Innovation or Invasion?

[Distortionfile]

All of the ads are completely optional to view and participate in, and although that has been made abundantly clear it has been made into such a panic. IF you have a kinect (I don't) and IF you watch ads by choice (Who does that?), and IF decide to involve the ads products or services in your social media this gives you the option to do so.

I don't think anyone on earth meets those three prerequisites, and I'm sure that the total fails in comparison to those who complain about the service.

The real problem here is that this could be a slippery slope to this:

Soon, we will have to tweet an ad if we want to watch/play what we have already paid for.

Even giving the option to participate is being intrusive.

You mean the way we pay taxes on something that was taxed when it was bought by the store, taxed when it was made, taxed when the materials were purchased, and then pay property taxes to keep those things?

Nooo, that will never happen. Especially in a world where all that taxing can't even pay the bills.

Also, if no one ever opts to participate, you can damn well guarantee they will make it more mandatory. I've never seen a webpage or tv show ask "Would you like to view a message from our sponsor, or continue your scheduled program?" and I'm sure I never will. We pay for cable and they spam us on it, we pay for internet, and then Microsoft charges us $50 to use xbox live, why the hell wouldn't they start pounding people down with ads? what's to stop them?

 

[Marudas]

I have a triggered reaction against trying to slip advertisements into every facet of human life. It reminds me of the episode of futurama where they have advertisements beamed into their brains such that they see ads while Dreaming.

Its just one of those things where you have to put your foot down and dig your heels in. Advertisement is incredibly rampant in modern society. I'm not saying it shouldn't exist, but when it leaks into your leisure time, it becomes painful. From a personal perspective, they're just irritating. I can say quite honestly that its almost unheard of for an advertisement to ever provoke me to get a product. On some very rare occasions, i may miss a game, film or product and the ad will tip me off to go do actual research online to see if the product is one I want, but for the most part, the ads are just mindless annoyances. Many of the new methods of "interacting" with ads or sharing them just sounds shady. Me and most of my friends will alert eachother about products, sure, but we dont share the actual advertisements. The ads are often biased towards the product in question and do not provide completely correct or useful information. If one of my friends started sending me actual ads, I'd probably clock him. The "Interactive" part is shady for just the same reason. An ad will never badmouth its product, so any interactivity is still operating within the realms of them trying to convince you to buy a product through stimulation.

I don't own a Kinect, and I'm about as far removed from Microsoft products as they come these days (though apple does some of this too in its IOS devices), but I don't want to see advertising evolve into the money grabbing behemoth that they'd like it to be.

 

[robert01]

If I bought a product to use on ANOTHER product I bought to use, I don't want any form of fucking advertisement being fed down my throat.
Web Ads? I get that people have to pay for server space and other related stuff like that.
NUads on Kinect? The product that people pay for, that developers pay royalties to have their product released on, and even probably pay fees to license the software to use in general. Fuck that, forget it. Keep the ads away. Stop trying to ram marketing down our throats every time we turn around.

I don't even mind advertising in games if it is tasteful(a la Prototype, those didn't bother me). But I am sure these NUads would be used as a gateway and unless you interacted with it PERIOD you won't get to the content that you want to use. PLUS ultimately you have to pay to download the damned ad anyways(depending on your ISP agreement regarding bandwidth).

Don't think Microsoft is the devil here either, I am sure there is a million other companies planning ways to do the exact same shit. With everything being net enabled these days it was only a matter of time before we get spammed with spam.

 

[infohippie]

This kind of thing just makes me despise all forms of marketing more and more. Bill Hicks had some extremely good advice for marketers.

EDIT: Damn, ninja'd by Fronzel.

 

[LadyRhian]

NUAds reminds me of the word "Gonads". Probably because it's balls.

Im not sure, but i think that might be the cleverest thing i have heard all week.

Thanks.

 

[agiganticpanda]

If Microsoft wants to have full integration of their products, maybe they should start with their windows phone not sucking. Zing.

The difference with social media vs regular media, is that with social media you have the ability to pick and choose what you follow, the brands you want to interact with. It''s a better direct message and instead of a broad shotgun message, you have those who want to have conversations and interact with your brand. Until corporations and advertisers stop just using it as a loud speaker and use it as a base of two way communication, it's never going to be fully realized. The same really with this I think, you know your audience and creating something to interact with I think is important for it to work.

 

[thiosk]

You are spot on about the reactions-- I don't like being advertised at when I know someone is advertising at me. I hate commercials, right? But I still sing-song the tunes played in the adverts that run during television commercials.

The one my wife is singing currently is that one for the eye-pad clone or whatever; the girl in the pink dress with the square around her head going "Let me, entertain you! blah blah blah blah blah versatile." We sing that line like parrots over and over and over again. Now when I think IPad I don't necessarily think IPad, I think samsung whatever the hell she was entertaining me with.

I've generally accepted that advertising is the new normal-- and hey, if that means I see more awesome commercials for GEICO or Duke Nukem Forever instead of that fucking pot that lets you grow tomatoes upsidedown or feminine itch products, thats fantastic.

 

[ryo02]

well I wont be tweeting or re tweeting or liking anything on face book ... I dont even use those.

I think I might have a face book account that I used for all of 5 minuets (if that) many many years ago.

 

[Strazdas]

Nu ads should be banned. then again it seems that advertisement is the norm now. gone are the days when you could browse the net or play games peacefully. Oh well. World is gone to sh*t, even on the technology side.

You know whats worse: sites that think the only way to register is via facebook. i dont use your fagbook, why dont you let me have a normal account!
P.S. i noticed that there is now login via fagbook on the escapist too, i fear the worst.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

I don't know about anyone else, but adverts tend to make me want to buy the product less.

Very true. There are a number of products/brands (as well as films, games and the like) that I was interested in pre-ad campaign but have since blacklisted due to the intrusiveness and frequency of said ad campaigns.

Spoiler: Figurative and deliberately exaggerated example

If I see a billboard for something interesting I'll give it a look, but if someone wearing a sandwich-board for the selfsame product follows me down the street shoving a poster in my face screaming "Look at this! Isn't it cool?! LOOK AT IT!!!" then whatever it is can f*ck right off.

A good example of this is Ticketmaster, which I used to get some gig tickets about 18 months ago. Ever since then they have sent 3-4 e-mails a week telling me of their special offers (despite my repeated demands that they not contact me) and as a result I now no longer buy my tickets from them, even though I was impressed with the quality of service I got from them regarding my actual ticket purchases.

In other words, non-intrusive background advertising can make me interested/curious about a product, but intrusive and pervasive ads will cause me to blacklist whatever is being advertised. And this NUAds system sounds incredibly intrusive.

 

[mastiffchild]

I can''t see it working and will take no part in it whatsoever. In fact, this is the last word I'll say on the matter as it stinks to me.

 

[Rack]

I'm inevitably turning into a crotchety old man resistant to change, sticking to the ancient Mario Galaxy instead of CoD 77 because I object to being forced to advertise the delicious taste of Zagrafs at the end of each level.

 

[Dorkmaster Flek]

Soon, we will have to tweet an ad if we want to watch/play what we have already paid for.

I fear this is way too close to happening.

It's already happened. When you put a DVD in, you have to sit through previews and FBI warnings about copyright BS, even though you already paid for the damn thing like a good little consumer. It's making me sick, and I don't think I've actually watched a DVD in over a year now.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

I don't know. Years of roaming the internet have taught me that clicking on anything that say 'win product x' is usually not a good idea.

 

[Hamster at Dawn]

Hey, if they make the ads fun then I don't really care. I played those free Doritos games on XBLA and, although short-lived, they were a lot of fun. They also made me more inclined to buy Doritos but I'm ok with that since the games were free so if I do go and buy Doritos as a result of playing the game then I'm not only paying for a snack that I like anyway but I'm also indirectly paying for a game that I enjoyed. Everyone's a winner.

Furthermore, I tend to be aware of when I'm being marketed to which is why many adverts are fairly ineffective and may even reduce the chance of me buying a product or service. The most effective TV adverts, in my opinion, are the ones that make you laugh. If you live in the UK then you'll be familiar with the compare the meerkat ads. They're kind of dumb but it's been a very successful campaign because it's something that people will discuss and it doesn't even mention much about the actual website it's promoting. It's fun for the consumer and it produces results for the business AS A RESULT of it being fun. Seems fair to me.

 

[JeppeH]

Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't.
But sure as the sky is blue, when the thing launches on my consoles or whatever - I install a AdBlocker

 

[Loonerinoes]

Any way it works, unless advertisers realise that brand recognition alone isn't enough and that a POSITIVE association helps, and even then might not work, advertising's just going to be a blight on whatever platform it's plastered across. "Go Compare" with it's annoying opera man is firmly emblazoned into my mind from over-hearing the prat on house-mates' TV, and I know bloody well to keep the fuck away from it. Same for "We Buy Any Car", for similar reasons. Even Old Spice, with one of the more amusing marketing campaigns, merely entertains - I have no desire to purchase the product. Having things rammed down my throat whilst I try to enjoy doing something completely unrelated is NOT a good way of engaging with me, and making me literally go through a song and dance routine does not sound like a positive move on behalf of advertisers, behavioural marketing be damned.

This has pretty much been my own experience as well. And it's not just positive association either for me...it has to be topical. Meaning, if I'm playing videogames on the article's Kinect, then one would logically surmise that any ads that would come through it would promote videogame-related technology or products and nothing else. As the quoted person here, I too have deeply fallen out with TV commercials, because they are completely random and have ramped up to showing up every 30 minutes in our country (which is insane, when our neighbouring country has a big 15 min marketing session at the beginning of a show and then does the sane thing - shows the thing entirely without commercial brakes).

Similarly, no matter how well marketed, for me it is very important that it remains on topic. Now this is a bit different and I know that there are different constraints when it comes to marketing at children, but I remember how the late 90s Cartoon Network marketing became solely about promoting the network's own shows and in a few cases also a few tours and events - that for me was decent advertising, because it goes to figure that kids watching cartoons would be interested in other types of cartoons than the one they happened to be watching, rather than say...some toys from Mattel or Fisher Price, so they can bug their parents about it (which was what Cartoon Network did at the start of the 90s before getting rid of those ads).

So...I know that statistically the chances increase with this sort of interaction as described by JP...but for me the two most important things about advertising of any sort always have been and will be that it is both a *positive* experience AND that it is related to the *topic* or genre of whatever it is that I am currently watching/playing/experiencing. If I'm watching science fiction, it is doubtful I am interested in My Little Pony...but it could be that I'm interested in Battlestar Galactica - as a basic example. That's the moment when marketing for me actually becomes a force of good - when it provides me with a wider vareity of selection based on the topic that I have displayed interest in and does so in a manner that is either entertaining, if it is meant to draw attention (like Old Spice Guy) or unobtrusive, if it is not meant to do so and instead be moreso subliminal (NOT like credit squeezing, which is anything BUT subliminal and annoying to the point that it finally drove me off of watching shows and films on TV for good).

Either way...interesting article as always.