Ad Skipper
Awhile ago I was telling my dad* how I’m annoyed that radio stations all play their commercials at the same time – I am changing stations because I don’t want to hear a commercial.
He said he hadn’t noticed that. He said, GASP!, he doesn’t change the station when a commercial comes on.
WHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT?!
Are you an ad skipper?
You know, changing the station when a commercial comes on, fast forwarding if you have one of those fancy DVR things, recycling catalogs, ignoring the ads in your email, on Facebook, on blogs…
Well, you probably guessed it, but I sure am. Can’t stand them on the radio. Don’t watch much TV so that’s not a problem. I ignore them online as much as possible. I have noticed a huge increase of people selling stuff on Facebook, and more and more sponsored posts on blogs, which I mostly just skip over. I just, sigh, want to peruse the internets without trying to be sold something. Is that too much to ask?!
Ha ha, yes, I realize it is. I realize ads are what make it so certain sites can run. So that we can listen to music, and watch tv. So people can make money. I get it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t try to block it out. I have enough “things**.” I just cleaned out my closet and had three bags for Goodwill! This happens every year! That doesn’t seem… right.
And there are only two places I don’t skip ads – in running magazines (fun to look at new products) and in local area bulletin boards (never know what you’ll see there!).
*During one of those long runs where he has to listen to me babble for hours… sorry, Dad!
**Of course, not all ads are for things (some are for experiences), but a high amount seem to be.
Themocracy
Oh, I definitely skip ads on tv and radio whenever possible. I’ve gotten so used to it that I find myself pressing the fast forward button when we’re watching live tv and being confused when it doesn’t work!
Ha ha ha! Can you do that “live” with some systems? Like if you start watching it late or something?
Yep! Sometimes we’ll start watching a show late on purpose so we can build up enough lead time it fast forward through ads.
I’m too lazy to skip ads on the radio. Also, I’m super paranoid about getting distracted while driving so I try to mess with the radio as little as possible. I love looking at ads in running magazines too…it’s nice to know what new products and races are out there!
We have a button on the steering wheel to change stations so I toggle through that… then get mad when all 6 presets are playing commercials!
It’s SO fun to read about new races! 🙂
Yes! I am totally an ad skipper. We have Sirius Radio in the car, on which our favorite station is ad-free. We skip ads by watching on the DVR and since the ads on the internet are pretty much tailored to my likes, I glance at them. I’m really not a fan of advertising. I already know what I like and shop for them or at those stores regardless of advertising.
Like you, I do look at them in running mags. Love seeing new shoes and dream races!
Do any of the stations play ads on Sirius? For some reason I didn’t think they did.
What about all those email ad things? Like the Clymb and that? 😉
I am an ad skipper too. Minus community bulletin boards because I’ve found some cool stuff on those like an ad for a time machine. (Should have followed up on that!)
I don’t generally watch live TV, and ff through the commercials on dvr.
I like the ads in magazines too.
Oh and nothing makes me close a blog faster than some dumb “ad” or “product review” Also makes
Me not want to read those blogs again…
Ha! You might like the movie “Safety Not Guaranteed” if you found interest in that ad 😉
Yeah. I was going to get in to the blog thing more… but decided to keep it light. I have been hearing from SO MANY people though, about how their friends are trying to sell them stuff on FB. Have you seen that?!
I HATE ads. They are horrible and I will just turn off the radio when all the stations are on commercial at the same time. There is a reason that I love spotify and netflix!
I need to try Spotify at some point! 🙂
I’m right there with ya. Hate ’em. I’ve got XM Radio so that’s not an issue anymore, but I very rarely watch live TV so I can fast forward through the commercials and rarely even glance twice at the junk mail in my mailbox before I toss it in the recycling. I’m particularly miffed right now with the mail… all the political ads!!!
Ugh. Such a waste of paper, right? It makes me bonkers!
Ha, I’m the opposite of an ad skipper, at least when it comes to the radio. It actually drives me crazy when I’m in the car with someone and they change the station every time ads come on. I am, however, an enormous e-mail ad skipper. Very rarely do I click on e-mailed ads.
Maybe we discussed this but I’m with Bethany on this one. I use to ride with someone every now and then that was always changing the station back and forth, drove me crazy.
You did tell me that. Who was that? 😉 Remember me telling you about a certain BIL doing it? LOL
I don’t mind skipping the ads, I guess, cause I do it myself, but you saying that reminds of me of someone who skips through all the songs, and I am like KEEP YOUR HANDS ON THE WHEEL!
Email ads go to my junk yahoo acct. And I usually hit “unsubscribe.” LOL
I can’t stand ads. We cut our cable last spring, so I only watch Master Chef on Monday’s I don’t watch tv but find myself even getting irritated during that ONE hour, LOL.
I have also noticed the radio stations getting together to torture everyone at the same time with commercials, so sometimes I’ll plug my itunes in and jam to my own tunes.
That is when I tend to plug mine in, too 😉
So after replying to this post I was driving home from work yesterday listening to a commercial…I quickly went to flip the channel, and the SAME commercial was playing on a different station. WHAAAAA? LOL
I am totally not surprised! Those bastardos! LOL
I’m a BIG ad skipper. But have you also noticed how on rare occasion you can find two stations playing the same as at the same time so you can flip back and forth and miss nothing? Weirdness.
Yes! So odd! How do they do that? LOL
I hate commercials too…so horrible
Agreed! I’m totally an ad skipper. I’m really getting sick of people trying to sell me things on Facebook. I had a high school friend recently create a group trying to sell mascara and everyone seems to be selling the shakeology drinks lately.
Sigh. Isn’t it getting kind of out of hand on FB? Something happened to me on Tuesday night on there that prompted me to write this. I understand people want to make money, but it’s super annoying 🙁
Radio ads are the bane of my existence! I absolutely hate hate hate them and always switch the channel. The worst is when all my programmed stations are on commercial break. Seriously, I’m so glad I’m not the only one who feels this way. With that said, I suspect people probably hate riding in cars with me because I also have the bad habit of checking every station’s current song playing before settling on one…after every song! I’m sure it’s highly annoying.
I work for malls, so basically my entire professional life is devoted to getting you to buy “stuff.” But me personally? I have recently been on a purging kick, trying to get rid of stuff, and when it comes to clothing, lately everything I’ve acquired has been secondhand. I sometimes skip ads, but sometimes I pay attention to them because I’m a marketer and that’s my job. The personalization of digital ads is both freaky and cool to me.
I would love to hear about the buying psychology. Do they try to target the people like me who actively try to avoid ads? Or do they move on?
LOL, Rachel and I were laughing about how she started getting ads for acoustical panels after we talked about it in an email. Creeepy!
With the digital ads, they use cookies or whatever to track your likes, even down to specific items you’ve looked at. I’m sure you’ve noticed that you’ll see ads for things you looked at on Amazon or Zappos on other sites. They call that “remarketing.” So they try to outsmart you! Or FB ads can be targeted based on the pages you like. So if you “like” Nordstrom, Macy’s might target an ad at you, thinking you’d also like Macy’s. Etc. It’s just freaky that all of this stuff is tracked. Oh and the email stuff, creepy! I assume that was on Gmail? Although I guess why wouldn’t Yahoo and Hotmail copy that same model.
Oh yeah, I have totally noticed that stuff. It is freaky. I need to clear my cookies more often 😉
It was gmail! Yahoo and hotmail just still have skeevy ads. They aren’t that smart, lol. I have an ad blocker on gmail though.
As for the mall-specific marketing, we try to look at our average shopper and keep targeting those folks. Get them to shop more often and spend more money during their shopping trips (mobile push alerts when we know you’re in our mall [if you downloaded our app] … more freaky tracking!), and position ourselves in a way so they’ll pick us over our similar competitors. Or, try to make in-store shopping more appealing than online shopping. Gap doesn’t care if you shop in store or online, but the mall only sees revenue if you shop in store. So a big thing lately is how to improve the customer experience.
Are people going back to the malls more? Or is that still on the decline? I keep running in to articles about that.
This has actually been a topic in the office (and how to communicate against that idea). If what we’re told is true, folks are still shopping in-store the same amount (90%). It used to be that the remaining 10% of shopping was predominatly by catalog, now it’s mostly online. But the in-store purchases haven’t declined. Also, a lot of online purchases start with in-store window shopping. But as for malls themselves, it has seemed to evolved a little bit. There are more “life style centers” and “street level retail” than strictly malls.
Let’s see….I prefer to change the radio station when an ad comes on and get annoyed when the stations are ALL playing ads. Thankfully I’m not in the car much these days and that’s the only place I listen to the radio. I do use Pandora and haven’t ponied up the money for the ad-free version so occasionally I get ads there that I can’t skip. So I just try to tune them out mentally.
I don’t really read ads in magazines or in the newspaper and we don’t watch anything but Netflix or shows/movies we already own so no ads there. I’m always surprised when we go somewhere and are watching “live” tv! It’s like I forget about commercials.
I use Google Chrome at work now and haven’t installed the ad blocker (there is one, right? Still getting used to Chrome) so I keep seeing ads on Facebook after I go to a store’s website. That’s annoying.
As for sponsored posts, I do have two coming up but I try REALLY hard not to do ones that don’t have anything to do with me. I need to be interested in the topic. For example, one of the upcoming ones is for jeans at American Eagle Outfitters. Since I can wear jeans all the time at my new job and don’t really own a lot of jeans I thought this was perfect! And if the jeans don’t fit or suck I’ll be sure to be honest about that!
I have actually stopped watching “live” t.v. (i.e. tv shows when they actually air) because I can’t stand commercials. And when I watch stuff online, I usually open another browser (FB, email) during commercials so I can ignore them. Blah.
I listen to Spotify at work, and they play so many ads. It drives me NUTS. I always want to turn the volume off, but Spotify pauses the ad when you do that. It almost makes me want to buy the premium, ad-free subscription, but I also don’t want to give in to their game. Instead, I just take my headphones off until the ad is over, which is still annoying.
Ugh, that is SUPER annoying that they pause the ads when you change the volume! BARF!