I sometimes think, that marketing is one of the worst thing that happened to us. It is constantly destroying all things that worked really well for us.<p>There were times when checking my mailbox (I mean physical one) was either important - taxes, administration, bills or fun - postcards from family and friends. Now it’s 99% spam. It’s not worth checking.<p>Email - the same. Mostly spam and shitty newsletters that will 'Teach you to Be Rich...'.<p>Professional press - instead of interesting and novel ideas and research we get sponsored junk just to sell services. Instead of honest reviews we get paid test winners. All mixed with just plain old full page commercials.<p>TV shows - instead of good story we get some unbelievable plots that are built only to excuse showing a sponsor car, cooking pots or some other junk.<p>Phone - few years ago a call from unknown number meant your kid was sick or you have missed something in your taxes. Now it's always spam, many times per day. I've already disabled all notifications from numbers out of my contact list.<p>Blogs - they used to be interesting or personal, now it's either commercial spam, worthless review/comparisons or a personal brand spam. Mostly written by cheap contractors with no experience in the field. I hope it get's replaced by GPT-3 soon.<p>The list is pretty long:
- city full of ugly banners
- loading screens in cash machines so you can see a commercial
- commercials in movie theaters before and after the film
- worthless books just to build personal brand or promote products
- sidewalks full of flyers
- free games for kids on mobile
- web pages with popups
- addictive social media practices
- spam comments underneath articles and in forums
- reddit communities full of spam<p>The list goes on.<p>If we give them more time they will find a way to destroy everything that's worth while for us. Well paid psychologists, instead of helping people will find a way to get to your brain with next junk you don't need while data scientists prepare more reports from our personal data. After that engineers will work hard to circumvent your ad blocker instead of adding new features, fixing performance or improving user experience.<p>Sorry, for the long rant, but sometimes I simply think their mission in life is to make our lives worse.<p>In the end I'm just happy that clickthroughs are shitty. And that they stay this way.
Can this be tagged with 2012?<p>Otherwise people might think Andrew Chen is advocating for mobile notifications and Open Graph in 2021...<p>Here is the 2012 discussion: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3804055" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3804055</a><p>The dated URL is: <a href="http://andrewchen.co/2012/04/05/the-law-of-shitty-clickthroughs/" rel="nofollow">http://andrewchen.co/2012/04/05/the-law-of-shitty-clickthrou...</a>
> Similarly, this law provides a litmus test as to the difference between advertising and information. When you are marketing with useful information, then CTRs stay high. Advertising that’s just novelty and noise wrapped in a new marketing channel has a limited shelf life.<p>As a not-a-marketing/ad-person, if more ads contained useful information and less emotional pandering to whatever/whoever they think I am, I'd be more likely to look at and click on them. That, and not actively surveilling me...
I don't get it. It's written as though this spamming marketing cancer is somehow a virtue, and I'm supposed to have an ounce of compassion for the poor marketer constantly having to come up with new ways to shove his shit in my face and admire his ingenuity.
Speaking of laws, there should be a law that forces blogs to put publication dates below article titles. Was this article published yesterday or 10 years ago?
The main takeaway:<p>The 10X solution to solving the Law of Shitty Clickthroughs, even momentarily, is to discover the next untapped marketing channel. In addition to doubling down on traditional forms of online advertising like banners, search, and email, it’s important to work hard to get to the next marketing channel while it’s uncontested.<p>Sometimes I get asked “have you ever seen someone do XYZ to acquire customers?” Turns out, the highest vote of confidence I can give is, “No I haven’t, and that’s good – that means there’s a higher chance of it working. You should try it.”
> The 10X solution to solving the Law of Shitty Clickthroughs, even momentarily, is to discover the next untapped marketing channel.<p>There is no such thing as an uncontested marketing channel. It's why browsing the Internet feels like a chore on most days. Any interesting UGC site with an audience will be deluged with marketers.<p>Think about Medium and Quora. Great when they began, back when contributors understood the intent of the site, and wrote accordingly. Today, they are nothing more than an appendage of one's personal brand and SEO strategy.