The problem is that the perception of the advertising industry at a larger scale is that it's a blood sucking industry with no thought for anything other than taking the attention of everyone away from what they were looking for and towards what the industry has been paid to help sell.
It's ironic, I think, that the advertising industry is perceived so badly.
How could the advertising industry market itself? "Our knowledge of psychologically attacking the human mind is second-only to the CIA, but we're catching up!"
Well their job is to please their clients above all else not the ad targets. That crops up a lot like enterprise software being infamously hated because it is geared at looking good to procurers and not the end user - and not even in an "annoying to deal with but it does the job efficiently and cheaply".
If you were to say working in advertising Girl Scout Cookies in Cannabis Advocate magazines you would get fired so very quickly even if it boosted their sales substantially because of the controversy.
It is part of how Google got their good reputation in the first place - they gave the people what they wanted and were loved for it. Obviously it has greyed over time since.
>Well their job is to please their clients above all else not the ad targets.
I find this comment fascinating, in that:
1. If more of the 'ad targets' (ie. consumers) knew this, then it wouldn't work so well.
2. The advertising industry, by keeping their clients happy, are treating the customers of their clients as a resource to be squeezed wherever and whenever possible, and the clients are obviously fine with this.
3. Point #2 results in the advertising industry being a lightning rod for angry anti-consumer sentiment, allowing the ad industry clients to remain relatively clean.
4. It would be 'good / right' if the ad-industry clients that sell the various products being shoved in our faces on most of the flat-surfaces to be found on the Internet could be held to account just as much as the ad industry itself, then the ad industry would have more reason to drag itself out of the sewer. See point #1.
Edited to add: @Nasrudith, just to clarify, your comment is a great point, and succinct. Well said.
The goals aren't entirely disjoint either for commercial but for cause campaigning and strong dogma they may be able to sustain the relationship indefinitely. A fanatical evangelist business owner indefinitely posting on a billboard in fiery red letters "Are you going to hell?!" on a billboard may well be counterproductive to conversion but as long as the customer is happy the advertiser doesn't care that everybody hates that billboard.
The problem is that the perception of the advertising industry at a larger scale is that it's a blood sucking industry with no thought for anything other than taking the attention of everyone away from what they were looking for and towards what the industry has been paid to help sell.
It's ironic, I think, that the advertising industry is perceived so badly.
How could the advertising industry market itself? "Our knowledge of psychologically attacking the human mind is second-only to the CIA, but we're catching up!"