Have you ever wondered what kind of effect advertisements might have on us? We are constantly being bombarded with sales pitches (whether it's a product or an ideology. On the radio, on social media, in movies and television shows, on buses and benches, in the mail, at the beginning of online videos, in the drive-thru, on billboards, in the newspaper, at the grocery store, on the sides of vehicles, at the top of a notepad, on t-shirts, hats and water bottles, via text message or email, on signs in front of stores and in store windows too, in the form of coupons or deals, taped to street poles, on community boards, in magazines, around the edges of sports fields/rinks, on keychains and pens.. the list is practically endless. But it hasn’t always been this way.
Back in the 1970's, the number of ads a person would see each day was somewhere between 500 to 1600, on average. By 2007, this number rose to around 5000. Today however, the average person sees or hears up to 10 000 advertisements every single day. Only about a quarter of them will actually be relevant though.
But how much do ads really effect us? Do they really make that much of a difference? I don’t know about you, but I will literally go out of my way to avoid having to use any products or services that I have been forced to watch advertisements for on YouTube. Even if its a huge inconvenience to do so. Unfortunately though, not everyone is as ridiculous as I am. In fact, as soon as chewing gum commercials started showing people chewing two pieces of gum at a time, sales doubled.
What won’t double your sales, is paying Google to pin your website to the top of search results. Why? Because 70-80% of users ignore sponsored search results online, and are likely to mistrust brands that advertise this way.
Perhaps the effectiveness of advertisements has something to do with visual appeal. This would explain why sponsored search results don't do all that great. I wouldn't be surprised if this is why the ads on YouTube have become so frequent, and why some video creaters choose to include sponsored content within the videos they create and post, where they themselves read a script that they were given, to advertise some product or service (I am so sick of hearing about that Raid Shadow Legends game LOL). Apparently videos get shared 1200% more than text and links combined. Which really sucks, because I actually remember a time when there were entirely no advertisements on YouTube. None. At all. Those were the days!
I loathe online ads — especially YouTube ads (even more so when the YouTube video I am trying to watch is only like a minute or two long). Pop-up advertisements are pretty damn terrible as well, because most of the time the stupid pop-up loads at the exact moment I try to click on something, and all of a sudden I've opened another browser tab that I can’t just immediately exit out of because it makes everything slow as hell for a moment. Ugh. I'm annoyed just writing about them.
But since global digital ad spending is predicted to exceed $645 billion by 2024, I don’t think things are going to change for the better any time soon. That's a $121 billion increase from this year.
I couldn't tell you when the last time was that I watched actual television programming. I actually stopped watching regular tv because of commercials. I hated that they would list a show as being scheduled for a half of an hour, and then 1/3 of that time would actually be taken up by commercials. The fact that in 2020, millennials (my generation), watched 23.4% less television than they did in 2019, tells me that companies are most certainly going to follow the crowd, and stick their advertisements in places where they are likely to have the most reach —online. Although I would love to think that online ads couldn’t get much worse than they already are, I am not that naive. Of course they can get worse. It can always get worse.
But aren’t advertisements just another form of propaganda? In my opinion, that is exactly what they are.
Propaganda and modern advertising were both developed in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, due to the rise of mass production and historical political events. When people hear the term “propaganda” they typically associate it with feelings of negativity and the idea of being manipulated. Yet when they hear the term “advertisments” they don't generally get much of a negative feeling, outside of slight annoyance. The majority of people just associate advertisements with businesses being businesses, and doing what they have to do. But if you take a look at the definition of ‘propaganda’ vs. the definition of ‘modern advertising’, you won't find much of a difference. I didn’t, at least.
Propaganda - a form of communication whose main goal is to influence the attitude of a group of people towards a cause or a position that benefits oneself. Propaganda is used to promote a variety of topics such as public health recommendations, encouraging citizens to participate in a census or an election, or other public service announcements encouraging people toward behaviors that are beneficial to the society such as reporting crimes and avoiding drinking and driving.
Modern Advertising - a form of communication used to drive consumers' behavior. It aims to convince viewers, readers or listeners to take action toward a product, idea or service. Advertising is normally paid for by sponsors and can be viewed via myriad media including newspapers, magazines, television, radio, direct mail, posters, websites, text messages and emails. Commercial advertising most often uses “branding,” the repetition of an image and a consistent message, to increase the consumption or use of their client’s product or service. Non-commercial advertisers such as political parties, interest groups, religious organizations and governmental agencies spend funds to advertise ideas rather than products.
You see, both propaganda and advertising aim to persuade or convince the public to take action, and whether the goal is to get them to purchase a product or join a cult, doesn't matter — t's the same concept. Many of the methods used in propaganda and advertising campaigns are the same. Knowledge of advertising principles and consumer behavior is essential to an effective propaganda campaign even if no consumer product or service is being sold.
Most of the time, propaganda attempts to influence an audience through emotions, and advertising does so through information. With propaganda, a consumer would buy into an idea based on its emotional attachment, or the emotional response invoked by the messaging that’s used. While advertising would encourage a consumer to buy a product or a service based on specific, emphasized facts. Propaganda emphasizes facts as well to encourage a particular behavior, but the facts used are often more selective. The most common form of propaganga is using highly emotionally loaded messages to produce a visceral reaction. Advertisers will tell you that the aim is to create a rational response from their consumers towards given information about a product or service. Propaganda is said to be aimed at changing attitudes, while advertisements are said to be aimed at changing behaviors. But in reality, isn’t an attitude change required to change someones behavior?
Mr. William Randolph Hearst, American newspaper tycoon, said that "legitimate publicity is the spreading of truthful information, or facts, about any cause or condition which is of interest or importance to people generally” while “propaganda is the giving out (or hiring of) opinions, arguments, or pleas to induce people generally to believe what some individual, group of individuals or organizations want them to believe, for the pecuniary or other advantage of the individual, group or organization giving out (or hiring) the propaganda.”
But if you think about it.. those that push propaganda believe that the information they are providing is factual. Not only that, but they also believe that it is in people’s best interests to listen to them, and follow their claims. They think that doing so would benefit individuals in many ways. Which is exactly what someone is doing, who is trying to sell a product or service. They believe that the information they are providing you about said product or service is factual. They also think that it would be in people’s best interest to purchase the product or service they are selling, because they believe it would be beneficial. Most importantly though, the main reason they want people to believe their sales pitch about their products or services, is so that they themselves will benefit, by making money.
Essentially, all advertisements are is colorful, catchy propaganda.
Even individual product reviews are basically propaganda. Those that take the time to write them, are either hoping to convince you that whatever it is the review is about, is worth buying. Or they are hoping to stop you from wasting your money, because the thing the review is about is no good. Usually there is some sort of mini story contained within a product review, and the reason for this is to give you information that you can relate to emotionally, so you are more likely to listen to what they have to say, and take their words as reliable, and follow through with what they are suggesting you do, when it comes to buying the product or not.
If something is looking to influence your thoughts, and effect your actions, it's propaganda, according to the definition. If you aren't in agreement with this, please let me know why, down in the comments. I would love to hear what you have to say.
Propaganda and advertising are both pretty “in your face”, and seemingly unavoidable. Did you know that Facebook Advertising has a reach of 2.11 billion people? Sure seems like it's being crammed down people’s throats, the way propaganda usually is. Doesn’t it?
Here are some more wild advertising facts:
Over 80% of Instagram users browse products and services. I am not one of these people. I didn’t even know Instagram had that option, because I have never been on it.
Meta made $115 billion from advertising in 2021. And learning this made me despise Zuckyboy even more.
YouTube made $28.8 billion in ad revenue in 2021. Yet they still insist on making you watch two annoying ads before you get to see the video you clicked on. How greedy of them.
Every other post on social media is an ad. If you aren’t using an ad blocker, you’ll see banners and popups on nearly every website. If you know of any awesome ad blockers for Android, drop a comment below and fill me in!
Despite the average person seeing between 4000 and 10 000 ads per day, our brains actually screen out most of them, to avoid information overload, and we will typically register under 100. The number of them that we remember is significantly less than that too.
The huge increase in the number of ads we see on a daily basis today, compared to the number of ads we saw a day in the 70's can easily be attributed to the rise of the internet. Pre-internet advertising was done via television commercials, in print in magazines and newspapers, and on promotional products. These things only have so much space that can be given to an ad. The internet on the other hand, is endless. Especially when you consider refresh rates and pop-ups.
By 2020 42.7% of global internet users had ad-blocking software. Because of this, advertisers are frustrated and trying to eliminate this type of software, or change the legalities around it's use. They don’t like dropping billions of dollars on advertising, and then have only half their target audience seeing them. Which I think is rather selfish. People probably don't like having to spend × amount of dollars on their internet/phone bill each month, to have a good portion of their bandwidth always being used up on displaying ads. Advertisers and large companies are in much better positions financially, and therefore can afford to have half their target audience not see their ads. The one that shouldn't be forced to deal with this situation, is the individual who's footing the internet/phone bill every month, and having half of their bandwidth being dedicated to displaying ads.
Did you know that Meta derives 98% of it’s revenue from ads. I think that’s insane. I’m glad I ditched Facebook.
Most of the ads you see while browsing online are run by Google and Facebook. As of 2022, Google holds 28% of the market, while Facebook has 24.5%. Combined, they account for more than half of the global advertising revenue.
Amazon is also making strides in the ad industry, rising from 0.8% to 6.5% market share in six years.
Meanwhile, Alibaba and Tencent dominate the Chinese market. Globally, they make up 9.1% and 3% of the ad revenue.
Around 200 million Instagrammers view at least one business profile a day.
Facebook has an active monthly user base of 2.91 billion people, and 72.5% of them are targeted by advertising campaigns.
This all seems extremely aggressive to me. How is this even legal? Honestly?
Despite Meta’s quick rise, Google still sits on the online advertising throne. The company runs the so-called “Display Network.” This system places your ads on websites it deems appropriate. That way, they reach the users who are most likely to interact with them. What makes Google ads so desirable is the big audience. In addition to the 35 million websites and apps, the network works with Google services like Google Search, Gmail, and YouTube.
83% of Pinterest users have bought items advertised on the platform. To me, this is absolutely nuts! I have been on Pinterest since way back when you needed to be invited to the platform by someone who was already a user. You couldn’t just sign up for an account. As someone who was regularly doing drawings and tattoos for people back then, and using Pinterest as my #1 source for reference images, I am SO glad that there were no ads on the platform then, like there are now. Pinterest ads these days make using the app extremely irritating. To the extent that I now use it so very rarely, I could probably uninstall it from my phone, and not really be effected at all.
Another common advertising method is the use of billboards. And despite the rise of online advertising campaigns, things like billboards are still going strong. If you ask me, I think that a billboard would be much more effective these days, depending on what it is you are advertising. Since people often autopilot their scrolling online, and unless something about an ad really stands out, they arent likely to pay much attention to anything like that, that comes up on their phone screen. A well-placed, visually attractive billboard on the other hand, would be far more noticeable against a cloudy sky, I think.
For example, throughout the course of the pandemic, once it became obvious to certain people that the policies put in place and the methods used to attempt to control the situation, were actually causing far more harm than they were doing any good, some people took it upon themselves to try and spread awareness about this, through the use of billboards.
Here are a few examples:
As a Canadian, I am awfully proud to see Canadian billboards about this stuff. Living in the country, and rarely going to the city, the only billboards that I usually see are ones with bible verses on them (usually on land owned by a local Mennonite). So seeing the Vaccine Choice Canada billboards, after doing a DuckDuckGo search for “covid vaccine dangers billboards” made my day.
These too however, are propaganda. I just happen to like this kind of propaganda though. I am all about blunt, honest, straight to the point statements that make people uncomfortable. Why? Because when there is a conversation that should be happening, but that isn’t happening, it’s usually unavoidable things like this that end up forcing people to discuss things.
I cannot stand being lied to, especially when the lies are an attempt to manipulate you into doing something you really don’t want to do, that is very likely to cause you harm (or worse). Even more so, if there will be no accountability from those doing the lying and manipulating, should something bad actually happen.
I think that for the most part, people should be left alone to make up their own minds about stuff, and decide things for themselves. Afterall, they are the one that has to live with any decisions they make. Being forced to live a life thats been negatively impacted in a serious way, by a decision that someone else made for you, because they didn’t trust you to decide for yourself, is a sure fire way to end up resenting whoever made that choice for you. Especially if the decision they made for you never negatively effected them at all. Not only would it suck to have to live with whatever issue arose from the initial decision that was made for you, but it would also be pretty terrible to have to live with the hatred you are likely to have towards the person that decided things for you. Hate is an extremely powerful emotion, and the burden of carrying it around all the time is a big one. Always being pessimistic about things can cause you to become depressed very easily. Too much negativity can cause all sorts of health problems for a person as well. When this happens, chances are it will end up snowballing into even bigger issues. Once you are swamped by constant health problems, you likely won't see an end in sight. It’s thoughts like this that will have you giving up. Once you give up, you’ve lost.
So when you consider the fact that all advertisements and product promotions, or coupon offers, etc., are all some form of propaganda that’s trying to convince you to make a certain choice about something, do you really think that the amount of ads we are subjected to in a day should be legally allowed? Do you think that all these advertisements cause any sort of damage to our psyche? What do you think the difference might be, between someone who grew up in an environment where they were subjected up to 10 000 ads per day by the time they are 30 ish, and someone who grew up in an environment without exaggerated advertising, or untruthful product claims, etc.? I bet the difference would be astonishing. The person who wasn't subjected to all the advertising is probably more trusting of others and of the things they read. But I believe that the person raised around all the advertising would be the one who got screwed over the most, despite being less trusting of others. Just because all that constant manipulation would probably mess with someones ability to think critically and properly assess situations. Regardless, I would be fascinated, and thoroughly enjoy it, if I had the opportunity to talk to someone who didn’t constantly have ads thrown in their face all their life. I bet you would learn quite a bit about the way people work, from such a conversation.
But anyways, let's get back to the topic of propaganda..
One thing that people generally state when explaining the differences between propaganda and advertising, is how user data is used when it comes to advertising. By now you should be aware that the apps on your phone are pretty gossipy, when it comes to your habits, and they like to share secrets about you, amongst one another. Did you spend 4.5 hours checking out different chocolate cake recipes on Pinterest last night, instead of going to sleep like you said you were going to do? Chances are Pinterest shared this information with Facebook, who we all know loves sharing things with all kinds of people. So now, the next time you do a Google search, somewhere in the results, you’ll probably find a link that refers to chocolate cake in some way, where you are able to make some sort of purchase if you wanted. Why? Because that’s what it’s all about now, in the age of Big Data. The more a company knows about the sort of things you are interested in, and what you are likely to buy, plus the times when you most often make online purchases, etc., the more that company is then able to design an advertisement that appeals specifically to you, to increase their chances that you will end up responding positively to this ad, and make a purchase from this company. Because that is the goal, afterall.
Now even though we are mostly all aware that this activity goes on, when it comes to advertising. But how come no one ever discusses the likelihood that the same probably also happens when it comes to propaganda? Be it election propaganda, pandemic propaganda, WWIII propaganda, you name it. Don’t you think that the fact that the technology to target people and their specific interests being available for marketing purposes, also means it’s available to sway the opinions of the masses, and therefore influence behaviors and social cohesion? I do.
Call me a “crazy conspiracy theorist” all you want. But I truly believe that this is something that we are all effected by, and as the days go by, I also believe it is becoming a more frequent occurrence.
People just seem to behave so much differently now, than they did in the past. I may be considered young, being 30 years old. But I have always been a “people-watcher”, all my life. I'm fascinated by the things people do, what makes them tick, what sort of behaviors they will exhibit in certain situations, etc. When I say that I don’t ever remember a time where people acted so belligerent and irrational, I mean it.
I mean, yeah, in the 90's there were middle aged women violently beating each other in toy stores over Beanie Babies. But that's bound to happen with any popular trend. Just look at hockey riots over the years. But these days it seems to be on an individual level, for the most part.
We all saw the videos posted to social media of crazed people in masks screaming at others for not wearing a mask, or for not following the store floor arrows, or for standing too close to another person. Or the people that decided to take it a step further and actually physically assault others for these reasons. And videos like this weren't all that rare. For a while, there was a new video or two like this every single week. If it wasn’t some lunatic freaking out, it would be a video of police somewhere using excessive force to remove people from social gatherings. Like.. what in the actual fuck? Why did so many people choose to act out publicly this way? Normally that sort of behavior only comes out in crowds. Usually people are afraid of what others might think, and so they are more reserved.
I get that the mainstream news media didn’t help the situation, with their constant fear mongering and case count scoreboards. But still. I didn’t go out and assault people, and I didn’t feel the need to scream at people in Walmart. So why did some of us exhibit this behavior, while others didn’t? Yes, I have read up on Mass Formation Psychosis. But that seems to apply to more of a group-think situation. Not to those rogue lunatics that seem to come out of nowhere, freaking the hell out about someone choosing to not wear a mask.
The actions of these crazies don’t even make sense either. Because in the videos that I have watched, the person that flips out is not even near the maskless person in the first place. Plus, the maskless person isn't talking to anyone, and so therefore if transmission occurred through aerosol droplets that spread when people spoke, they aren't even guilty of doing that, because they aren't speaking. And what happens is the unmasked person is then forced to speak, because some loon is confronting them and accusing them of spreading disease. Yet the psycho is completely oblivious to the fact that they are forcing someone to react to their violent behavior, and by making them do that, they are then to blame for the aerosol droplets that person is now spreading around that they weren’t before. It’s like all of their self-awareness went out the window the moment they spotted someone across the airport with their mask on but not covering their nose.
No matter which way you look at it, there is a complete lack of logic. Unless you consider the idea that perhaps people were being targeted with propaganda designed to play off of people’s emotions in such a way that it changed their behavior and caused them to act on their emotions. This would explain why people acted out in public while they were alone. Because normally, it takes a group of people getting riled up together, egging one another on, for someone to have such violent outbursts like that. Just think about the times you have been at a bar where a fight has started to break out. There are almost always a group of people that contribute to the situation where someone actually gets into a physical altercation. Do you understand what I’m trying to say? When people are alone, they don’t normally get emotionally charged enough to actually pick a fight. But if they were being manipulated through propaganda that was designed to target them using their data, in the same way that advertisements target people, then it might explain why things would escalate from 0 to 100 in a matter of seconds.
All I am saying is that people weren’t themselves, even when they were all by themselves. And due to the frequent occurrences where lone individuals were bold enough to physically confront other people over something as trivial as the way they were wearing their mask, it's hard for me to believe that these attacks were not provoked in some sort of way. I have no proof that people actually were being targeted with propaganda. All I really have is my understanding of human behavior. Which I developed over a lifetime of people-watching, as well as having taken it upon myself to study/research psychology, sociology, and human anthropology on and off, for the last 12-ish years of my life, out of sheer curiosity and the desire to understand people.
Although I might not have little letters that follow my name, to signify that I’ve earned some sort of fancy degree, I know I am not a stupid person either. My understanding of human behavior is quite in-depth.
It's not very often that my hunches about this type of stuff end up being far from the truth.
All I'm saying is, it might be something worth thinking about.
Thanks for your time.
If you have any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to share them with me. I absolutely love feedback, and good discussion.
That’s all for now. Be careful out there! This world is getting crazier every day!
-Davis