Opting Out of Advertising is a Financial Privilege

Paying for a Product Prevents Me From Being the Product

The other day, my phone very rudely interrupted me. A text came through, “Hey there! It looks like you forgot your cart!”

No, I didn’t abandon a horse and buggy on the side of the road, or leave a grocery cart at a friend’s house. I had simply gotten distracted before clicking “Buy Now.”

I had signed up for e-mail and the dreaded text notifications to get a discount on my kiddo’s favorite travel granola bars (yes, that is in fact a thing— these magical bars are reasonably healthy with names like “Apple Kale” and not too crumbly for car rides, with a price tag to match their unicorn status).

Ostensibly, I could have paid full price for the bars. But, inflation’s real, a (toddler) girl’s gotta eat, and paying full price was, well, not in the preferred budget. So a handful of clicks and a shred too much advertising data later, I had a virtual cart of on-sale granola bars, and a new unwanted text companion.

I’ve written about opting out of advertisements plenty before. I try most of the tricks in the book: Opt Out Pre-Screen to reduce junk mail, a separate e-mail address for any coupon needs, and using the “unsubscribe” button ruthlessly.

But this was the first time it truly occurred to me that opting out of advertising is sometimes a financial privilege.

Of course, anybody can use the tricks above. Creating a junk e-mail address or clicking unsubscribe is free, minus the time and effort involved. But with retailers increasingly insisting on getting your phone number— or worse, downloading an app for the discount— well, chances are you’ll deal with at least one unwanted text before remembering to unsubscribe.

I know some minimalist gurus who disparage the sales price of an item. Joshua Fields Millburn of The Minimalists, for example, controversially argued that he would rather pay Full Price than Sale Price. His reasoning? “…It forces me to question the purchase: when I discover something I want to buy, I must think it over and spend time budgeting for it—all the while questioning if the new possession will add real value to my life. Conversely, Sale Price is the compulsory price—a fool’s price.”

I understand his reasoning, to a point; I’m all for being intentional about our purchases as well. But the fact of the matter is that sometimes, I can afford the higher-quality, safer-for-my-family, buy-it-for-life item only because it’s on sale. And that’s okay.

That doesn’t mean that I have to love sales tactics. I abhor high-pressure pitches like “Save Now with Promo Code GOGOGO.” I’m less than enthusiastic about retailers who offer 40% off less than a day after their 25% off season special (remember: there will always be another sale). And I can’t for the life of me understand why I should need to download a grocery store app to get $1 off my ice cream.

But retailers are increasingly deciding that the true cost of the sales price for their products is access to you and I, the consumer. It’s not enough to get your attention in a weekly grocery mailer; the supermarket now wants you to enable push notifications. It’s not enough for an online retailer to have your e-mail address; now they want to text you like a best friend at all hours of the day. Increased access to my attention is the price I pay (at least until I click unsubscribe) for getting a discount code.

Not my abandoned online shopping cart

The same is true, of course, of radio, streaming services, and any number of other subscriptions: If I can afford it, paying for a product prevents me from being the product. A $17/ month Apple Music subscription guarantees my family’s favorite ‘tunes (currently, Baby Shark on repeat) without the aggravation of advertisement-laden radio. Similarly, the right pricing tier will help you dodge advertisements on Netflix or Amazon Prime Video. Even Facebook is offering a subscription to opt out of advertisements for European users (although this is an option only because EU regulators determined that Facebook violated privacy regulations in collecting and selling user data)

The caveat is that paying for a product doesn’t guarantee that your private information isn’t being sold to advertising platforms. As just one example, the online therapy platform Better Help recently announced settlement terms for selling private user information to social media sites like Facebook, Snapchat, and Pinterest. But it does reduce your exposure to advertising, which is great if you’re trying to escape the feeling that the inter-web is nothing but a capitalist void.

You can pay your way out of advertisements for music, television, or social media (or opt out altogether), but it’s still practically impossible to dodge the hundreds of advertisements that show up as billboards or convenient product placement on a daily basis. In other words, there are limits to the amount of consumerism-gone-wild you can pay your way out of experiencing.

I also don’t think that paying for an ad-free experience is some sort of morally superior choice: There are plenty of noble causes— donating to charities, supporting small businesses, maintaining a fair trade chocolate habit— to spend my money on, and I don’t think Apple Music is one of those. It’s simply an intentional choice to reduce my advertising exposure, made because I have the financial privilege to do so.

But that financial privilege has its limits, and I apparently found mine with granola bars.