From my reading of the book (and the exerpt you have mentioned here), I'd agree that System 2 is in play when looking at the Timeline; it does create some cognitive load.
However, I can't remember anything backing your assertion that System 2 is more susceptible to advertising. In fact, my reading is the opposite: System 1 cannot help but read words or look at images, and it is easily swayed by various advertising techniques. It would be System 2 that processes what's happening, realizes you are trying to be sold something that you probably don't want/need, then rejects it. Isn't it a lack of engagement of System 2 that leads people to instinctively click ads or follow spam links?
(edited and fixed after accidental early posting. edit2: added URLs)
> does an ad being shown next to something objectionable transfer some of that negative sentiment to the brand?
Yes, it does because the negative sentiment will be added to the possible results returned by "System 1"[1][2] thinking that tends to be very fast at approximate searches of long term memory and applying energy saving simplifications/heuristics. System 1 strongly favors fast lookup times over accuracy; this is very useful when you need to decide quickly if that thing you just saw around the corner was a bear or just a strangely shaped shrubbery. Wasting a bit of energy running away from shrubbery is a better survival strategy than waiting for an accurate analysis from System 2 while the bear eats you.
The question isn't if the brand will be negatively affected - it will. What we don't know is how this is the size of the effect, which probably varies wildly due to many different factors.
Are you sure? Everyone says that they are “immune” to advertising (or propaganda), and yet here we are where the collective result shows that it works, surprisingly well too. Another theory could be that people just get the causal order wrong:
ad display => subconscious influence, nudge => eventual product purchase, mention etc => recognized ad => spooky feeling
Ads also physically influence the world. More humans become aware of something other humans want them to be aware of, more people end up buying some things (thereby incentivizing more of them to be created) or spending their lives on the most addictive mobile gambling thing or whatever. Whereas a system that just lets people say "this thing entertained me enough for 0.00023% of my economic output for the year doesn't do anything else, and deciding typing in how much something is worth to you is work. Not a lot of work, but it's still work that might even be worth more than your micro donation, depending on how you value your time and the neurons you dedicate to thinking about it. So obviously the system that actually does something is more viable.
That is like saying the taste of good food is an attack on our reward system. Attention works that way because it is often helpful.
On a normal day advertising is pretty useless. When the world is changing it is a very effective way to find that out. It is part of the system that drives rapid improvement.
Not OP, but the truth is that everyone is highly susceptible to advertising and other methods of mental priming. It is probably true that people are susceptible at different levels, though. However, the brain and our environment interact in highly complex ways that affect our behavior a great deal, and this is what advertising is designed to target. That's why a predominant advertising strategy is to equate the product being advertised with social status, something humans have evolved to be very sensitive to (and other social organisms too).
If you're interested in this stuff, I'd recommend the following books:
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky
Ads work on the brain on many levels. Often affecting us below conscious recall. They work on us even if we don't like them.
For example a feel good video from a car company won't make us go out and buy the car. That's not the intention. The aim is not for you to click through right then and spend. The intention is about feeling of the brand. So maybe in 2 years time when you have forgotten the specific ad and are in a position of trading in your old car you will choose this brand of car compared to a similar one from a company that didn't advertise.
Ads are worse than we think. They work on many levels to manipulate us.
"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half."
--- John Wanamaker (1838 - 1922)
This is why advertising has been such a profitable business. That's because targeting of traditional advertising system is not good. As a result, traditional marketing has to be attention-driven. You have no better choice other than throwing trillions of dollars to attract attentions, and hopefully several percent of the attracted attentions will be finally converted to your new customers so that your business can continuously run. As a matter of fact, a huge amount of your marketing costs are completely wasted, and it is necessary due to low efficiency of the advertising model. This well-known fact is clearly shown that the low efficient classical display advertising model need be disrupted and replaced.
Fortunately, with the help of Internet and advancement of information processing technology, targeting will be significantly improved, and it has to be improved. However, it could not be attention-based, because attention is intrinsically low efficient on targeting. It has to be intention-based, which is intrinsically well targeted and accurate. For instance, with prior knowledge of your intention on buying some orange juice in front of a Trader Joe's, I will recommend you some good juices. It will be interesting information to me instead of advertisements. On the contrary, it will be totally annoying to me if you shout out at me about some high-end computers just because you know I'm a computer science student or a software programmer, but you don't know I just bought a super cool Macbook last week and don't need a new computer in next few months or even years.
To solve the targeting issue, intention-based marketing systems will be an ideal alternative to current dominant attention-driven marketing systems. Attracting attention is surely helpful. But it has to be complementary, not the primary driving force. It will be intention-based and intention-driven systems that can significantly improve targeting accuracy and marketing efficiency. That is the future!
Right, advertising is a form of disseminating information, but the issue is that there are limited resources to process all this information in the world.
What ads do is forcibly take my attention and direct my resources towards processing their content without my permission.
Sure, I can look away but I need to exert effort (even if it is the slightest bit).
Processing what they want to tell me makes me more informed about their product (as opposed to their competitors) which, if their ad wasn't terrible, will make me less uncertain about it.
This easily makes a number of people more likely to buy it since it will feel familiar, thus making this company better off even if their competitor had a better, but at first more unfamiliar product.
Hypothesis: most of advertising has always been fake. The subscription numbers of newspapers did not equal the number of people seeing your ad, and even if they did see it they probably didn't pay much attention. The 70's TV-watcher would use the commercial break to go to the restroom. People listening to a 30's radio serial would talk to each other about it during the ad, I bet. Anything driven by ads, is inherently going to be mostly fake, since it is not usually information that the user wants, but you're trying to convince the user that they want it. Which is easier, forcing the user to pay attention to the ad, or convincing the person paying for the ad, that it happened when it did not? The latter will always be easier.
But with advertising, the attention transfer is involuntary. The user is always trying to spend their attention on something else, and they aren't getting what they pay for. If attention is currency then advertising is clearly bait-and-switch fraud.
Even when people know that things are ads they are influenced by them. The BS works for the same reason that ads work.
It's like humans experience something (see an ad) and it makes them feel something (ad uses cute dog) and they remember that feeling the next time they see that brand/ad/initial stimuli. Like seeing something triggers a mini-replay in the brain.
It might be a problem with my assumptions. Could you elaborate on the "people do want to see ads" part, please? Personally, I'm having a hard time imagining why people would (actively) want to see (on-line) adverts.
I can't find it in a quick 2 minute search, but I seem to recall a study that concluded that people who thought they were unaffected by advertising were actually MORE susceptible. Which makes a sort of intuitive sense. If someone is aware they can be manipulated they can make a conscious effort to counteract it. Someone who assumes they are immune won't.
I found the linked article about ads more interesting than the post itself. It's an insight that makes a lot of sense but I hadn't considered at all before.
I agree. Contextual advertising is less intrusive. What I also believe is that it is also very relevant and there is a debate about whether hyper targeted advertising actually drives more sales.
I am, thankfully, pretty distant from things advertising these days, but one of the few things that stuck, and one of the first bits of advice is to move away from the factual type 1, to the vague aspirational type 2 on the grounds it works far better. I seem to remember one popular book picking on example type 1 ads from a newspaper or yellow pages and turning the boring lists of features into the hollow promises^W implications of type 2.
Which is essentially admitting it's very good manipulation so close to lying it should carry a warning or regulation.
It's the former type that's sometimes quite popular - like in the back of old computer or hobby magazines - precisely because it's handy for discovering new things.
TL;DR Type 2 is what marketers and advertisers do, type 1 is what a lawyer, gardener or software engineer might produce to sell their product.
It sure can't be explained by the fact that ad delivery systems are seldom static and are continually being tweaked based on the latest research....oh wait, it can, but you just go ahead and pick whatever is expedient with your beliefs.
However, I can't remember anything backing your assertion that System 2 is more susceptible to advertising. In fact, my reading is the opposite: System 1 cannot help but read words or look at images, and it is easily swayed by various advertising techniques. It would be System 2 that processes what's happening, realizes you are trying to be sold something that you probably don't want/need, then rejects it. Isn't it a lack of engagement of System 2 that leads people to instinctively click ads or follow spam links?
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