I’m working thru a marketing cert via Google rn (working with the enemy) and I just learned how many ads we’re exposed to on a daily basis!

Any guesses?

Tap for spoiler

4000-10000

ads per day !!!

  • ButteryMonkey@piefed.socialEnglish
    3·
    16 hours ago

    Boy idk, with my pihole I can see all the places where ads are supposed to be on articles and stuff and there are a freakin ton of breaks and funky formatting.

    That’s not including highlighted word ads, video ads at the top and sides of the screen (especially the ones that follow you) and sponsored results in every search (Google, Amazon, etc.). The top result bar of the main used search engine, Google, shows you an entire scrollable row of related product ads, followed by another block of ad links after. When you buy things online, there’s often a pop up about related products or things you might like before you check out, which is 6-12 more ads. That’s not including the multiple ads that may already be present on each product page.

    I can’t comment on social media sites in depth, but there they likely have static ads in addition to volumes of sponsored posts, plus a solid chunk of the “content” is also advertising.

    Does this include real life and not just the internet? Radio ads, gas pump ads, billboards, ticker messages and printing on vehicles are all ads as well. Oh, and all the clothing with logos.

    I absolutely believe 4,000-10,000 for an average person without blockers who uses normal sites. Video ads probably make up a relatively small proportion but ads are -everywhere-.

    • cabbage@piefed.socialEnglish
      2·
      15 hours ago

      Take radio ads - if they last 10 seconds each and you listen to the radio non-stop all day, 2/3rd of the content on the radio would have to be ads. If they play 2 minutes of pop music for every 30 seconds of ads you just can’t reach these numbers.

      It’s true that you can get several ads all at once online, I just still find it hard to believe one could reach 10 000 in a day without basically making an effort. At least in terms of visible ads - trackers is another thing.

      But maybe I’m just out of touch. Recently I generally forget to install ad blockers because I have pretty much stopped using the majority of the web.

      • ButteryMonkey@piefed.socialEnglish
        2·
        14 hours ago

        If you take each medium in isolation, no you can’t reach those numbers.

        But for a whole day across all the various ways advertisers have found to shove shit in our faces? I just think you might be under-estimating how many ads are out there, or maybe not considering all the things that count as ads, especially in meatspace, and how little most people actually do to avoid them, if they can even be avoided.

        Like that 30 seconds for every 2 minutes of music is often while driving and seeing billboards and vehicle advertisements and stuff as well.

        • cabbage@piefed.socialEnglish
          3·
          14 hours ago

          I’m European and I only went to the US this year (first and last time), and it’s true I was weirded out by the amount of billboards. But still, the same billboard usually stays within your line of vision for a little while.

          And if they really count it in such a crazy way by knowing what’s in everyones field of vision all the time, that’s a crazy approximation from their side.

          I think it’s likely they instead measure how mamy ads come through the web to your device, which is different from how many you actually see. Like an ad at the bottom of a website you don’t scroll through and stuff like that.