Ian

wrote
Jim GM4DHJ ... wrote

Is it just me or were we able to tolerate a small amount of advertising
in
the past but now the quantity is unacceptible .....I personaly turn the
tv
and radio down when ads come on and use ad blockers on the internet......
I used to wonder why if I searched for a type of car on the internet
adverts
on youtube etc were targeted to me....sick of it all thank god for the
BBC.

Advertising is a cancer.

Yes.

Once it gets established it takes over and eventually destroys the host.

Nope, hasn’t destroyed TV and it aint gunna either.
Those with even half a clue record it and skip the ads.

Television used to be to "Entertain, Inform and Educate",
now it's just an advertising platform with the programmes
as a necessary but irritating cost.

Even sillier than you usually manage with the BBC alone.

The internet used to be about sharing information and
knowledge, now almost every website is trying to monetize
its visitors with increasingly obnoxious 3rd party adverts.

Not all of them do, most obviously with wikipedia.

And google is still very usable and the ads easy to ignore.

Even sites that have solid revenue streams have bought in to the scam,

Some like the BBC certainly have.

similar to how you still get (more and more) adverts on
subscription TV. Why wouldn't they though - it's free money!

Wikipedia doesn’t.

Of course advertising pays for a lot of good things. Google
earth/streetview
is amazing, and couldn't possibly exist without the $billions of ad
revenue
they get. The problem is the greed and deception of the advertising
agencies
They've got to have more and more, and it becomes a race to the bottom.

Not with wikipedia it isnt. It isnt alone either.

The losers are both the consumers

Not when its so easy to skip the ads.

and the generally honest companies paying for advertising. Is some
teenage prat on youtube really giving your company a good return
on your advertising budget? "Of course" say the brokers, Look at the
missions of subscribers they have. In reality, precisely 0.0% of those
subscribers are likely to do anything to give you a return on that
investment,
but if the $million you paid only represents 1% of your advertising
budget,
and that's only 1% of your profits, it makes sense to "embrace the new
media".

And yet some like wikipedia don’t bother.

One day the whole scam might finally fall apart

Not a chance.

and internet and TV content will be decimated.

Not a chance while ever the BBC and others are funded otherwise.

Hopefully whatever's left will have more value
than the steaming pile of click-bait we have now.

wikipedia is nothing even remotely like that.

Neither is facebook either.

Sorry for the babble. Bad cold and too many
lemsips. Safer than trying to write code.