Dishonest and unwanted adverts

[CallMePaul]

The adverts are probably served randomly, according to some algorithm - Google or otherwise - which works with a bank of adverts. The informative site holders try to get revenue by agreeing to have some adverts on their site, but they may have little control over what adverts are served out. Some of the adverts will be served out based on demographics - what Google (for example) knows about the viewer, while some may be general.

Some can be offensive and counter to the measage which the original site owner wants. For example, adverts for porn could appear next to serious articles - though most providers wouldn't do that too obviously - unless perhaps the algorithms detected that a user reading a particular site liked that kind of advert. It's a minefield - and should never have been allowed to get to this state.

Google obviously does not know anything about me. Whenever I check my emails (TalkTalk), I get "ads by Google", which are usually for women's clothing and accessories. As my full first name appears in my email address, they ought to know that I am male! I agree entirely with your comments Dave!

[Old Grumpy]

Google obviously does not know anything about me. Whenever I check my emails (TalkTalk), I get "ads by Google", which are usually for women's clothing and accessories. As my full first name appears in my email address, they ought to know that I am male! I agree entirely with your comments Dave!

Ah, but you never can be sure these days!

[Bryn]

Ah, but you never can be sure these days!

Indeed: https://nameberry.com/babyname/bryn/girl

[Serial_Apologist]

Two new adverts to add to the eternally returning, 50s B-movie quality acted, Smugland-addressing Verisure Alarms, whose monthly updates must be really raking it in: one, ironically promoting chocolate brownies, for Sapphire Clinics, surely to goodness - a private health clinic outfit; and another for a computer site that passed so fast I didn't register the name, featuring just a lad cycling in the film maker's slipstream, with a girl riding on the handlebars!


One really does wonder what for what purpose are Advertising Standards.

[oddoneout]

Two new adverts to add to the eternally returning, 50s B-movie quality acted, Smugland-addressing Verisure Alarms, whose monthly updates must be really raking it in: one, ironically promoting chocolate brownies, for Sapphire Clinics, surely to goodness - a private health clinic outfit; and another for a computer site that passed so fast I didn't register the name, featuring just a lad cycling in the film maker's slipstream, with a girl riding on the handlebars!


One really does wonder what for what purpose are Advertising Standards.

So that a box can be ticked to say that there is a body that deals with such matters. Since the way things go these days with such bodies is to defund, destaff and force compliance to particular political aims, it is hardly surprising that it doesn't seem to function. My gripe is that they have rolled over on greenwashing for the most part.
However I'm not sure what part it might play with your advert issue even if it was functioning as it originally did - I had to look up Verisure in the first place! Where do the adverts appear?

[Serial_Apologist]

So that a box can be ticked to say that there is a body that deals with such matters. Since the way things go these days with such bodies is to defund, destaff and force compliance to particular political aims, it is hardly surprising that it doesn't seem to function. My gripe is that they have rolled over on greenwashing for the most part.
However I'm not sure what part it might play with your advert issue even if it was functioning as it originally did - I had to look up Verisure in the first place! Where do the adverts appear?

Every morning on CH5, incessantly repeated. Frequent begging ads too, from charities, really pulling the heart strings, starving babies who by now must either be at least 12 years old - assuming the aim of donations is being fulfilled, which one doubts because the problem source is nearly always political - or are no more on this godforsaken earth. But one sees the same ads on any channel at any time of day and night - they appear to get shared around all the networks. Judging from the acting quality displayed in most of them, and the amount of irrelevant plot attached to products, either the average age envisaged for targetting must be between 7 and 10 years old, or recipient's mentalities at levels beneath even those of the people making the ads in the first place... which for me has to say something about the products. Admittedly advertising, as John Berger brilliantly put across in his 1970 series Ways of Seeing, has always put creating dreams well ahead of in any way describing what they purport to sell, but at least until the last few years there was usually some semblance of wit or imagination that went into them, as is evident from VHS recordings I made from between 1990 and the year everything went digital, where for whatever reason I left the tape running without pausing at commercial breaks. The tacit message behind today's advertising industry is that we're all fools and slaves to the desire for unsustainable crap; I believe they're all laughing at us, just as do the right wing tabloids.

[Jonathan]

Surely ALL adverts are unnecessary and unwanted?

[smittims]

...except for the advertisers and those selling the stuff. I suppose in Utopia everyone would be supplied with what they need so there would be no requirement to tempt anyone to buy anything.

[Old Grumpy]

Perhaps in Utopia there would be two channels only, fully funded by public subscription, with no commercial channels.


Ah, them were t' days!

[Serial_Apologist]

Perhaps in Utopia there would be two channels only, fully funded by public subscription, with no commercial channels.


Ah, them were t' days!

I don't see why one couldn't have numerous channels, all of them under public ownership. The notion of uniformity tagged onto public ownership flows from the bureaucratic model we've been subjected to.

[Serial_Apologist]

Surely ALL adverts are unnecessary and unwanted?

They would be both necessary and wanted if they actually described the product, rather than the confected lifestyles we're all expected to attain to but fewer and fewer actually can. The only ads that actually do are those for sanitary wear!

[Dave2002]

Surely ALL adverts are unnecessary and unwanted?

[Serial_Apologist]

A funeral cortège slowly trundles past a street café where an elderly woman and younger man sit outside having tea in this cartoon advert. "Soombody's going out in style" says the latter meaningfully in generalised Northern, indicating working klass identity. "I've been thinking about when it's my turn" says the woman; "'Ave yer?" says the man. But why the surprise? This ad has been showing now for what must be at least five years - you'd think that by now any proudly authentic virtual male working class signifier (bit of a softy to be truthful) would be aware that his mum signifier had decided on Pure Cr*mation, surely?

But I'd better stop now, lest somebody accuse me of "product placement"!

[smittims]

I'm reminded of a product tested by 'Which?' many years ago, a 'magic torch: never wears out, never needs battery replacement'.

It was glue-sealed so you'd have to smash it to find out how it worked. They did this and found a bulb and an AA battery.

One would think few if any people would be so gullible as to believe the advert. Yet I still get phone calls purporting to be from 'UK Energy' but which I guess are from a Nigerian call-centre telling me I can save 'loads of money' on my boiler service if I use them, a complete stranger I've never heard of who offers no evidence to show that they can or would ever come to service my boiler.

Another told me my TV insurance agreement had expired and offered to renew it. I have never insured a TV and surely no-one would, now one can buy one for far less that the annual premium . Yet presumably someoene thinks it worthwhile to employ people to make such calls.

[Pulcinella]

I'm reminded of a product tested by 'Which?' many years ago, a 'magic torch: never wears out, never needs battery replacement'.

It was glue-sealed so you'd have to smash it to find out how it worked. They did this and found a bulb and an AA battery.

One would think few if any people would be so gullible as to believe the advert. Yet I still get phone calls purporting to be from 'UK Energy' but which I guess are from a Nigerian call-centre telling me I can save 'loads of money' on my boiler service if I use them, a complete stranger I've never heard of who offers no evidence to show that they can or would ever come to service my boiler.

Another told me my TV insurance agreement had expired and offered to renew it. I have never insured a TV and surely no-one would, now one can buy one for far less that the annual premium . Yet presumably someoene thinks it worthwhile to employ people to make such calls.

And whoever does will pay the merest pittance (if any) as wages.