Dream Advertising (but actually real and targeted by companies)

[Punp]

I told you guys a few months ago that I had mid-dream advertising, and we all had a good laugh at my expense. Turns out:

• It's a purposeful target of advertising companies
• 54% of young Americans report ads infiltrating their dreams
• 41% of respondents in the linked survey said they'd accept dream advertising in exchange for discounts
• 68% indicated they would not be willing to pay to keep their dreams ad-free
• 32% expressed interest in a hypothetical "dream-ad blocker"

Information is based on this article from studyfinds.org

Would you be interested in a hypothetical "dream-ad blocker"? What do you think a "dream-ad blocker" looks like? Have you had advertising or product placement in your dreams?

Thanks to @llillilll for sending me the link.

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Edit: Thanks to @zalaz alaza and @Vitnira for further articles:

Science.org, 2001
Coors Light in your dreams

 

[Hara]

Is this not just a side effect of being bombarded my ads every waking minute of the day (for most people)? I have zero tolerance for ads and do everything to avoid them, and I have never had ads in my dreams

 

[№56]

The open letter from a group of sleep researchers that's mentioned in the OP article is worth reading, and cites a number of examples of attempts at "targeted dream incubation" advertising. One particularly disturbing paragraph:

For now, TDI-based advertising requires our active participation, for example choosing to play an 8-hour Coors soundtrack while we sleep. But it is easy to envision a world in which smart speakers—40 million Americans currently have them in their bedrooms [22]— become instruments of passive, unconscious overnight advertising, with or without our permission. These tailored soundtracks would become background scenery for our sleep, as the unending billboards that litter American highways have become for our waking life.

I can imagine Amazon selling budget versions of their smart speakers that whisper advertisements while their users sleep, like the budget Kindles that include advertisements. The regulations against subliminal messaging in advertisements are apparently next-to-nonexistent in the US, and if it was presented as a voluntary consumer choice I doubt they would get in trouble for it. All they'd have to do is get "consent to receive targeted responses based on your activity" or something like that.

 

[ビンス]

I LOVE SUBSCRIPTIONS!

I LOVE SUPPORTING MEGA-CORPORATIONS!

I WILL PAY EXTRA TO KEEP MY DREAMS AD FREE!

I WILL FORCE MY CHILDREN TO SLEEP NEXT TO A SUBLIMINAL DREAM-AD SPEAKER!

IF YOU DISAGREE YOU'RE JUST BROKE!

 

[sneaky dice]

I've never noticed if my dreams are sponsored or not but this reminds me of an old /x/ post talking about how companies are using things like bone conduction via vehicle vibrations to insert advertisements into our subconscious.
We're headed for a future where indoors our screens have advertisements, going outside we'll see billboard advertisements, the sky will be filled by drone display advertisements and then even our internal thoughts and dreams will be infiltrated by them.

All this thinking about our dystopian lives makes me thirsty for the refreshing taste of an ice cold Coca Cola™.

 

[Punp]

I've never noticed if my dreams are sponsored or not but this reminds me of an old /x/ post talking about how companies are using things like bone conduction via vehicle vibrations to insert advertisements into our subconscious.

Yeah that'd be fucking wild if roads could play jingles.

I feel like my brain is already filled with advertising and Simpsons quotes. Sure, just bundle some more of that shit directly into my dreams.

 

[InternetGeist]

Just create a firewall rule to block all incoming traffic to your brain. Make your dream local only

 

[SparkyWilson]

What a sick, sad world we live in. They are probably going to try to figure out how to get that number to 100%. People wonder why I disconnect my self from modern society as much as possible.

 

[K0WLOON]

>2025
>having ads on anything at all

what happened to the generations? it is so simple to install an adblocker on nearly any device, yet every young person I meet is watching an ad on youtube or whatever stream they use. I haven't seen an ad on the internet in over a decade but these inbred sports are sitting through literal minutes of advertizing slop just to watch some pink-haired twink get play good at video gaem.

It is seeming like so-called "digital natives" are just dumb cows that companies milk for adrev, they would most definitely sign up for brain ads if they could see an egirl tiddy or watch the favorite girlish-boy get pentakills on Fortcraft or whatever children does these days

 

[Punp]

it is so simple to install an adblocker on nearly any device, yet every young person I meet is watching an ad on youtube or whatever stream they use.

Holy shit tell me about it. There was this accountant guy I used to work with who was the posterboy for "chad". Smart, popular, a new date every weekend, good looking, money. I sent him a youtube vid and watched him open it and he sat through two ads before the video. I told him he could remove that with ad block and he was like "no, I like the ads".

"No, I like the ads".

I can't fathom how much of his time browsing must have been consumed by advertising.

Dumb cash cows is the perfect analogy.

 

[Ross_Я]

what happened to the generations?

What baffles me over and over again is the fact that back in the 90's I used to think: man, the next generation will be tech wizards; they will be able do stuff with computers I can only dream about.
Reality: I am a magician to them and half of them do not even know how to open a command line. Take a UI away from them - and they will be bleating. Wow. So much for the wrong expectations, but talk about comforts and what not. I never thought corporation could just take away that much freedom by... simply offering a UI and routine updates. Like, really, wow. I all but literally saw people jump into the cage as long as there's a comfortable couch in the said cage.
Forget about revolutions. I don't know how hellish it was in 1917, or if people changed that much in 100 years, but you ain't gonna see any will to fight in the masses of today for whatever reason.

Yeah that'd be fucking wild if roads could play jingles.

"The city ... rebuilt it to the exact same, wrong blueprints."
Once again, no comments.

On topic: I barely see any dreams at all. Kind of sad, I guess. I heard some stories from some acquitances who practice lucid dreaming about different creatures and beings they met in their sleep, and I always think I should get into that, but so far my slep schedule is too fucked up and life is too busy to try and include any lucid reaming practices into that. And yeah, at this point my sleep time is a black screen transition from night to day (or from morning to evening) pretty much about 98% of the time.
When I do get dreams, it is usually... mild horrors that I'm a student in univesity again and I have to defend a term tomorrow or something like that... Kind of crazy: 5 years of those bollocks left such an impact on me, that I still remember them with such a high level of anxiety. Guess I just wasn't cut for any type of a hustle. Good thing I didn't try to have a regular job for more than several years. Last thing I need is a regular job - and then having dreams about my regular job on weekends. Now that's a horror worse than ads in my sleep.
Anyway, yeah, nothing in my dreams. And whenever something does appear, it doesn't include ads. Perhaps because I'm with adblocker online and do not pay much attention to them IRL.

On a side note, I watched Dream Scenario with Nick Cage rather recently, and at some point ads in dreams appeared in that movie, and I was, like, horrified. Really, it looked like a nightmare. And stuff like

• 41% of respondents in the linked survey said they'd accept dream advertising in exchange for discounts
• 68% indicated they would not be willing to pay to keep their dreams ad-free

looks like some kind of collective madness. Or despair. Or... I don't know what. But it just doesn't look right in my eyes.

 

[vulonkaaz]

surprisingly enough i found no trace of active advertising in my dream logs (possible that it happened and i didn't log it, or that i didn't realise there was an advert)

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apparently in the world we live in we are way more connected than we think like not only connected through like electronics and stuff and what we physically see and hear everyday but we are kind of like radios that can emit and receive thoughts and vibes and stuff we don't realise it but most of our personality and thoughts and subconscious and stuff are shaped by random informations floating around in the air, the day that mankind realise that and manages to directly modify that invisible layer of data we will have far bigger problems than some goofy dream adverts i think

 

[Ross_Я]

we are kind of like radios that can emit and receive thoughts and vibes and stuff we don't realise it but most of our personality and thoughts and subconscious and stuff are shaped by random informations floating around in the air, the day that mankind realise that and manages to directly modify that invisible layer of data we will have far bigger problems than some goofy dream adverts i think

I first heard that thought way back in Linklater's Waking Life.
I'm not sure I find it anyhow plausible though. Surely if we were a hivemind, there would've been at least somewhat less bollocks in the world, no?

 

[Obake]

Never seen an ad in my dreams but if I did I wouldn't remember it anyway

 

[Punp]

We are destroying this already fucked and people's minds up world just making people buy more useless things.
Such a human thing to do!

>So deep, very valuable insight
>Joined Jan 3 2025

I first heard that thought way back in Linklater's Waking Life.
I'm not sure I find it anyhow plausible though. Surely if we were a hivemind, there would've been at least somewhat less bollocks in the world, no?

If you think about the general push and pull of humanity and the commercial interaction of ideas, you get big emergent behaviours which result in "more bollocks". We have AI users on social media because in a spreadsheet somewhere it makes financial sense while on the ground level it makes zero.

Dream Scenario is an excellent film and great research for the social implications of dream advertising. It takes the concept a little further than "a catchy jingle in your head" but the gut feel of it is there.

 

[Sidewinder91]

I guess it makes sense? Back before colour TVs were common, people used to dream in black and white.

If these young Americans are watching videos on their phones all day, then they'd be exposed to a lot of adverts. Makes sense to think that some of that would follow them into their dreams, though I'm not too sure how effective 'dream marketing' would be, realistically. Not a great way to spread product awareness and you can't get the same kind of metrics that you can with TV, radio or internet ads.

 

[SparkyWilson]

I'm working on either a video or blog post about what I call The Consumer-advertising industrial complex manipulating people into having an instant gratification complex which causes them to consume more product and the side effects of this are increase in addictions problems in youth.

 

[K0WLOON]

Holy shit tell me about it. There was this accountant guy I used to work with who was the posterboy for "chad". Smart, popular, a new date every weekend, good looking, money. I sent him a youtube vid and watched him open it and he sat through two ads before the video. I told him he could remove that with ad block and he was like "no, I like the ads".

"No, I like the ads".

I can't fathom how much of his time browsing must have been consumed by advertising.

Dumb cash cows is the perfect analogy.

these are the men that the early commercial interneterati dreamed of inviting to the party. The Mouthbreathers and assorted normies that would see the internet merely as a forum to conduct activities they already participate in, an extension of the meatspace where inundation with commerce is the norm, rather than as an opportunity to develop an alternative free of this pandemonium of particularly insidious pandering.

The crayon eaters are always the perfect patsies to plunder and pilfer because they can be easily persuaded of the pseudo-benefits and can be easily parted from any parsimony or penny pinching they may be want to partake of. Probably.

 

[灰の男性]

Probably caused by the high exposure towards adverts, looking at the articles calm advertising seems to be more ideal for dream injection. There is also the matter of in-sleep injection where you manipulate the subject's environment in order to induce changes in his consciousness.

 

[Creechan12]

>2025
>having ads on anything at all

...

It is seeming like so-called "digital natives" are just dumb cows that companies milk for adrev, they would most definitely sign up for brain ads if they could see an egirl tiddy or watch the favorite girlish-boy get pentakills on Fortcraft or whatever children does these days

I mention Adblock all the goddamn time to my fellow college students and they always make up an excuse of "oh it's not on chrome" or they don't know how, I always say it's not that hard, but they still refuse, not only is utter laziness, the current generation seems to have a complete hesitation to learn anything about the tools they use. Or maybe they don't know where to even begin to learn?

I did talk to guy about operating systems briefly. He brought up some stuff about his computer, I talked about my computer a little, being pathetic Linux user I am, I mentioned the fact I used Linux and he just responded with "Oh yeah? I use chrome." and then nodded his head, It wasn't a chromebook. These people when they think about downloading firefox or adblocker they're imagining climbing a goddamn mountain. I truly wonder if it's just a normie thing or if there is something more deliberate going on. I get some people aren't curious and they just stick to their neck of the woods, but this seems completely different.