A business’s viability outside of advertising doesn’t change the morality of advertising.
Regardless of which side of the camp you fall on, you can’t argue that ads are “good” just because some businesses need them to survive. In fact, I’d wager if a business NEEDS ads to survive, it’s probably a net negative on society as a whole.
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.
> 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.
Directly working. But then you have all the vehicles that, in the grand scheme of things, exist solely to enable ads and make data mining for them easier, such as Chrome and Android. Then there are products that exist primarily to lock you into the Google ecosystem so that you're forced to interact with the rest of it.
At the end of the day, if most of company's income is from ads, it can be safely assumed that whatever else it does is somehow about ads even if it doesn't contribute directly. Well, or else Google is incredibly inept.
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.
There are "very hard problems" that don't need to be solved, or are far lower priority than other problems. Hard doesn't imply being "productive, useful and beneficial to society."
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.
A business’s viability outside of advertising doesn’t change the morality of advertising.
Regardless of which side of the camp you fall on, you can’t argue that ads are “good” just because some businesses need them to survive. In fact, I’d wager if a business NEEDS ads to survive, it’s probably a net negative on society as a whole.
I won’t die on that hill, but that’s my hunch.
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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.
> 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.
Directly working. But then you have all the vehicles that, in the grand scheme of things, exist solely to enable ads and make data mining for them easier, such as Chrome and Android. Then there are products that exist primarily to lock you into the Google ecosystem so that you're forced to interact with the rest of it.
At the end of the day, if most of company's income is from ads, it can be safely assumed that whatever else it does is somehow about ads even if it doesn't contribute directly. Well, or else Google is incredibly inept.
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.
There are "very hard problems" that don't need to be solved, or are far lower priority than other problems. Hard doesn't imply being "productive, useful and beneficial to society."
That's a problem that advertising both created and feeds off of.