be a new frontier of marketing, putting emphasis on people and quality products? I don’t know, but I’d very much like to see it.
Since ideas are up for grabs and just a multiplier of execution, feel free to go and make something out of this one. And let me know what you come up with!