My hate for bad advertising rivals my hate for mosquitos in the bedroom.
So I asked Gemini this:
Nobody like advertising, it’s highly annoying, why then is advertising everywhere, how does annyoing advertising help companies sell their products and not keeping customers away?
Great question — it’s one of the genuine paradoxes of modern capitalism. Here’s why annoying advertising persists and actually works, even when people hate it:
It doesn’t need you to like it — just remember it
The primary goal of most advertising isn’t to make you feel good. It’s to make a brand top of mind when you’re ready to buy. Repetitive, even irritating ads lodge in memory far better than pleasant ones you glance past. The jingle you can’t get out of your head is doing exactly what it was designed to do.
The “mere exposure effect”
Psychological research consistently shows that the more you’re exposed to something — even if you consciously dislike it — the more familiar and trustworthy it feels. Familiarity breeds a kind of unconscious comfort. You might groan at an ad, but later choose that brand on a shelf without knowing why.
It’s a volume game, not a relationship game
Most advertising isn’t trying to win you over personally. It’s playing statistics across millions of people. If 95% of viewers find an ad annoying but 5% convert, that’s often a massive profit. Your annoyance is essentially collateral damage they’re willing to accept.
Attention is the real currency
In a crowded media landscape, even negative attention beats being ignored. An ad that provokes irritation has still captured your focus for 15–30 seconds, which is the whole point. The alternative — being invisible — is far worse for a brand.
Companies often can’t measure the damage
It’s very hard to track customers who were repelled by advertising. You can measure clicks and conversions; you can’t easily count the people who quietly decided never to buy from you. So the negative side of the equation is largely invisible to marketers.
Advertising works on other people, not you
People consistently believe they are personally immune to advertising while everyone else is influenced by it. This is called the third-person effect. In reality, we’re all affected — just rarely in the obvious, conscious way we imagine. The influence is subtle and cumulative.
The race-to-the-bottom dynamic
Even if a company wanted to advertise less, competitive pressure often forces their hand. If your rival is running aggressive ads and you go quiet, you lose market share. So the whole industry is somewhat trapped in an arms race of noise.
The short answer: annoying advertising survives because it works well enough, its costs are hard to measure, and the psychology of human memory rewards repetition over pleasantness. It’s not that companies don’t care about your experience — it’s that your annoyance simply doesn’t hurt them as much as silence would.
Why are there no Like/Dislike options for advertisements, on social media for example, which could give advertisers a better idea of how ads are received, and encourage them to make better and less annoying ones. Also, if there would be an option “I don’t want to see this type of ad” advertising agents could actually show ads that are meant for the right person. It feels like there is a lot of room for improvement of the user experience.
You’re touching on something that sounds obviously sensible — and yet the reality is more complicated, and a bit cynical. Here’s why this “obvious improvement” hasn’t happened at scale:
Some of it actually already exists — and gets ignored
Meta, YouTube, and TikTok already offer “hide this ad,” “why am I seeing this,” and interest-based opt-outs. YouTube has had a thumbs down on ads for years. The problem? Platforms systematically ignore or suppress that data because acting on it conflicts with their revenue model. You’ve probably noticed that hiding an ad type rarely stops similar ads from reappearing.
The fundamental conflict of interest
Here’s the core tension: social media platforms’ customers are advertisers, not users. You are the product being sold. A genuine dislike system that forced advertisers to make less annoying ads would:
- Reduce the pool of ads platforms can show you
- Give advertisers leverage to demand lower prices for “low-rated” slots
- Potentially shrink ad revenue significantly
Platforms have zero financial incentive to empower users against advertisers. Their entire business model depends on selling access to your attention, not protecting it.
Advertisers don’t actually want honest feedback
This sounds counterintuitive, but most large advertisers prefer reach over quality signals. A robust dislike system would expose how poorly received most ads are, creating uncomfortable conversations with clients, boards, and shareholders. The advertising industry has survived for decades on vague metrics like “impressions” and “brand awareness” precisely because they’re hard to challenge.
Negative feedback loops would shrink the ad market
If users could effectively filter out ad categories — “no car ads,” “no gambling,” “no supplements” — entire advertising verticals would collapse. Platforms would lose billions. So the “I don’t want this type of ad” tool is deliberately made clunky, buried in menus, and largely ineffective as a feature of design, not oversight.
The illusion of control is more valuable than real control
Platforms offer just enough customization to make users feel heard — without actually giving them meaningful power. It’s a calculated UX decision. Real control would undermine the system.
Why hasn’t regulation forced this?
Honestly, this is where the gap is most glaring. Regulators have focused on data privacy (GDPR, etc.) but largely ignored ad quality and user agency. The advertising lobby is powerful, and the argument that “users can just scroll past” has been surprisingly effective at keeping pressure off.
So you’re right — there is massive room for improvement
A genuinely user-empowering ad system would:
- Show you only ads in categories you’ve permitted
- Let you rate ads with real consequences for repeat offenders
- Reward advertisers whose ads users actually engage with positively
- Cap how many times a single ad can reach the same person
This would likely produce better, more creative advertising and happier users. But it would also mean less total ad revenue in the short term — and that’s the wall every good idea runs into. The platforms know what’s possible. They’ve just decided it’s not in their interest to build it.
The irony is that a genuinely user-friendly ad system might actually build more trust and long-term engagement. But “long-term” is a hard sell when quarterly earnings are on the line.
