Why do we dislike online ads?
Why do we dislike online ads more than TV commercials?
Mainly because we tend to act together - people like to behave as a group. I would say “herd” but that might sound a bit harsh. As Aristotle has put it, a man is by nature a social animal.
People also don’t like it when they get unsolicited calls (I hang up as soon as I realize that it is not personal) more than they like advertisements they encounter online. We fast forward commercials on TV if we can, or just use that time to take a break from what we are watching. But the negative feeling towards these TV commercials is not as strong as it is on the internet. Some commercials we might even like, and show our friends - “hey you have to see this one, it is so cool” style.
I believe it’s because we see every advertisement when we are alone surfing the web. Just like unsolicited phone calls. So it is not personal on the one hand, and we don’t feel like we’re part of a crowd on the other hand.
May 14, 2008 at 7:28 pm
I don’t know, Rutipo…
I hate TV commercials just as I hate online ads. though I actually do click ads occasionally, but do not have cable tv due to the amount of commercials (I’d rather use netflix instead). It could be that commercials in Israel are better, here I’m just sick of strange medication commercials there to help my skin have a glare, or reduce my debt. Damn Americans
May 14, 2008 at 7:30 pm
I don’t know, Rutipo…
I hate TV commercials just as I hate online ads. though I actually do click ads occasionally, but do not have cable tv due to the amount of commercials (I’d rather use netflix instead). It could be that commercials in Israel are better, here I’m just sick of strange medication commercials there to help my skin have a glare, or reduce my debt. Damn Americans
May 14, 2008 at 8:08 pm
I can think of at least two reasons for the difference you’ve mentioned between online ads and TV spots that do not necessarily involve social dynamics and the comparisons between solitary vs. group activity.
One reason is the fact that Internet advertisements can be a lot more intrusive than TV ones; to introduce an example, if you were to turn on your TV to watch the breaking news only to discover that most of your screen is filled with a beverage commercial with the newscast hidden behind it, and if you were forced to hunt for a small red button on the remote to make the (beautifully photographed but irrelevant to the current events) beverage container go away, I’m sure you’d have a few unprintable words at the ready at such a jarring interruption of your viewing experience. However, on the Internet, Flash ads that behave exactly like that are fairly common, and thus justly invoke our displeasure.
The other reason has to do with continuity of advertising: when watching a TV program, there is an advertising break, and then the programming continues for the next 15 or 20 minutes uninterrupted and ad-free, so that the unsavoury taste of the advertising disappears as your involvement in the plot of the program grows. On the contrary, an Internet page usually has several ads, and some of them might in fact be continiously visible “at the sidelines” while you’re scrolling the page, so you don’t get any reprieve from the banners and the text links, and your displeasure mounts until it gets discharged in some way; for example, via a blog post
May 14, 2008 at 8:10 pm
I hate any ad that takes time from me.
Most of the online adds I see - appear in Google, where they actually save me time. So these kinds of ads I actually like.
May 14, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Thanks for your thoughts, I thought it might cause some reactions to claim that we are all driven by peer pressure, but I agree that there are many other elements to it.
@Damti - hon, I see you are becoming a local out there.. don’t forget how it is here back at home. (and no, I don’t mean just the TV)
I agree, there are other reasons for the difference, but it certainly is a topic that people feel strongly about whichever way you put it. (+good to see you here)
@Max - you made me laugh..
@Eitan - good point about search ads; but I’m sure you see other ads online (e.g. banner ads) which you just ignore.
May 15, 2008 at 12:01 pm
An annoying ad is annoying whether I am alone or with friends.
We like viral videos because they are cool and we get some social reward by passing them.
May 15, 2008 at 7:16 pm
In some ways those viral videos are the same as cool tv commercials. We’re being part of the crowd - we’re part of 2,874,892 who watched it - and we feel comfortable with that.
May 15, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Hehe,
Actually my mind totally screen the unimportant banners for me, so that I totally ignore them.
It’s like the “Nobody cares field” which helped aliens land in the middle of Manhattan in “Life Universe and Everything else” - without anybody noticing it :).