Comment by soared
12 hours ago
This is kind of broken logic. You’re not required to advertise. If you want to scale your business into millions in revenue, then you’ll likely need to advertise. The best ROI is generally google/meta, but you have countless other options. You can buy ads directly from most websites, it just doesn’t scale.
The best ROI is google/meta if you're an expert and have unlimited time to dedicate to making and running ad campaigns. For the rest of us there's much better tools that give us better ROI than if we did it on our own.
> You're not required to advertise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_race
If you are considering human society as a whole, it is a disastrously poor use of resources. But if you are an arms merchant (or dominant advertising platform), it is fabulously profitable.
> it is a disastrously poor use of resources
For it to be a poor use of resources, you have to have some goal you are optimizing against.
And I think you'll come to find that the assumed goal in your head is not one that's widely shared across what people in society actually want.
Okay, maybe the digital ad is a waste of resources. But is it any more of a waste than the gender reveal confetti that it was advertising? How about even the idea of a gender reveal party.
What about an enamel pokemon fridge magnet?
After a very low bar (for 2026), human essentials are taken care of and people mostly want luxury/leisure consumer goods for entertainment.