<story><title>Paid $75k to Love a Brand on Instagram – Is It an Ad?</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/30/business/media/instagram-ads-marketing-kardashian.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Sneakos</author><text>&amp;gt;Have we really measurably improved the world by having a huge spike in cut-throat razor sales?&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s not the point. The point is that these types of advertisements are effective. In an world where standard ads are being phased out, these types of product placements are becoming more and more necessary. Adding an ad label will eventually make these types of ads obsolete. And it is very naive to think that ads aren&amp;#x27;t necessary in today&amp;#x27;s society.</text></item><item><author>munificent</author><text>&amp;gt; For example, after the James Bond movie &amp;quot;Skyfall&amp;quot;, in which he shaves using a cut-throat razor, razor sales were boosted by 405%. I guarantee you if they had a #ad label during that scene, we would not have seen the same effects.&lt;p&gt;And would that have been a bad thing? Have we really measurably improved the world by having a huge spike in cut-throat razor sales?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; But that doesn&amp;#x27;t mean those involved have to make it blatantly obvious.&lt;p&gt;Why not? What&amp;#x27;s so great about advertising that it&amp;#x27;s OK to give it free reign to play around with human psychology and influence peoples&amp;#x27; behavior without them even being aware of it?</text></item><item><author>Sneakos</author><text>The problem with finding someone to like your product is that it&amp;#x27;s much more efficient to get support from people who don&amp;#x27;t like your product but are popular, then it is get support from people who like your product, but don&amp;#x27;t reach a large audience. Business-wise, it&amp;#x27;s smarter to attempt the former than the latter.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Audiences &amp;quot;have a very visceral reaction to &amp;#x27;#ad&amp;#x27; or &amp;#x27;#spon&amp;#x27; or whatever it is, where they don&amp;#x27;t want to know people are getting paid for stuff even if they are.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;This is the biggest issue marketers have with those who are advertising their products. Even though you can logically assume that a person you follow is sponsoring products, it is more appalling to the consumer when a sponsorship is labeled with #ad, or the likes.&lt;p&gt;If everyone was truly a self-aware consumer who knew they were being manipulated, this wouldn&amp;#x27;t be a huge issue. But the fact is that the majority of people will respond much better to subtle advertisements, then ads that label themselves as an advertisement, which most people are conditioned to ignore or dislike.&lt;p&gt;For example, after the James Bond movie &amp;quot;Skyfall&amp;quot;, in which he shaves using a cut-throat razor, razor sales were boosted by 405%. I guarantee you if they had a #ad label during that scene, we would not have seen the same effects.&lt;p&gt;As for the question &amp;quot;Is it an advertisement?&amp;quot; of course it&amp;#x27;s an advertisement. But that doesn&amp;#x27;t mean those involved have to make it blatantly obvious.</text></item><item><author>Latty</author><text>I love the &amp;#x27;I wish we knew what was OK&amp;#x27; - someone viewing the content, totally blind, needs to identify it as an advert without prompting. The only way to do that is to state it, up front, in the same format as the content itself. Not hidden away in some description, not in code, plain and simple. Anything less is obviously intending to deceive, and I see no reason to give anyone leeway to try and hide sponsorship.&lt;p&gt;If you want your sponsorship to come across as real and honest, then get someone to actually like your product, and then it won&amp;#x27;t matter that they disclose it, as they&amp;#x27;ll be able to explain why they like it in a convincing way. The only reason people want to hide the &amp;#x27;sponsored&amp;#x27; element is that the product is bad, and paying people is the only way to get them to associate with it.&lt;p&gt;When I watch an Extra Credits video sponsored by a games company, it comes off as honest because it&amp;#x27;s clear that it&amp;#x27;s an advert and the content is still quality and obviously unaltered. When Purge (DOTA 2 personality), talks about DotaBuff, it still comes off as honest as he shows how he uses the service and what value it provides him. This can be done right, and is, by reputable people.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>munificent</author><text>&amp;gt; And it is very naive to think that ads aren&amp;#x27;t necessary in today&amp;#x27;s society.&lt;p&gt;I work at Google, so I fully understand how much of today&amp;#x27;s economy rests on top of advertising. But that doesn&amp;#x27;t mean society &lt;i&gt;needs&lt;/i&gt; to, just that it has &lt;i&gt;chosen&lt;/i&gt; to.&lt;p&gt;I haven&amp;#x27;t heard compelling arguments that advertising is much of a net boon to humanity. To me, it mostly looks like tools to steal my precious attention in order to make me feel bad about not having a product I didn&amp;#x27;t know I was missing out on in the first place.</text></comment>
<story><title>Paid $75k to Love a Brand on Instagram – Is It an Ad?</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/30/business/media/instagram-ads-marketing-kardashian.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Sneakos</author><text>&amp;gt;Have we really measurably improved the world by having a huge spike in cut-throat razor sales?&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s not the point. The point is that these types of advertisements are effective. In an world where standard ads are being phased out, these types of product placements are becoming more and more necessary. Adding an ad label will eventually make these types of ads obsolete. And it is very naive to think that ads aren&amp;#x27;t necessary in today&amp;#x27;s society.</text></item><item><author>munificent</author><text>&amp;gt; For example, after the James Bond movie &amp;quot;Skyfall&amp;quot;, in which he shaves using a cut-throat razor, razor sales were boosted by 405%. I guarantee you if they had a #ad label during that scene, we would not have seen the same effects.&lt;p&gt;And would that have been a bad thing? Have we really measurably improved the world by having a huge spike in cut-throat razor sales?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; But that doesn&amp;#x27;t mean those involved have to make it blatantly obvious.&lt;p&gt;Why not? What&amp;#x27;s so great about advertising that it&amp;#x27;s OK to give it free reign to play around with human psychology and influence peoples&amp;#x27; behavior without them even being aware of it?</text></item><item><author>Sneakos</author><text>The problem with finding someone to like your product is that it&amp;#x27;s much more efficient to get support from people who don&amp;#x27;t like your product but are popular, then it is get support from people who like your product, but don&amp;#x27;t reach a large audience. Business-wise, it&amp;#x27;s smarter to attempt the former than the latter.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Audiences &amp;quot;have a very visceral reaction to &amp;#x27;#ad&amp;#x27; or &amp;#x27;#spon&amp;#x27; or whatever it is, where they don&amp;#x27;t want to know people are getting paid for stuff even if they are.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;This is the biggest issue marketers have with those who are advertising their products. Even though you can logically assume that a person you follow is sponsoring products, it is more appalling to the consumer when a sponsorship is labeled with #ad, or the likes.&lt;p&gt;If everyone was truly a self-aware consumer who knew they were being manipulated, this wouldn&amp;#x27;t be a huge issue. But the fact is that the majority of people will respond much better to subtle advertisements, then ads that label themselves as an advertisement, which most people are conditioned to ignore or dislike.&lt;p&gt;For example, after the James Bond movie &amp;quot;Skyfall&amp;quot;, in which he shaves using a cut-throat razor, razor sales were boosted by 405%. I guarantee you if they had a #ad label during that scene, we would not have seen the same effects.&lt;p&gt;As for the question &amp;quot;Is it an advertisement?&amp;quot; of course it&amp;#x27;s an advertisement. But that doesn&amp;#x27;t mean those involved have to make it blatantly obvious.</text></item><item><author>Latty</author><text>I love the &amp;#x27;I wish we knew what was OK&amp;#x27; - someone viewing the content, totally blind, needs to identify it as an advert without prompting. The only way to do that is to state it, up front, in the same format as the content itself. Not hidden away in some description, not in code, plain and simple. Anything less is obviously intending to deceive, and I see no reason to give anyone leeway to try and hide sponsorship.&lt;p&gt;If you want your sponsorship to come across as real and honest, then get someone to actually like your product, and then it won&amp;#x27;t matter that they disclose it, as they&amp;#x27;ll be able to explain why they like it in a convincing way. The only reason people want to hide the &amp;#x27;sponsored&amp;#x27; element is that the product is bad, and paying people is the only way to get them to associate with it.&lt;p&gt;When I watch an Extra Credits video sponsored by a games company, it comes off as honest because it&amp;#x27;s clear that it&amp;#x27;s an advert and the content is still quality and obviously unaltered. When Purge (DOTA 2 personality), talks about DotaBuff, it still comes off as honest as he shows how he uses the service and what value it provides him. This can be done right, and is, by reputable people.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Latty</author><text>Necessary by who&amp;#x27;s definition? Sure, I like the way adverts allow me not to pay for content directly (or ask people to pay for things I produce directly). That&amp;#x27;s great. However, some things I value more than that. Misleading advertising is too far, I won&amp;#x27;t accept it.&lt;p&gt;If advertising isn&amp;#x27;t effective enough to be worth doing, fine. We&amp;#x27;ll find other ways. Yeah, micropayments have never caught on, but maybe there is an alternative, or maybe they won&amp;#x27;t be so bad once we accept we need a replacement for adverts.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m willing to bet non-misleading ads will still be worth enough the whole ecosystem won&amp;#x27;t collapse.</text></comment>