:: adgruntie :: Readers rate ads

+ Readers rate ads from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

If there was an overriding theme to this year's responses, it's how bleak the advertising landscape seems to be these days. To be sure, people's memories tend to be selective, leaving the impression that advertising, like everything else, was so much better back when.

Still, it was remarkable how little advertising is favorably catching the public's eye, ear and mind (when it's not actively repulsing them, that is). That ought to be of some concern to the companies who are paying for these ads, and may not be getting much for the bucks they're spending.

Sheer repetition has something to do with the reaction; one reader said advertisers "should learn about the law of diminishing returns." So does the audio volume, a complaint mentioned numerous times.

But a bigger problem seems to be the quality of the ads. Others might not have expressed it quite so forcefully, but to judge from the e-mails and letters, lots of readers in this year's survey would agree with one who said "I am afflicted with ad rage that makes road rage look like a petty snit."