Lowering the prices making you believe that is a great deal when in reality the thing was overpriced to begin with.

Easier question: Which marketing tactics DO you like?

I like Steam's discovery queue, sometimes I find some pretty interesting stuff. It's entirely voluntary, and I can leave at any time, instead of holding my time ransom and demanding my attention with annoying cringe-inducing content like most marketing.

All of them...

Honestly, sometimes when I can't sleep, watching eSports helps (especially Starcraft II). IDK why, but put on a super chill caster like Wardii and I'm out in 20 minutes.

Having some loud, disruptive ad punch through my ad blocker and try to tell me about Liberty Mutual when I've almost dozed off is close to the most rage inducing experience imaginable. With Youtube now working to inject adds directly into video streams, I'm actually anxious about the future of my best sleep aid.

Drive-by advertising. When someone joins a forum I'm active on just to let us know about their shiny new product and doesn't participate in any other way. Even if it's relevant, it's still pretty scummy.

Buy this thing! Its only $29.99!!!

@flyingsquid - this is your chance to shine!

All of them

To me it's sending me e-mails I have not explicitly signed up for. I have had once or twice, when I had filled out a form to order something and without pressing submit, they had already registered my e-mail address and signed me up for all kinds of spam, starting with 'weren't you about to order something'.

Top 5 marketing tactics EVERYONE hates. You won’t BELIEVE number three.

Stealing my time for nothing in return. Watching an ad to get content is a transaction. The door to door guy, or the guy who interrupts my shopping with “I’m not selling anything just asking you some questions” is annoying and I’m never going to use their product. The ones that persist after being told “not interested” can jump off a cliff.

All of them. Make "banning advertising" an election platform, I'll vote for you. Ban billboards and other forms of commercial advertising everywhere. Advertising works, nobody denies that. If you see enough ads, on average, your mind will be changed. By allowing advertising to exist, we are sanctioning widespread mind control. It sounds crazy when you say it that way, but it's true. Advertising does not benefit the average person, it makes them buy stuff they have no native desire for. Advertising only benefits advertising agencies and their clients.

Let word-of-mouth and genuine desire for a good or service drive purchases of that good or service, not advertising, and you'll end up with a more efficient economy where our consumer choices better invest in our shared prosperity and future.

Short of answering any questions about a product I ask, all of them.

If I want or need something, I will come looking. Anything beyond that is the market trying to solicit demand where none need exist.

So much waste could be eliminated if that just... Stopped.

This one needs to be illegal.

Apps that you need push notifications turned on for, but also serve ads.

For example, where I live the company that does riding sharing also does all kinds of deliveries. I get notifications about all kinds of restaurant deals.

The version of Amazon we have sends all kinds of unwanted messages from sellers if you add an item from their shop to your cart. It can be turned off, but it needs to be done one by one manually.

Even the mobile wallet apps that we use here send all kinds of ads.

Like, I need notifications about payments and that is it. Stop giving me full screen popup ads each time I open the app to make a payment. It just slows me down and frustrates me.

There's this ad I keep seeing that I really despise. It's for teeth-whitening toothpaste. The actress is wearing a white coat then holds up a tissue to her teeth, lamenting that her sparkling white teeth are 'still yellow'

They cut away to teach you how toothpaste works, because surely you've never heard of this newfangled thing, and when they cut back she's no longer wearing her white coat and says how much whiter her teeth are.

It's transparently obvious that the wardrobe and tissue are just to give you something whiter to look at. But like... your teeth aren't supposed to be freakishly white. It's just something that Big Toothpaste wants you to feel bad about the way your body is. Also, using whitening toothpaste when you don't need it can damage your enamel and cause you long term problems.

After my mom passed everyone on my cell plan began getting phone calls and text messages to buy her house.

Hiding finished/already existing game content behind DLC. Day one patches. Pay 2 Win in General. I just want to play good, finished games :c.

All of them.

Yes.

Product placements in television shows where the ad becomes part of the fiction.

I officially stopped watching Eureka when there was an episode about Degree For Men. I similarly gave up on Bones when the characters started delivering Toyota ads to each other.

I'm okay with there being a stick of Degree For Men label out in Sheriff Carter's bathroom, or if the cast of Bones drive Toyotas. But when they stop to talk about long lasting anti-wetness or zero percent APR financing I'm fucking done.

The thing is, if I want something I'll go looking for it. At the point where I'm looking for it or something like it, I am happy to consume ads even tangentially related to that thing. If analytics marketing worked this way (showing me relevant ads when I'm shopping for something, even if it's for something I am not actively looking for), things would be better. But ads have worked their way into the cracks of everything and that's my problem with them.

I hate Billboards. I don't like circulars (waste of paper and generally too much trash), I hate junk mail and I think it's predatory. Popups (singing, flashing, scrolling when I scroll to stay on the page, tiny exit buttons, video, etc) are garbage.

For me it's branding something as "AI" as a buzzword. Almost all product marketing is full of AI hype these days.

Asking me to give them profit so that they can donate is so obviously pretentious.

It's a way for them to have their cake and eat it too.

They use the desire of people to buy something they want and think they did a good thing at the same time, while the business will just take that money to donate to a non-profit (helping their public image) while writing off a part of it on their tax records (helping their bottom line).

They're not doing this from the bottom of their heart, it's just a cost of doing business for gaining some PR karma.

I'm gonna go the other way. The only marketing I acknowledge is factual reporting of design features that make a product suitable for the intended task. Anything else is dishonest and manipulative.

Think of Chris Cooper's character from Interstate 50. Any marketing claim must be specific, measurable, verifiable, and accurate.

I dislike ads that don't indicate the functional benefits of the product and instead nake it about the product being aspirational or about my worth.

The "You're worth getting some deliciousness" for a chocolate bar would be an example.

I'd rather know if the chocolate was ethical, the price, and sweetness level.

On a related note, when shops let you "donate" stuff you buy at their store to a food bank.

The job of sales is the overpromise and write checks that their ass won't have to personally cash. Anything they say is to get you to sign on the line.

Fuck em all

Paid streaming services that have ads in the UI (youtubetv). Amazon firesticks having ads on the UI. I actually complained to YTTV and they sent me an email explaining why there are commercial on live TV, pissed me off even more.

Detaching basic features from an existing free product and making people pay a subscription for it.

They can fuck off, all of them. Worthless pieces of degeneration. Zero sympathy from me.

Sending my work email a calendar invite as the first communication. Just because you want to sell it doesn't mean I want to buy it. Or even hear about it. If a calendar event is the first thing you send me, I will be the avatar of snark. My calendar is busy enough without you inserting yourself into it without my consent.