One show worth watching is MadMen on AMC. By exploring the duplicity and hollow lives of 1960s advertising executives, it exposes the manipulation and greed that still fuel Madison Avenue. It’s an Emmy-winning drama, and even the product placements are vintage and therefore pretty harmless.

Therefore, it’s fairly easy to avoid most of the ads.

I ask myself – why in the world would I need that? And if I really do ‘need’ it, is there a less expensive option – which there most always is

Also a big subscriber to the “your money or your life” theory… meaning how many hours/days do I have to work to pay for this? Sometimes it’s just not worth it in time!

So kill your tv, get yourself off every single catalog mailing list, and stop reading “lifestyle” magazines. Stay out of malls. It’ll do wonders, truly.

Listen to public radio or iPod in the car.

Always watch TV shows pre-recorded so I can skip through commercials…even sports.

Stay out of the malls unless you have a purpose…no aimless browsing.

If you must indulge in shopping do it online. Make a point of comparing all the pros and cons before buying. Often this is enough of a shopping fix that I don’t have to pull the trigger, or I’m unsure of what I really want so I wait a bit.

Buy online knowing that your purchase will be several days away from delivery. The anticipation can be satisfying, and you won’t buy on impulse like you might at the mall.

Avoid in particular advertising, magazines, or blogs for things you know you don’t need/can’t afford like (for me) new cars and new computers.

After TV went advertising-only a decade or so back (those logos count), I dropped it. No satellite, no cable, (semi-true, I have a limited TV service with my current cable company because Internet-only is more expensive, but I don’t watch it, my new provider for internet does not require a tied service, they’re due out in two weeks) I might have an old antenna somewhere, but it’s probably rusted into oblivion. DVDs and web-shows for me.

To me, advertising=fraud. I often make decisions based on advertising I’ve been unfortunate enough to encounter. If I can remember an ad about a product, I’m much less likely to consider buying it. I only get two magazines, one I pay for for the value of the non-ad content (about 25% of the pages) and one I don’t even bother to read because I did not subscribe to it. My telephone company paid for a subscription for me. I assume that it’s an ad-book, I haven’t actually opened one any farther than extracting it from it’s plastic mailing sleeve and chucking it in the recycle bin.

Sometimes, if I’m looking for something, I’ll look through a catalog that deals with that sort of thing and see if they have anything I can use. In that sense, advertising can sell me something, but only if I was looking for it at the moment the ad came by. I will usually run a web search when I am looking for something.

I freely admit to being a cheapskate. I need a reason to buy something. My reason, not the sellers.

Also, seeing really expensive items sometimes has a completely opposite effect on me – it prevents my buying a cheaper version at all. For example, I may see a really expensive jewelry item that I absolutely love, but wouldn’t buy because I cannot afford it or just don’t want to spend the money. Then I see something cheaper that I could afford, but it just looks so uninteresting in comparison, that I end up not buying anything at all. This is a pretty common situation with me, by the way: I don’t buy one thing because I cannot afford it (or don’t want to) and I don’t buy a cheaper item because after seeing the first one, the cheaper version looks pale in comparison.

Not to say that ads may not influence my decision – assuming I was already planning to spend the money. If I am already planning going somewhere on vacation and happen to see an ad for a cruise, and it looks good, and the cost is inline with what I normally spend on vacation, I may go for it – after considering it and comparing the cost/itinerary with other vacation possibilities. In this case, the ad may have helped me find a better deal.

My partner and I do all of these and find watching the Ads before films painful and watching TV is nearly impossible.

$2000 for a sweater is ridiculous unless you are a multi-millionaire and this is pocket change for you. Sure I can afford it and even pay for it out of my paycheck without even touching my savings – I earn 100K+ and have no debt. But it’s just ridiculous. Even if it had been the most gorgeous sweater in the world, it’s not like it’ll last forever. Things get warn out, they go out of fashion, you gain weight, you lose weight.

As to cashmere – I bought a really beautiful cashmere sweater at Ann Taylor for $40. It is so much prettier than the one in the picture, and it is also 100% cashmere. I saw it first there when it was $90, decided that it is too expensive, thought it was still too much when it was $70, then $60, then bought it for $40 a month after I first saw it. If it had disappeared in the meantime – I’d thought “great, I saved money”.

The other day I saw another pretty cashmere jacket for $90. I didn’t buy it – both because I couldn’t bring myself to part with my money (I kind of love money… and yes, I have a credit card, but money is money). Also when you put on the thing it feels a little itchy – it’s a thing with wool stuff. Something that expensive should be perfect. I also couldn’t bring myself to spend $75 on a skirt; although it was also the fact that I gained a couple of pounds and size 5/6 was a bit tight whereas I didn’t want to buy size 7/8 out of principle. If it is still around after I lose weight I might consider it.

Heh. I usually buy my clothes at Costco or Goodwill, so this was way outside the norm for me. But I love Filson.

What usually happens when I get tempted by email advertising is that I click through. Fill a basket while carefully calculating shipping cost (usually coming in right under the limit for the next step). Then I mull it over, decide I don’t really need it right now, and close the browser. It’s a grand waste of time

Since I got my wife on board a few years ago, we don’t care too much what the meighbors have. Where I once would have felt a sense of deprivation at looking at some ads, I now often find a source of amusement. We have raised our son to use critical thinking on matters such as this, he’s 18 now and becoming a somewhat savvy shopper. As he heads off into the world, we can only hope that he keeps his head on straight. He is already way more prepared that I was at that age.

They still show most of the American athletes and I find the announcers less annoying as well. They show a lot of events in ‘real time’ or at least a full 3 hours earlier than what we get from the American t.v. coverage. Plus it is nice to get a different perspective.

But I realize this option isn’t available to everyone.

MN Scout, we watch shows on DVD almost exclusively now. That, and hulu.com, although that site DOES have ads.

JD, thanks for the article. I agree with other users about adblockplus, and use it all the time. I did end up signing up for a high-yield savings account through your site, so I don’t feel too bad about not clicking on any ads. That, and your other article about not clicking on ads. Thanks to your honesty, I’m a faithful reader.

No, you don’t know it coz you’re not in other people’s heads.
I sincerely dislike that sweater and wouldn’t buy were it cheap.