Comment by somenameforme
9 days ago
It also just occurred to me in our discussion that you may have missed the fundamental point. The study used ad spend as a proxy for ads viewed. This is because measuring exactly how many ads people see, let alone over time, is impossible to measure, but it's undoubtedly increasing with a sharp exponential, largely thanks to the internet.
Ad spend works as a passable proxy for it, and is likely understating the impact in modern times since advertising has become cheaper than ever, again thanks to the internet. So ad spend is going up at the same time that the number of ads per spend is increasing, at a rate substantially faster than during their study period.
> The study used ad spend as a proxy for ads viewed
Yes, clearly that was the intent. That doesn't mean you can generalize from your proxy to the thing you have a hard time measuring.
> So ad spend is going up at the same time that the number of ads per spend is increasing, at a rate substantially faster than during their study period.
It seems like you are just making up facts.
The fact is that global spending on advertising is a fairly steady percentage of the GPD. It does occilate a little up and down, but the "exponential" growth you are talking about is merely the exponential growth of GDP.
Thus your argument that internet has increased ad spend and thus decreased happiness is false.
Addionaly, while this is also hard to quantify, the trends for cost per ad view does seem to be moving in the opposite direction. The cost of an impression seems to be moving upwards, not downwards.
The study started in 1980 and carried on to 2013. So they started in an era where you had a mixture of extremely expensive (television) or extremely low reach (local newspaper classifieds) ads. In the internet era you have high reach low cost options such that for less than $100, like $30 adjusted to 1980 dollars, you can hit tens of thousands of people. And there are vastly more people advertising precisely because of that.
Your GDP thing is a complete red herring. GDP has no relevance on the meaning of increases in advertising. Finally here [1] is a graph of global advertising spend over the years. Yes it is increasing exponentially, and obviously so are the number of ads people are seeing.
[1] - https://www.visualcapitalist.com/evolution-global-advertisin...
> In the internet era you have high reach low cost options such that for less than $100, like $30 adjusted to 1980 dollars, you can hit tens of thousands of people.
You could buy a classified with the same or better reach and same price in 1980.
> Your GDP thing is a complete red herring. GDP has no relevance on the meaning of increases in advertising.
You've claimed that internet cause ad spending to grow. Ad spending only grew because the GDP grew so you can't blame the internet for it.
> Yes it is increasing exponentially
Again, because GDP is increasing exponentially.
Also your graph doesn't show total spend, only the breakdown by sector.
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