I hate advertisements, too. In all their many forms.
Fortunately, the steady democratisation of information by the Internet seems to be messing with advertising as a business model. Increasingly, the way to get sales is through word of mouth and good reviews rather than through advertising.
Unfortunately, advertising execs are fighting for their lives, telling their clients they can manipulate word of mouth through "viral marketing" and reviews through "building sentiment". They probably can, but not necessarily as successfully as they'd like to pretend. Equally unfortunately, many people's critical faculties have atrophied, but perhaps the generation that grows up with free exchange of information will learn to assess the merits of any and all information put before them.
On the other hand, the fight that moved from the web towards the search engine is now reaching the appliance. Amazon sells a discounted Kindle that advertises at you, which I find a little sinister. Apparently they've even sold some. The utopian dream of a world in which products succeed or fail according to their merits seems a little more distant again.
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Fortunately, the steady democratisation of information by the Internet seems to be messing with advertising as a business model. Increasingly, the way to get sales is through word of mouth and good reviews rather than through advertising.
Unfortunately, advertising execs are fighting for their lives, telling their clients they can manipulate word of mouth through "viral marketing" and reviews through "building sentiment". They probably can, but not necessarily as successfully as they'd like to pretend. Equally unfortunately, many people's critical faculties have atrophied, but perhaps the generation that grows up with free exchange of information will learn to assess the merits of any and all information put before them.
On the other hand, the fight that moved from the web towards the search engine is now reaching the appliance. Amazon sells a discounted Kindle that advertises at you, which I find a little sinister. Apparently they've even sold some. The utopian dream of a world in which products succeed or fail according to their merits seems a little more distant again.