Comment by elzbardico
4 days ago
Because is fucking undproductive, useless and detrimental to society. Advertising is a cancer, an immoral activity.
4 days ago
Because is fucking undproductive, useless and detrimental to society. Advertising is a cancer, an immoral activity.
If you owned a small business you'd be singing a very different tune.
Own a small business, still cancer. Will never use and lo and behold, all runs fine.
Most small businesses do not have the luxury of ready made distribution channels.
Especially if it's an ecommerce business.
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Hi. I own a business. I still find ads to be cancer.
You think all businesses should just spread awareness by word of mouth? Can you put a sign on your store or is that an ad? What if you don't have a store? Yes, advertising can be really awful but that doesn't meaning all advertising is "cancer." If you have a good business that creates actual value for people, advertising it can actually be seen as a good thing.
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> If you owned a small business you'd be singing a very different tune.
The problem with advertising is that a little bit done honestly is actually good and fine. What we actually have way, way too much, and it's often dishonest and manipulative.
It's a similar thing with finance. It's necessary, but way too many talented people are spending their energies on it.
Black and white thinking doesn't really capture the situation, and ends up creating a lot of noise (BAN IT ALL vs. IT'S ALL GOOD AND YOU LOVE IT, FIGHT!).
Honestly, I think it might be a good thing to put caps on the number of people that can work in sectors like that (and further limit the number of very smart people working in them), to direct talented people to more productive and socially beneficial parts of the economy.
Maybe 1 percent of Google's headcount is actually working on ad technology. There isn't some brain drain problem where people are doing ads instead of curing cancer.
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Those "US STEM grads have their skills wasted" are solving those problems (optimal ad load, bad ads, etc.) but its a very hard problem. Don't be so dismissive.
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That's a problem that advertising both created and feeds off of.
Setting aside the moral aspect which is highly subjective and seems to have a price tag (for example tech CEOs quit any sort of morals for a good paycheck), the productivity question is a measurable one.
Aka does advertising as a whole increase total consumption or is it a zero sum game (aka send bigger slice of the same pie to a competitor)
From what I know advertising does increase total demand aka more things/services need to be produced and sold on aggregate.
Some of the demand induced by ads is useful; people becoming aware of stuff they didn’t know exists, and finding that it provides a useful service for them.
But most ads are trying to convince you to buy their brand’s version of a product that you already know of, or (even worse!) a new version of an old product. Any demand induced there is just wastefulness.
If Amazon can figure out that I’m interested in headphones, I already know more actual information about headphones than their ads will give me.
> for example tech CEOs quit any sort of morals for a good paycheck
An alternative explanation is that prospective tech CEOs who are willing to overlook morals are scarcer and thus mandate higher salaries. ;)
Is increasing total consumption something positive?
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I disagree
There is good and bad advertising.
I'd want to receive ads for things that I'm really interested in.
I can’t relate to that. When I see a banner ad I find it obtrusive whether it’s from Bank of America or my favorite HAM radio company. If I’m in the market for a product I value hearing the testimonials of people in my life rather than an advertisement.
The one case where I find ads useful, when word of mouth isn't an option, is in a static image on a site (review site, blog, whatever) where I'm researching a thing. The ad would be related to that thing, doesn't need to know a thing about me other than I'm browsing that page, and is related to the content on that page. I click on those ads sometimes.
I'm mostly thinking about finding things that you werent even aware that they do exist
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It's like saying there is good and bad diseases because some solve other problems like space in nursing home.
Depends on the product being advertised. I don't see how you can compare a product that enhances someone's life to a disease.
No, it isn't.
People want to buy things, especially the ones that make their life easier, but you got to get to know them somehow, right?
If you're "really interested" in something, you're already following new releases, doing extensive research for purchases etc, so why would you need ads?