Avoiding subliminal messaging use to be as easy as turning off the TV. Now that your TV is actually a computer, and virtually every other piece of technology has that in common, advertising is impossible to turn off.
Source: Facebook
MMM.. Oreos
"A form of subliminal messaging commonly believed to exist involves the insertion of "hidden" messages into movies and TV programs. The concept of "moving pictures" relies on persistence of vision to create the illusion of movement in a series of images projected at 23 to 30 frames per second; the popular theory of subliminal messages usually suggests that subliminal commands can be inserted into this sequence at the rate of perhaps 1 frame in 25 (or roughly 1 frame per second). The hidden command in a single frame will flash across the screen so quickly that it is not consciously perceived, but the command will supposedly appeal to the subconscious mind of the viewer, and thus have some measurable effect in terms of behavior. "
Source: Psychologist World
Then you have the viral phenomenon of fake news. Even the most clever reader is succeptable to these believable trending topics.
"Fake news has become, of course, something of an online genre so much so that Facebook is testing a satire label on posts from sources like The Onion. The New Republic has described how plenty of other fake news sites make it their business to fool readers with plausible-sounding headlines in order to generate massive clicks and the ad dollars that come with them. And as Ben Adler has written for CJR, the way people increasingly consume information on the internet by reading headlines and sharing stories before clicking through to the article makes it easier than ever for people to fall for online hoaxes. The average click-through rate on Twitter posts is a disturbingly tiny 1.64 percent, according to MediaBistro.
Source: CJR
"at Philbin, the man who staged a fake FEMA news conference on the California wildfires last week, has lost his promotion because of the event, which begs the question: What does it actually take to get fired from FEMA?" That was the lead story on the latest installment of Weekend Update, the faux news broadcast on "Saturday Night Live." Something bothered me about this, and not just Amy Poehler's misuse of the phrase "beg the question." Nor was it the idea that FEMA's staged news conference was scandalous simply because reporters, listening by phone, weren't able to ask questions while FEMA bureaucrats lobbed "fake" questions. There's no such thing as fake questions, after all, only fake answers. Was FEMA's fabrication any more fraudulent than, say, press releases written like real news stories?
Those sneaky ads disguised as legitimate journalism are a modern day wolf in sheep's clothing. They can be difficult to discern at first glance, and pause much larger trouble for the future of journalism.
Source: LA Times
Subliminal advertising has been hotly contested since the 1950s. Public opinion considers these dubious techniques to be as invasive and unethical mind control techniques. Movie theaters were under scrutiny after slipping individual frames saying "Drink Coca Cola" and "McDonalds" into their movies. BECAUSE ACTUALLY, WE ENJOY BEING PROGRAMMED TO LIKE COMMERCIALS.
" “The punch line is that commercials make TV programs more enjoyable to watch. Even bad commercials, said Leif Nelson, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of California, San Diego, and a co-author of the new research. “When I tell people this, they just kind of stare at me, in disbelief. The findings are simultaneously implausible and empirically coherent."
Source: NY Times
A Study from NYU even proves it: you LIKE commercials.
"The new consumer research analyzed similar dynamics at a moment-to-moment level. In one experiment, Dr. Nelson, along with Tom Meyvis and Jeff Galak of New York University, had 87 undergraduates watch an episode of the sitcom Half watched it as it was originally broadcast, with commercials for the Jewelry Factory Store and the law office of Michael Brownstein, among other ads. The other half watched the show straight through, without commercials. After the show was over, the students rated how much they enjoyed it, using an 11-point scale and comparing it with the sitcom “Happy Days, which they were all familiar with.. Those who saw without commercials preferred “Happy Days, but those who saw the original show, Jewelry Factory Store and all, preferred by a significant margin. In similar experiments, using other video clips and a variety of interruptions, the results were the same: people rated their experiences as more enjoyable with commercials , no matter their content, or other disruptions.. The effect was not imited to watching TV; interrupting a massage also heightened peoples enjoyment, one experiment found. Not only did people report greater enjoyment when shows were interrupted by commercials, but they did so regardless of the quality of the commercials. In one of our six studies, we asked subjects to rate the ads relative to the shows, and there was no correlation between badly rated ads and lower enjoyment of the programs. People enjoyed shows that had commercials more, whether those commercials were good or bad. And if they watched shows with commercials, people were willing to pay 30% more for a DVD compilation of programs by the same director."
Source: HBR
Specifically, what makes these adds so unbelievably effective is that the general public enjoys them. They might be getting tricked into buying Oreo's tonight, but hey, who doesn't like Oreos? The current advertising guidelines are cryptic and feign generosity. But does any of that really matter when multiple scientific studies prove that people enjoy advertisements?
