Super Bowl Ads: Worth the Price Or Waste of Time? 347
samzenpus writes "Every year companies are willing to dish out big bucks to reach tens of millions of consumers with their Super Bowl ads. With an average price tag of $4 million for a 30-second commercial, this year is no exception. We've seen: beer obsessed frogs, field goal kicking horses, celebrities drinking various beverages, explosions of all sizes, homages to 1984, and day trading babies in the past. Since talking about the commercials has become almost as popular as the game itself, here's a place to do just that. What have you liked and what do you think would have been better left on the cutting room floor."
Ads are toxic. (Score:4, Insightful)
The superbowl doesn't change that.
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The NFL is toxic.
Re:Ads are toxic. (Score:5, Funny)
From the online chatter, it seems to be a celebration of TV adverts and (junk?) food, so I assume the super bowl being referred to is an oversized container for fried chicken wings etc. Is that correct?
I understand why the majority of Americans would be so wholeheartedly involved in such an event, but it seems a bit irresponsible to an outside observer. With all your obesity, diabetes and heart issues, I think it'd be better for your nation's health to steer these sort of events towards less sedentary pursuits.
Why not include a healthy sporting event in the day's activities, for example?
Re:Ads are toxic. (Score:5, Insightful)
Originally, it was about football.. Now it's about rampant consumerism. Of course, europeans and aussies would know nothing about rabid obsession over soccer...
Re:Ads are toxic. (Score:4, Insightful)
Damn straight. World cup notwithstanding, soccer is a summer curiosity here, watched mainly by migrants from Europe and their grandchildren.
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Damn straight. World cup notwithstanding, soccer is a summer curiosity here, watched mainly by migrants from Europe and their grandchildren.
Cricket, on the other hand...
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the NFL is undoubtedly an awful organization that hates ...
What's NFL, precious? Nerds for life, somehow?
Re:Ads are toxic. (Score:5, Funny)
Well, we do have curling in Canada
Re:Ads are toxic. (Score:4, Funny)
Please stay on topic. We're discussing sports here.
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Because everyone else is doing so much better on the obesity front? India, Mexico, and China are all facing much larger obesity epidemics than anywhere in the west, including the US, and the rest of the West is actually no better than the US. Even places like Italy and Greece are facing problems as the demands of a modern lifestyle mean that families don't have time to cook traditional foods and the same convenience foods are doing the same thing there as everywhere else.
For all that America is the home of
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Banning adding sugar in any form to anything would essentially wipe out a huge number of foods, including a whole mess of relatively healthy traditional foods. Basically any desert is off the table, a whole variety of Asian foods, heck if you take "in any form" to its extreme you've just banned anything containing fruit or milk, as well as potatoes, any kind of grain, essentially you'd be left with meat and a few, though not many, vegetables.
To be honest, I don't think any amount of regulation is going to h
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But everything does come and always has come filled with sugar. Sure we add some artificial stuff, but every single fruit and seed in all of creation is full of one form of sugar or another. Carbohydrates, complex and simple are everywhere in all our food, the few foods which aren't full of carbohydrates are full of fat. If you think there's any diet on earth where you can escape sugar and survive you're insane. Even vegans are exposed to large amounts of sugar. We love sugar and fat and salt, WE NEED THOSE
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What is this superbowl thing? I've seen a lot of references to it lately, but not a lot of explanation.
I for one welcome our superb owl overlords.
Whooo! Whoo-whooo!
Re:Ads are toxic. (Score:4, Insightful)
Advertising is a way to let people who may be interested in purchasing your product or using your service that you exist, nothing more, nothing less. On a fundamental level, there's nothing wrong with it.
There are certainly issues with some ads, in terms of the products they sell, the stereotypes they reinforce, and in some cases the veracity of the claims that they make(though outside political advertising regulation keeps that sort of thing largely in check. There can also be issues with the tools advertisers use to reach us and in some ways the degree to which they manipulate us, but that's not the same as saying "Ads are toxic".
That kind of attitude is so pointlessly naive it's ridiculous. Are signs on shops toxic? Yellow pages advertisements? Websites for products or services? Review Sites? Slashdot Articles? All are a form of advertising.
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They do that as well, but that's a particular type of advertising, not advertising as a whole.
My point is that if you eliminated all advertising in the kind of idiotically naive way implied by the phrase "ads are toxic" you'd have no idea where to go to find someone who could provide you with a good or service, whether anyone else would provide you with a good or service, or any information about said good or service. Every piece of information you receive about a product that you didn't explicitly go and a
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you'd have no idea where to go to find someone who could provide you with a good or service, whether anyone else would provide you with a good or service, or any information about said good or service.
Well, we have the internet, and reviews.If I am interested in a product, including whether or not it exists, I go to the internet and research what other people use and the pluses and minuses of various products.
Every piece of information you receive about a product that you didn't explicitly go and ask the vendor about is advertising
I would agree with that. I would also add "and therefore suspect". Of COURSE the vendor is going to say their product is better than their competitors and of COURSE they are going to say it is awesome. That is why you can't make your purchasing decision based on the vendor's advertisement. They ar
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And how do you think the internet finds out about a product? Where does the seed for the great tree of pointless bitching which is your average review site come from? If I make the next video game, movie, car, and I'm not allowed to tell you about it, how do you know? How does anyone know? You have no idea how much of the information you get comes at least in part from advertising, even the review sites you go to are sponsored by it. Hell Slashdot, this website on which you and are I discussing this very is
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I don't think "by definition" means what you think it means.
Worth the Price Or Waste of Time? (Score:4, Insightful)
Neither: Waste of Money.
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Since I found comedians live tweeting the super bowl, my opinion has changed. Brands ill never buy setting up punchline after punchline, and since I have ota only, it costs no more than the internet connection I already have.
It's worth the price to the advertisers, and worth the price to me.
They wouldn't pay for it if it somehow didn't make sense. Budweiser and coca cola for example, they basically have to put in an appearance. They went with the feel good spots because they aren't going to be the talk of t
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Now that you've laughed about them, in a couple weeks you're going to forget about the "never buy" part and just remember the "felt strongly" part. Then when you're buying the products, the "brand you'll never buy" will be the brand you vaguely remember, so that's the one you'll put in the basket.
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slashdot... (Score:5, Insightful)
Shitty content. Shitty beta site. Stagnant traffic (Score:5, Insightful)
It's no secret that Slashdot's traffic has been stagnant at best, if not decreasing. Alexa's and Compete's numbers don't paint a rosy picture. Their estimates aside, I think it's obvious that Slashdot's popularity and influence has been on a decline for some time now.
Shitty, irrelevant stories like these do not help. This story is purely about marketing. There's absolutely no technological aspect to it. Nor are science or math involved. This story does not belong on Slashdot, plain and simple.
This is the kind of crap we can find at reddit. We come here to Slashdot specifically because we don't want to see stories like these!
The new ultra-shitty beta site sure doesn't help the situation. Now we get to see irrelevant, unwanted stories displayed worse than they currently are, with discussion that's much harder to follow, and damn near impossible to participate in.
Slashdot likely won't ever regain the influential position it once had. Shitty stories like this and the shitty beta site will make that a certainty, though. They'll continue to drive away the few remaining users.
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It's completely irrelevant. Dice was completely clueless when they acquired slashdot. They've turned it into a corporate-loving, irrelevant, average, mediocre, wannabe-like-everyone-else site. Slashdot has a unique audience and which Dice has completely ignored, and they've directed this place like every other millenial-driven ADHD twitter clone.
Money kills good things. Dice are fucking idiots. Thanks for fucking this one up guys.
Re:Shitty content. Shitty beta site. Stagnant traf (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, because it's not like [slashdot.org] Slashdot had stories about [slashdot.org] the Superbowl [slashdot.org] during its heyday [slashdot.org].
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I suppose the key difference was that back then that wasn't the only content. These days about half the stories are just some regurgitated press release or clickbait bullshit. I do try to vote it down, but you can't vote up non-existent stories.
Maybe the internet itself has changed. There is still good technical info out there, but somehow it seems harder to find. You would think that search engines would make it easier now, but a lot of it has migrated to forums and social networking where it is lost in a
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Sure, but does Netcraft confirm it???
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It hasn't reached reddit levels of stupid yet, but movement in that direction is a valid complaint. I guess it depends how you define 'success.'
Re: Shitty content. Shitty beta site. Stagnant tra (Score:5, Informative)
Yep, and they seem to be banking on this SlashCloud and SlashBI, etc. SlashBullShit as of late so I bet they're going in the "original content" with minimal user interaction/minimal community direction. I bet the slashdot.org domain will be up for cheap in a couple years when DICE has finished looting the last corpse here so if someone still has an installation of SlashCode laying around we could probably get the site back up to speed pretty quickly in that eventuality.
It must suck to be Malda and see your website baby all grown up to be a junkie whore like this.
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slashdot news for nerds^H^H^H^H^H americans.
I'm american and I don't watch the superbowl, neither do most people I know. The superbowl is the bread and circuses for the mindless sheep.
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...and yet, it could have been a nerd story, if only they'd have given up a bit of bias. I don't eat from the super bowl, but I'm lead to believe that Goldieblox advertised on it: http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/... [techcrunch.com]
Surely engineering/tech toys for girls *is* news for nerds? Why on earth would you run a story about advertising on the super bowl without mentioning it, not least because it didn't cost them millions to put on.
#slashdotsucks
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I don't get it. Same thing here in Canada, people complain they don't see the same ads as shown in the US. I hate commercials, I change the channel or pick up my phone when the commercials come on. It blows my mind that people get excited about them.
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Historically, there have been some pretty damned cool and clever commercials during Super Bowl.
And since I saw one Bud Light commercial, and one Budweiser commercial (because they cut to local ones) I can only assume there were a bunch of quite cool ones I missed.
This is one of the few things where you expect to see some good ones, but we never actually see them.
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I can only assume there were a bunch of quite cool ones I missed
Not this year! :(
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It blows my mind that people get excited about them.
Not this year! :(
Re:slashdot... (Score:4, Informative)
That's because most ads are dull and boring and played to saturation.
But when ads cost $4M per 30 second slot, it tends to bring out the most creative because it's costing a LOT of money to run the ad, so using it to run a plain jane ad is stupid because you can buy timeslots for 1/40th the price every other day of the week.
So some of the best ads you see will be on during the superbowl, and that's it very few are run again, unless they're up for awards (in which case they have to run on regular TV).
Plus, it's all about ratings. The C3 numbers for the superbowl are huge (Commercial+3), which is how ad prices are set. Neilsen sells those numbers so stations can set ad rates. The "public" numbers of L, L+SD, and L+7 are "given away" to show how popular a show is. The difference is that the C numbers subtract out the non-commercial content from the ratings (i.e., the programming).
Sports is one of the highest rated shows on TV, and outside of sports, only TBBT really scores anything significant, but well short of sports. The superbowl pretty much feeds the idea - the sport brings in the audience which raises rates, the raised rates bring up the ante on what ads can do because no one wants to epend millions running the same old ad you can see everywhere else, so they run special ads. Which attracts more audience because the ads are new, novel and often only run that time.
In fact, TV stations say they care about TV show piracy, but they really don't. Because the C3 numbers they buy don't include the programming. All it means is the ratings go down, the show gets less money and it's either make do or get cancelled.
Or why they're more than happy to stream TV because the ads are unskippable.
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I hate commercials, I change the channel or pick up my phone when the commercials come on.
I don't care for commercials but I don't get the active hate. Commercials are just basically 30 seconds of entertainment with product placement. Given so many shows and movies have product placement and tie-ins now, almost everything is one big commercial.
Commercials (Score:4, Insightful)
My take on Superbowl commercials is the exact same as the rest of the year. Namely, I avoid commercials wherever I can. Got rid of cable back in 2010, in favor of Netflix and other streaming options. Not looking back.
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I am reversed for Super Bowls. I record and watch mostly for the commercials instead of the games. Yes, I can watch online, but I prefer OTA HD quality!
Also, this year's commercials were weaker than usual. I even made a poll about them: http://www.aqfl.net/node/10876 [aqfl.net] ...
Re:Commercials vs. The Game (Score:2)
Friends of mine do a party where we do record it, watch the commercials, and fast-forward over the game, occasionally stopping if the football's interesting.
Since I'm writing this afterwards, it's not a spoiler, but while this year's commercials were below average, they were a lot better than the game.
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Agreed. Even better than half-time show even though I didn't like that music genre. In fact, last year's power outage made the game better and interesting!!
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It's sad really. I want to cut the cord so badly but my wife hasn't been convinced yet. I need to build a slick PVR / HTPC thingy that handles s
Re:Commercials (Score:5, Informative)
You mean, like subscription TV service, aka, cable or satellite? I vaguely remember when our house got hooked up for cable about 30-ish years ago and the promise* then was that the cable-based channels would be mostly ad-free since we were paying up front. That lasted more or less 10-15 years I'd say (if you give networks a pass on promos for their own lineups).
Then you're misremembering. There's a huge difference between ad-free networks being mostly on cable (the actual historical situation) and cable being mostly ad-free networks (how many people incorrectly remember the "good ol' days" of cable). Cable television has always had advertisements, barring a few notable premium channels such as HBO and, of course, public television stations. Many channels were nothing but ads, such as home shopping channels and local access stations that ran infomercials for something like 20 out of 24 hours a day.
Originally, cable television was merely a way to get television into areas that were unable to receive broadcast signals, thanks to geography or other factors, and carried only the networks, which had ads. Eventually some "superstations" rose up that were only available via cable out-of-market, the first of which was Ted Turner's WTCG (later WTBS) and eventually stations like WGN and WOR, and all of those had ads. Later, almost all cable-only channels such as ESPN, MTV, and CNN have run ads since their inception.
What you're mostly likely remembering is the commercials for specific premium channels like HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, Starz, and Disney (prior to 1997) that advertised that their channels were ad-free, but these were the exception and commanded extra fees in addition to your normal cable bill, not true of cable television in general.
Radio Shack Ad Best So Far (Score:4)
The 80s called ... they want their store back [sbnation.com]
Re:Radio Shack Ad Best So Far (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's probably one of the reasons they closed in Canada. Radio Shack used to be the place to go when you needed some components (which they stopped selling). the 200-1 electronic kits, the Armatron, I miss those kind of things...
Re:Radio Shack Ad Best So Far (Score:5, Informative)
Hey, guys -- THEY STILL SELL PARTS. They've just compacted them into a set of shallow drawers, rather than displaying them on pegboard. I haven't counted, but it seems to me that they've got a better selection of components than they did in the 80s. Besides the obvious (how many varieties of blue LEDs and microcontrollers did they carry in 1980?), they've still got fairly robust coverage of things like DC connectors and resistors/capacitors/other passive stuff.
I miss having the nerd stuff prominently displayed, but if they need to give more square footage to phones to stay afloat, I'm happy to pull out drawers instead of seeing it all disappear.
(Remember Lafayette Electronics, another chain that sold components? If so, you're old, too.)
Re:Radio Shack Ad Best So Far (Score:5, Informative)
**Some** Radio Shack stores still sell parts, mostly the stand-alone stores. The ones in the malls are almost completely cellphones and junk R/C toys.
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Some have a selection of components, some have none. Either way, unlike days past, nobody who works there has any idea what any of them are or how to use them. Ask for enameled wire and they show you monster cables.
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Radio Shack still okay (Score:2)
the one you could buy a soldering iron at. now, its like you described. just another consumer electronics store trying to be Best Buy
I bought a soldering iron at one a few months ago. Used it to fix a truck's instrument panel.
It was kind of a mess, but they still sold what I needed.
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I can't figure out where Radio Shack is going to get the money to renovate all of their stores after they blew their wad on a Super Bowl ad.
Supper what? (Score:3)
Supper bowl? Is that what I eat soup out of or what I feed the dog in? Both? Ads for it must be a waste of time...
Superbowl? (Score:2)
What is that? It wasn't on my tv so at least in my case it was a waste of dollars.
Ads are not sold by the second... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ads are not sold by the second, but rather by a price per thousand viewers, known as CPM or Cost Per Thousand. On a CPM basis the Super Bowl ads are equal or below the cost of regular ads... If you want to reach a lot of people they can be an effective part of a marketing mix.
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CPM = Cost Per Thousand?
Good to know these marketeer types can spell.
Maybe they're spelling in latin.
CPM -- cost per thousand (Score:5, Informative)
Doberhuahua (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this Audi [youtube.com] commercial is hilarious and hope the word "Doberhuahua" is now used for "something that sounds like a good idea, but would actually be very bad." Like, "That Unity interface is a Doberhuahua."
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Audi and Volkswagen had the best commercials so far.
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"Man, that Slashdot beta was a real Doberhuahua"
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I have to agree that Audi and Volkswagen had the best commercials so +1.
I already posted so I can't give mod points.
Everything else was... disappointing.
Texans aint playing = I'm not watching (Score:2)
AdBlock (Score:2)
Re:AdBlock (Score:4, Funny)
I Think the Super Bowl is A Waste of Time (Score:2, Insightful)
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More interested in the billboards near the stadium (Score:2)
than the crap being spewed over the air during the game...
http://blog.seattlepi.com/mari... [seattlepi.com]
My Fav, Budwiswer Beer commercial (Score:2)
Open road and a motorcycle starts off down it, all you hear is the noise of the bike as the gears are shifted.
Buuuuuud - Wissssssssss - Eeeeeeerrrrr - Beeeerrrrrrrr.
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Worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)
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You know what? You don't need to blow 4 mil on it. We even have shows dedicated to funny, entertaining commercials, and I'm pretty sure so do a lot of other countries. Yes, believe it or not, a whole show where they show NOTHING but ads and yes, they have rather good ratings, even. Why? Because these ads are actually entertaining!
I know it's a completely outlandish concept for most advertisers, even some companies, but if you give people what they WANT they will more readily accept getting it. If you cram d
blast from the past, from 2K (Score:2)
Just before DotCom became "DotBomb".
http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com]
Censorship! (Score:2)
ZOMG!,!! Puppies!!!,,! (Score:2)
Well, I think I was less offended by my least favorite registrar's ad this year, but still moving my business away from them.
Don't think Sonos ad worked too well; owning several, I understood, but it was a bit of a leap.
Other than that... Did you see the cuuuute little puppies...
Microsoft ad less than the sum of its parts (Score:2)
Microsoft stitched together a short Super Bowl ad [youtube.com] that (IMO) was less than the sum of its longer individual films [youtube.com], most of which would get you to tear up.
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Because of my personal history, the Steve Gleason one got to me. Surface or not.
This year's ads were disappointing (Score:2)
What Super Bowl? (Score:2)
I thought this was all about "The Biggest Concert of the Year" where some remarkably mediocre musicians are promoted as though they actually have talent.
Oh, and BTW... there might be a football game between some over-rated commercials.
This event has become nothing but an enormous amount of hype.
Cutting room floor (Score:2)
What would have been better left on the cutting room floor? Denver's offensive line.
Superbowl ads help you decide for products (Score:3)
Or rather, against them.
With ads being so expensive, it tells me that the product they are trying to advertise are overpriced since they can afford those ads.
GoldieBlox Scores Big (Score:3)
Also, their spot was spot-on and very well done!
Re:1984 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Say what?
Can you sayApple App Store and iTunes?
Re:1984 (Score:5, Informative)
I honestly don't understand why Apple is on this list. They're pretty much the final computer company that will just sell you a computer, and not tie it into a million services that track your identity, and try to spam you/sell you.
Setting up Mavericks:
- "Oh, hey, sign in with your AppleID for everything iCloud!" No, shut up, I don't need your crap.
- "You really should turn on location services so we know where you are at any given time!" No, shut up, you don't need that.
- "Hey, in order to update the applications that come with the OS by default, you're going to need an AppleID with a credit card attached." No, shut up.
Please, tell me again how Apple isn't trying to tie me into a million services that track me.
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Yeah, speaking of the Radio Shack one, I was hoping it was going to turn into them going back to what they were in the 80s... a nerd can dream...
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Homages? How about a re-enactment with targeted cellphone ads [nytimes.com] if you go to Times Square (which is of course nowhere near the actual location of the Bowl [wikipedia.org]*)?
*You can thank Cablevision in part for that. [wikipedia.org]
Re:1984 (Score:4, Insightful)
You remind me of the people who complain there ain't enough sports on TV when there are whole networks dedicated to it.
If you want more references to 1984, watch C-SPAN.
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Can anyone recommend good IT (systems) sites? I've already bypassed most of the science articles on Slashdot with PhysOrg.
beta.slashdot.org [slashdot.org]
Re:Slashdot : Worth the Price Or Waste of Time? (Score:4, Insightful)
> Those of us who've suffered Slashdot for more than the last decade should be 100% embarrassed that we still come here with shit like this being posted.
As someone who has actually been on here for more than a decade I find your pretense mildly amusing.
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Indeed, because Slashdot has always been such a bastion of informed journalism. If anything things are slightly better because only about 20% of the articles are rampant Microsoft/RIAA/MPAA hating click bait. Heck I think I've actually gone a full month without seeing anyone type Micro$oft. Slashdot has changed, mostly because those of us who have been reading this place for more than a decade are older now, and it's also not changed which can be frustrating because we all have. It's never been anything oth
Re:Waste (Score:4, Insightful)
Spending $4M gets you an ad during the superbowl. Uploading a video to youtube doesn't make it go viral.
Re: Waste (Score:2)
YouTube only became popular after they bought a Superbowl ad
This was the old pre Google YouTube
Re:Waste (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember: the primary job of advertisers is selling advertising, not selling the stuff that's being advertised. They put a lot of effort into convincing people that advertising is effective.
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Yes, a donation to the TV network that airs them.
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Sounds like things are tough all over