this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2024
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Privacy

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I've noticed that ads are absolutely everywhere, and wanted to post this to disillusion some of the places we see ads but don't realize. It would be harder to make a list of places you don't see ads.

Websites

The most common place to see ads is on nearly every website you visit. It's usually the most intrusive, especially with popups.

Books

The very end page of books and back cover of books will often advertise books written by the same author.

Billboards

Billboards along busy streets and highways often display static or moving ads. A notable mention is its role in the book Fahrenheit 451, where it was theorized that as cars get faster ads would have to be stretched out so people can see them better at high speeds.

Operating systems

Some Android operating systems, as well as Windows, show ads in a non intrusive way.

Apps

Especially mobile games, ads will be displayed anywhere possible, and sometimes used as a reward system. Social media apps display ads while scrolling, and even messaging apps will have some sort of promotion like requesting donations.

Mail

Deemed "junk mail", companies will collect and sell the address of residents in order to send useless advertisements to the residents. This can't usually be opted out of. In my opinion, this should be illegal.

Phone calls

Especially when put on hold, businesses will interject occasional advertisements in between the low quality jazz music. Customer support will also often advertise products to you while you are being assisted.

Newspapers

Newspapers have entire pages filled with ads. Some of these are promotional coupons that can be used to get overpriced products for a regular price.

Magazines

Magazines are fundamentally only used to advertise products in a passive way. The chances you actually have a meaningful experience with a magazine are slim. They are often placed in waiting rooms as a form of entertainment for people who don't want to use a phone at the time.

Music

Between songs in radio broadcasts, long ad breaks will be placed. Music streaming services will also inject ads between songs. Even the hosts of podcasts will have sponsorship segments.

Disk movies

DVD and Blueray disks will often come with ads baked in to advertise "upcoming" movies. That is, until 10 years passes and Peter Pan becomes a funny ad to see.

Movie theaters

Between movie showings, movie theaters will display long ad segments while you wait for the movie to begin. Some very long movies are even split in half, with an ad break in between for you to empty your wallet and refill your popcorn.

Bleachers

In sporting events, moving ads will be displayed under bleachers. Fun fact, these ads change depending on which channel you are watching the game from.

Commercials

Between live television, you will get 1-3 minutes of commercials and then watch the shortest segment of your actual show.

Baked into videos

Videos such as YouTube videos will have sponsorships and self-promotion baked in, causing the drastic rise of SponsorBlock.

Torrents

Some torrented files will also have text or image files attached advertising other torrenting services.

Vehicles

Buses, vans, cars, and others are often plastered with ads for different services. If you're in a car wreck, call emergency services first, not an auto repair shop.

Social media

Social media is one of the go-to methods of marketing. Besides the ads you see while doom scrolling, many pictures and videos uploaded will simply be ads for products.

Gas stations

Plastered all over gas stations, and apparently displayed on some gas pump screens, ads are placed everywhere. Is that not more of a fire hazard than eight closely packed gasoline tanks?

Posters

Pasted inside schools, workplaces, plastered on power poles and sides of buildings, posters are cheap to make and placed everywhere.

Instruction manuals

When buying a product, besides impossibly small print, some instruction manuals will have ads pasted in certain sections. Some devices like mice, keyboards, and headphones advertise proprietary software required to get the full extent of your product.

Wearables

T-Shirts, pins, bracelets, hats, and all other kinds of merch will display company names for everyone to see. Ironically, companies see these kinds of clothing as inappropriate attire on the job.

Pens

Another kind of merch, nearly every free pen has the name and contact info of businesses on it.

Redirects to downloads

Some websites will redirect you to ad websites before beginning your download. Lots of these websites (such as the infamous AdFly) are malicious and will encourage you to download malicious software.

Grocery stores

Solicitors in store, ads during checkout, product placement all throughout the store, ads over the intercom, nearly every type of ad imaginable can be found in grocery stores.

Speakers on public transport

Some subways and buses will play ads over the speakers while you travel. No napping on the bus, we want you awake to hear our ads!

Emails

Spam emails are frequently sent to people, so commonly an entire folder is dedicated to housing them. Even places you legitimately gave your email to will send you spam.

Comments and chat messages

People will often self promote their accounts on various platforms. This is a common place for scams to arise.

Solicitors

Solicitors will come on your private property just to sell their products to you. Just when you thought ads could never come knocking on your doorstep, they did.

Lawns

Lawn signs for services such as lawn care or political messages will be placed on people's property as a form of willing advertisement. Flowers look a lot better than rust and plastic.

Airplanes

Some airplanes will pull long banners with ads behind them. This is usually surrounding sporting events.

Brand names

Products produced by any company will have brand names on them. This makes it easy for advertising to flow through word-of-mouth. But seriously, where did you get that shirt from?

Search engines

Almost all search engines will display ad websites before legitimate search results

This post

Even this post had an advertisement in it that I bet most of you missed. I passively advertised "SponsorBlock" under "Baked into videos". If you missed it, that's ok. Advertising has become so common that people have become desensitized to it.

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[–] nave@lemmy.ca 39 points 8 months ago (1 children)

But you didn’t advertise Sponserblock? By that logic when an Amber Alert mentions a “black Honda civic” it would be an ad for Honda.

[–] Charger8232@lemmy.ml 16 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If you consider raising awareness about a brand name to be an advertisement, then it does. I do see your point, though.

[–] stebo02@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 8 months ago

I think you should differentiate between paid promotions or recommending a free service

[–] tuckerm@supermeter.social 26 points 8 months ago (2 children)

When I was maybe five years old, I was with my parents at the grocery store, and there was an advertisement for Reba (a TV show starring Reba McEntire) on those little plastic sticks that you place on the conveyor belt to separate your items from the other person's items.

I have absolutely no idea why I have remembered this fact for so long, or even why it stuck out to me as a five year old. But there was an INCH of space available, and someone had the business idea to slap an advertisement on it.

[–] Scolding0513@sh.itjust.works 8 points 8 months ago

I remember those too haha, some were intentionally made to be a lot larger so you could put multiple ads on them

[–] Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 8 months ago

Shopping carts too. It's insidious.

[–] anothermember@lemmy.zip 16 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I strongly believe nuisance advertising should be fought separately from privacy concerns. Both are valid concerns but need a different approach. Advertising based on website visits that collect user data is privacy intrusive, but an ad baked into a YouTube video is probably not (regardless of whether it's annoying or not).

[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I would argue that advertising is not just a privacy concern or a nuisance, it often also influences people to make decisions that are highly damaging to their health, the environment, democracy in their country,...

[–] tuckerm@supermeter.social 3 points 8 months ago

I agree with your point, but I also agree with the parent post as well. Advertising and tracking can be considered separate issues while also both being bad. I'd also say tracking is almost always bad, whereas there are advertisements that I think are perfectly fine.

People have been talking about how manipulative advertising can be long before targeting individuals was possible. (Like Joe Camel.)

But I also think that there is a whole new level of maliciousness to these highly-targeted ad services that can show you specific content based on a personality profile, formed about you by aggregating data across many different areas of your life. It's related to advertising in general, but takes it to such an invasive extreme that it's worth singling out on its own.

[–] cosmicrookie@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

Exactly, I was ok with Facebook showing me untargetted ads. But when they removed the option and forced me to either accept targeted ads or pay €30 a moth to go free, i deleted my accounts on all of metas platforms. Its more lonely but i get to read a lot more books and have less futile discussions

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online 2 points 8 months ago

Yes. Advertising can be done in a way that it isn't at all a violation if your privacy.

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

My fave is the giant unskippable ad for s1 stargate atlantis on DVD on the fucking season one stargate atlantis boxed set

[–] bbuez@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

Well, you know, just in case you haven't heard of it

[–] ffsoda@lemmy.ml 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Absolutely everywhere sadly.

This comment is sponsored by displate.

[–] delirious_owl@discuss.online 9 points 8 months ago

Fun fact: in India the barriers that police put up in the city (like a steel barrier to prevent people from going in an area with a politician or an uncovered manhole) have ads on them. Usually for banks.

This means the companies openly pay the police. To me, when I see those ads, my thoughts are: oh thats the evil company that owns the police and is responsible for their repression.

[–] lambchop@lemm.ee 8 points 8 months ago

I just found an ad in a fortune cookie with my take-out last week.

[–] tuckerm@supermeter.social 7 points 8 months ago

The progress bar screen during an AMD driver update. Cycles between ads for video games, ads for CPUs, and a "how are we doing" survey.

[–] Vej@lemm.ee 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Advertising actively pisses me off. I went from IT is cool, to I need a break from these ads/techology on the weekend and I go hiking. I throw my phone in airplane mode and go. It's liberating. I'm expecting ads here too.

[–] Shape4985@lemmy.ml 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Sad to see ads in so many places. I hate it. If an add is shown too much or its too invasive I'll never get that product out of spite

[–] Murdoc@sh.itjust.works 7 points 8 months ago

Not just spite. How do I know if my purchase decision is my own, or has been influenced by ads?

[–] Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee 5 points 8 months ago

The only ads I see are physical ones on the sides of the road and in stores. All the rest I either block or manage to avoid by some other means.

[–] Atelopus-zeteki@kbin.run 4 points 8 months ago

No advertising on Craigslist, Government websites, Brennan Translations (https://brennantranslation.wordpress.com/).

[–] Boozilla@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Pitcher's mounds. When you watch a baseball game on TV, they often super-impose an ad on the damned dirt. Also graphics at the bottom of the screen will often have an ad box.

Every available inch of visible space must be covered in an ad. It makes me resent those brands.

In particular, I stew over insurance companies spending millions on celebrities in commercials and prime time slots. That's money that could have gone to pay claims that were denied, or lowered their ridiculous premiums.

And I'll never understand people who purchase expensive t-shirts or caps with some corporate brand's logo splashed across it. They are paying more to be a human billboard. Are we supposed to be impressed with their taste in something millions of others have bought?

[–] tuckerm@supermeter.social 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Basketball courts too, newly added in the last couple years. There's one sponsor logo physically printed on the court, and one that's digitally added for the TV broadcast (tailored to your location, of course).

I was watching a game a few weeks ago and the superimposed logo kept screwing up. It was moving with the camera instead of being fixed on the ground, and sometimes it wouldn't be cropped around the players, it would just go on top of them. It was kind of amusing. They removed it after a few minutes.

[–] Ebby@lemmy.ssba.com 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Lots of those are ads, but some are branding which is a requirement for legal purposes.

Apple is going to mark their products Apple, Dell is going to mark their products Dell, but if Apple marks their products Dell, fireworks happen.

[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works 4 points 8 months ago

Technically you aren't required to mark your products at all for legal purpose, certainly not in a highly visible way unlike e.g. the small print that describes voltages and similar stuff on a usually hidden bit on the bottom of the product.

[–] Gooey0210@sh.itjust.works 4 points 8 months ago

Nowhere explicitly at least

I don't consume much content, and when I see or hear an ad I get very frustrated and angry

[–] pikasaurX4@lemm.ee 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] AtariDump@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Not in dreams, no sirre!

[–] rollingflower@lemmy.kde.social 3 points 8 months ago

For me

  • shopping on crappy discounters
  • listening to podcasts
  • literally every step in a city

Nothing digital shows me ads, but going to a crappy supermarket is crazy. Most organic stores dont have any ads, its really disturbing to be in others. (But the fact that they are not able to feed humanity is a complex issue)

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 3 points 8 months ago

I don’t think you mentioned the announcements often heard in shopping centers. As long as your ears work, you’ll be exposed to these ads.

[–] circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

It's important to differentiate advertising from sharing information, generally. SponsorBlock is not a corporate product, so mentioning it is not an ad. If the idea is not to share information, then the entire internet should be avoided, but advertisements specifically are aimed at some party making money.

I do actively try and avoid ads wherever possible, mostly through the use of open-source approaches. I don't have them on my phone because of heavy modification (except technically robocalls). I don't have any on my desktop rigs because of a complete reliance on Linux. I get some on my work machine, which is a Mac, but I went with that because IT gave me two choices and Linux wasn't one of them. I know I'd have more had I gone Windows.

I don't watch traditional television, but there aren't many ways to consume corporate content without also consuming ads. I think that is a thread that ties a lot of this together. Basically, if you want to consume corporate content, you have to concede to watching advertising in some capacity, and that is by design.

I would argue that we should be able to avoid it in life generally (e.g. billboards and such, which are a constant annoyance), but aside from that, I always see ads as a tradeoff that I have no option to avoid if I want to consume certain content.

Edit:

Basically, if you want to consume corporate content, you have to concede to watching advertising in some capacity

*if you want to consume corporate content legally

[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I get zero ads on my windows boxes. It's not hard to do.

[–] circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Windows 11?

I've seen them in the start menu, and in the bloat installed without consent, and in the emails to the mandatory Microsoft account.

Edit: not sure why the downvote, unless you have some evidence that MS doesn't push ads via those channels.

[–] Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

They literally didn't even design what the start menu looks like without the bloat. It's still a giant blob, just empty.

[–] circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yeah. It seems obvious when looked at from a design standpoint. They have shifted the product into a different space.

[–] Facebones@reddthat.com 2 points 8 months ago

That's why starting with 10 and that massive push (I assume it still works) you could plug in literally any windows key and they'd go "Yea sure you have 10 now thnx"

I'm pretty sure I used an xp code for one of my rigs.

[–] strawberry@kbin.run 2 points 8 months ago

only in real life on like billboards and stuff, and the occasional sponsorship in a YouTube video if I have thst channel white listed on sponsorblock (like if they're funny) or if its one of those like "company supplied the product", which I dont mind at all

[–] cosmicrookie@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I was surprised to hear ads at the end of audio books where they mention more books by the author or similar books by the publisher

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That’s a lot like the papers that come with physical products, such as cameras or keyboards. This category of advertising isn’t particularly offensive IMO, and it’s also fairly relevant as opposed to most online ads.

[–] cosmicrookie@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

Well, IMO ads are ads. Targeted ads are not better just because they are relevant or can be ignored

[–] Etterra@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

Articles linked here, because Connect for Lemmy (Android) has no adblock fire when it opens up a link.

[–] sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.today 1 points 8 months ago

In the USA there is a culture to put stickers everywhere. These stickers tend to be for a company. Whether that be your car, benches, poles, etc.

To me I think, I paid for this product and am not sponsored by them so why would I put a giant sticker for them in my window? It's free advertising for that company