Obviously, the feedback will almost invariably be negative. We've trained ourselves to filter out advertising to some degree. Thus, with two ads that are equidistant from "neutral" on the "bad" to "good" spectrum, the bad one will catch our attention before the good one will.
So, to do my Darwinian service to the advertising gene pool, I've started voting down the ones that I find annoying on any level. But I'm finding that it's rarely a three-click deal because Facebook's reasons for giving an ad thumbs down are, well, pretty whacked. For the record, here's the list:
- Misleading
- Offensive
- Uninteresting
- Irrelevant
- Repetitive
- Other
Misleading. I'm old school. Stephen Colbert's brilliant riff on "truthiness" aside, the word "Liar" is still in the dictionary, It does not require a license for its use, although responsibility is certainly required. To say that you can immigrate to Canada in a year is a lie. The backlog's too great for that, and will probably grow longer as the US economy drags down that of its northernmost neighbor. Likewise, photoshopping President Obama's face on a scam (substitute stimulus money for the Nigerian crown jewels) is also a lie. If there's any "leading" in "misleading," the intended path is straight off a cliff, 'k?
Offensive. C'mon, people: Outrage has become a cottage industry in this polarized nation suckled on a sense of its own exceptionalism. Various non-profit groups and belief tanks--I won't dignify their work with the term "think tank"--make their gelt nurturing outrage for reasons both real and delusional. Nothing to see here: Move along.
Uninteresting. Now that's just nonsensical. "Interesting" comes in both flavors: Good and bad. So why would you vote down an ad as "uninteresting" when it made it past the perimeter of your consumer defenses in the first place?
Irrelevant. That more or less begs the question "Irrelevant to what?" Now, you could make the case that Facebook ads are supposed to be targeted to your profile and the content of your "Home" page. Yet you don't have much control over what your friends are posting, so giving something thumbs-down seems suspiciously narcissistic, don'cha think?
Repetitive. I will admit this one's a bit mystifying. "Repetitive" as in "This ad repeats itself" (not terribly likely given the limited verbiage) or "Repetitive" as in, "Get this outta my grill, Facebook!" If it's the latter, I certainly won't traduce it. In fact, booyah for Adam Smith's "invisible hand," in this case smacking this stupidity upside its thick melon!
But, notable by their absence, are a few items that I would suggest be added to the list:
- Trashy ("Sorority Life," anyone? Like, aren't you in college for something other than an MRS degree?)
- Insulting to the intelligence of a bag of hammers ('Nuff said.)
- Grammatically appalling (Dood, u iz not lolcat. Srsly.)
- Toxic to the self-image Seriously, I don't have to push more than one button (i.e. the remote) to be told that I'm fat, limp-haired, yellow-toothed, splotchy-skinned, wrinkled, and possibly even smelly. Do I really need to sign in to be bombarded with those implications? Pro'lly not, I'm thinking...
- Toadying Ooh--your 'bot queried my profile for my age. Like I'm supposed to mistake that for "personalization."
Marketing and advertising don't have to suck. I actually enjoyed quite a few commercials during the flush times of dot-com-alot. Moreover, look at the feverish post-mortem on the ads of the Superbowl. There's plenty of proof that the bar doesn't need to be lowered after it's raised. But if the ad-voting does become commonplace across all interactive media, it will be our responsibility to nail that bar in place.
