I attended a sports event (SkateAmerica) recently. I was shocked that they played commercials. At the arena. Not just before things started, but in between competitors while they totaled scores.
And they weren't even topical commercials. Just...commercials. I'm a cord-cutter so I've been fairly isolated and I found the whole thing jarring. It did not encourage me to spend more time or money to give people more chances to advertise to me. (Though the event itself was otherwise great)
Fellow cord cutter. Commercials are very strange. Like seriously bizarre. Once you've stepped away for awhile you can't re-acclimatize.
Talking cars, dancing animations, crazy graphics...it's all just absurd nonsense.
It's like the the worst of a Salvador Dali painting.
My daughter grew up with Netflix (no commercials) and Hulu (no commercials specifically on kids programming, at least as of a year ago). She went to a sleepover when she was 6 and got incredibly confused when they were watching cable and the show stopped and a bunch of random toy videos showed up. She played it off in front of her friends, but asked me what was up with those videos first thing when she got home. She just couldn't understand why her movie would be interrupted like that.
... She also started pestering me for about a dozen different, explicitly named toys. Something she had never done before.
People who are either older than me (TV and radio era) or younger than me (mobile apps) look at me like I'm crazy when I seriously suggest ending all advertising. It's a terrible blight on society and you don't really recognize it until you haven't seen an ad for a month or two. (I use Firefox on my phone with an adblocker, and I don't use apps that show ads. I don't watch cable. I really have not seen an ad in I don't know how long.)
I can relate. YouTube has increased their ads lately, and I really can't imagine watching ads any more. I currently turn down the sound and avert my gaze for the duration of the ad. I guess it's a push towards the paid service.
The problem with that is, as other people said last time it was up for discussion, that if you are willing to pay to avoid ads, you are the demographic that is even more attractive to advertisers, meaning they will pay you even more to reach you.
The thing I don't get is, there has to be products out there that are actually useful, but I don't see advertising for those*
*exception: some sleeping headphones I saw in an app on Twitter, but they fail to meet my requirement: I want to put them on, go to sleep, and not hear a noise after that. I will pay 1k+ for this, iff they really work.
And they weren't even topical commercials. Just...commercials. I'm a cord-cutter so I've been fairly isolated and I found the whole thing jarring. It did not encourage me to spend more time or money to give people more chances to advertise to me. (Though the event itself was otherwise great)