What are your best intrusive ads ideas?

If your job was to come up with greater enshittification for society, what would you do?

My ideas:

  1. Rental apartments where every wall has a screen with ads 24/7. You can pay cheaper rent to live with ads in every wall or you can pay a monthly subscription to turn off the ads (you don't get to use the screens for anything else tho). After people get used to it we can start adding a little bit of ads even for the subscription users, just a little less.

  2. Movie theaters. This one is obvious, why did anyone think it was ok to give people access to uninterrupted movies just because they paid a couple bucks? We should include some ads in the middle of movies in the cinema duh.

  3. Water and electricity. Private utility providers should be able to require you to watch a certain amount of ads on their apps in order to deliver their services to you every month (you still also pay normally ofc).

  4. Alarm clocks. Smartphones should delete the option to pick a custom sound for alarm and instead wake you up with loud ads. Installing any custom alarm app should require root and we should lobby government to ban devices with alarm clocks which are not smart.

  5. Unified ad-watching score. Similar to credit score, you will gain points by not skipping ads, having the selfie camera turned on while watching an ad (to make sure you looking), having the microphone on to make sure it isn't muted, etc. Every platform contributes to your score. They can use your ad-watching score to give you benefits or punish you as they please.

Jaffa ,

You know ad-supported kindles? Expand that to phones, TVs computers. Anything that can show or play an ad while it is off or when you turn it on. It's free real estate!

bassomitron ,

Isn't windows 11 doing that now? I only use it at work and I think only Home Editions are affected.

Bizarroland ,

You have to watch an ad to crank your car.

Every time you bring your car to a full stop while it is running, an ad plays through your audio system and displays on your radio.

You have to watch an ad to make a phone call.

When your phone rings, it plays an ad jingle, call JG Wentworth 877 cash now.

When you send a text message or write a text post to an online system, an ad is injected with your text post so that readers in order to read what you wrote also have to read the ad.

If you have Smart lights or anything smart in your home, in order to use it you have to watch an ad.

In order to pay for something with a credit card you have to watch an ad on the credit card machine and click one of the choices that are offered to you.

Smart pillows that play hypnotic ads at you in your sleep.

Your electric toothbrush requires an ad to be played the whole time it is being used, and if you brush your teeth for less than the length of the ad, then they take a dollar from you.

Some guy comes to your house and screams logos and add quotes at you all of the time. If you try to get him to shut up he murders you and your entire family.

Replace the guy with a robot.

andallthat , (edited )

The medical field is ripe for some intrusive ads to boost revenues! Possibilities are endless:

Ad-supported hearing aids ("this conversation will resume after a quick message from our sponsors!")

Pacemakers - want to watch an ad for 100 more free heartbeats?

Surgery - this will leave a visible scar, but how about we make the cut look like the Amazon logo ?

Implants - click the nipple and watch an ad to re-inflate the left breast for 10 more days

AlexanderESmith ,
@AlexanderESmith@kbin.social avatar

Nice try EA, but you're not getting my golden ideas for free.

Hamartiogonic , (edited )
@Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz avatar

Remember those mobile games where you can watch ads to get some gold and diamonds or simply pay for them with real money? Well, I can imagine a dystopian future where that logic has been applied to everything.

Wanna press an elevator button? Pay with shopping center diamonds or watch this quick ad.

Wanna try on this shirt before buying it? Ads. Is this made of cotton? Ads.

Take the escalator to the next floor? Ads.

Wanna check the info screen to figure out where you can find a restaurant in this shopping center? Ads.

Wanna unlock different parts of the menu? Ads. Wanna see the prices too? Ads. Allergens? Ads again.

Need to go to the toilet? Ads. Want some toilet paper? More ads.

If you encounter this literally every 30 seconds, spending some money on those shopping center diamonds suddenly becomes a very appealing idea.

On the outside of the mall you see a punk looking guy with a Molotov cocktail in his hand. You feel a sudden urge to join in whatever he is up to.

Anyway, if you want some more suffering and sadness, simply dump the first lines to GPT and ask it to take this dystopia to its logical conclusion. It could get pretty wild.

AlligatorBlizzard ,

Want to put gas in your car? Ads. That talk and there's no way to silence them.

Oh, no, wait, that one is real. Are they everywhere yet? I haven't driven a car in several years. But I definitely remember that was real dystopian shit, similar to how I felt when I started getting ads in Windows.

Etterra , (edited )

Replace the glass cooler doors in the drink section with huge screens that display ads abd obscure the contents, then use a sketchy motion sensor to trigger a delayed screen full of what's probably inside the cooler.

Oh wait nvm, they've already got that.

Mandatorily implanted lenses in your eyes that track your location and collect all the data off everything you see, trading it out over Wi-Fi while downloading ads for your surroundings in real time while simultaneously leaking your private information, telling the government everything, and ratting you out to your employer and insurance company.

But only if it's cheaper than a brain chip that does the same things.

twoprops ,

Nice try, Zuck

highalectical ,
@highalectical@lemmygrad.ml avatar

https://lemmygrad.ml/pictrs/image/6ffa7cb0-4ba7-47de-9129-12a6d98473aa.jpeg

azimir ,

Have groups of quadcopters/does fly down streets over cars stuck at stoplights and show ads and/or play ads at them.

You could wait for the light to go red, then form up in a wall over the crosswalk to show the drivers waiting down the street your ad. They're just going to be looking at the stoplight anyway, so that's free eyeball time, right?

Vej ,

Please don't give them ideas. If they could figure out how to beam ads to our brains when sleeping they would.

shinigamiookamiryuu ,

Sometimes when I'm shopping, I leave a piece of paper explaining my work/thoughts/etc. in the shopping cart before returning it.

MossyFeathers ,

A typing game like Mario Teaches Typing or Typing of the Dead except all the sentences are ad slogans or brand names.

Emergency phone lines have ads at the beginning of the call to help pay for emergency services (because the government won't pay for them).

Revoke regulation that requires disclaimers on paid endorsements (in other words, you have no idea if someone is endorsing a product because they like it, or because they were paid to talk about it).

Digital piracy is now a felony on par with drug felonies.

Ad blocking is now digital piracy.

Copyright is now indefinite, applied retroactively. An agency is formed to pursue copyright infringement on behalf of deceased rights holders and defunct companies.

Criticism is no longer considered free speech if it leads to direct or indirect economic damage ("your rights end where mine begin!")

Referencing or speaking about a copy-protected work in-depth constitutes copyright infringement. However, enforcement is up to the rights holder except in the case of deceased individuals or defunct companies.

The last three may seem tangential, but together it means companies can take action against you for talking negatively about their advertisements and products, regardless of how old they are. Now companies like Disney can use copyright to permanently erase things like The Song of the South or Walt Disney's Nazi boner.

Advertising is allowed on voter ballots (the voting process can be expensive after all).

Politicians must publicly endorse companies which endorse them (it's only fair). Failing to do so is considered a form of ad blocking.

Public schools may include advertisements in their curriculum to augment teacher salaries. There are no restrictions on how many advertisements are presented, how they are presented, or the extent of their presentation. Choosing not to present an advertisement that is part of the curriculum is considered a form of ad blocking. "You have to pay teachers somehow, and I'll be damned if it comes out of my pocket".

I could probably come up with more, but this is making me depressed.

Zagorath ,
@Zagorath@aussie.zone avatar

2 is already a thing. Product placement.

espentan , (edited )

It's disgusting how many things people can still do without being exposed to advertising.

Loudspeakers: Imagine how many speakers there are in the world, and how often they're not playing anything. All loudspeakers should always play ads if not utilized for anything else.

Edit: I went hiking last weekend, and while out there the silence was deafening. Out in the wild, where it's relatively quiet, we'd only need to place speakers every few hundred meters to efficiently broadcast ads to hikers and such.

Arghblarg ,
@Arghblarg@lemmy.ca avatar

Kill it all with fire

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