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What happened with the idea that ads were a means you had to get to know useful products? If all ads were banned forever from existence, how would anyone disco

by fiatjaf 10y ago

What happened with the idea that ads were a means you had to get to know useful products? If all ads were banned forever from existence, how would anyone discover anything new?

eric_the_read 10y ago
For one example, I discovered Joule (new immersion circulator from ChefSteps) when they appeared on Cooking Issues. While they've since taken advertising from ChefSteps, I'm pretty sure the initial appearance was Dave Arnold chatting with Chris Young(? I think it was him) because he (Dave) thought it was an interesting product.
- eropple 10y ago
  That example doesn't work, though. Follow the chain back to its source: how did ChefSteps get its first customers for its first product? And that question ends up being critical because it's kind of silly to use as an example a product that is from a company with existing direct-marketing channels with existing customers and existing relationships with what are functionally marketing venues (and while I like Dave Arnold and Cooking Issues a lot, it's in many ways a marketing venue--mostly for Arnold's own stuff, but for the occasional interesting-to-him product too, ChefSteps's guy wasn't going on there just to chat). Advertising can and regularly is done well; Giant Bomb, a CBSi joint, never takes ads for games or game-related accessories on their podcasts and the hosts don't endorse the product when they do the ad. I don't think an astroturfed universe (which is the inevitable end result of "oh, no advertising"--see the profusion of "native advertising" for similar) is a better universe.
  - imagist 10y ago
    That's a false dichotomy. The options aren't advertising or astroturfing (which is just advertising). My goal is to not look at ads, be they pop-ups or sponsored Reddit posts. It's true that companies won't be able to saturate markets quickly without ads, but I'm not sure why we want that. I'd rather see small businesses grow slowly based on the quality of their products than see companies with the best advertising grow, crushing competitors with better products. Every dollar spent on advertising is a dollar not spent on developing a good product.
gpm 10y ago
I'd hear about it from a friend, family, on reddit/hn. I'd find it when I googled for "how to do X", or was browsing a store or Amazon. I.e. the exact same way I heard about 99.9% of products I actually use today.
analog31 10y ago
What happened with the idea that ads were a means you had to get to know useful products? Tragedy of the commons. That idea was OK when the state of technology placed a limit on the amount of advertising, on its psychological impact, and on its externalities such as erosion of privacy and malware. I discover new things all the time without being exposed to ads. I also have a modestly successful side business. Its advertising is limited to identifying my business when I participate in certain web forums, and maintaining a frightfully ugly web page.
psyc 10y ago
When I have a need, I go looking for it, and I find it. I want that part of my life to be strictly pull, no push. Advertising is one of the things I hate most about the commercial world.
- blhack 10y ago
  What do you pull on?
  - imagist 10y ago
    People with expertise in the area, ideally.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
charlesism 10y ago
> What happened with the idea that ads were a means you had to get to know useful products? The internet. > If all ads were banned forever from existence, how would anyone discover anything new? What would happen for existing categories of products is "pull" instead of "push." And if it's an entirely new product category, word of mouth and news articles.
- baddox 10y ago
  Exactly. I don't think the author of this article would be opposed to googling [0] "best microwaves" and finding articles from sites like wirecutter [1] or even articles written by manufacturers about why their microwaves are the best. [0] Okay, maybe not Google, but a hypothetical search engine with a different business model [1] They may not like wirecutter's affiliate links either
imagist 10y ago
By searching for things we want instead of waiting for things other people want us to want to be shoved in our faces.
mrfusion 10y ago
Well I think it could be more of a "pull" model instead of a shove down your throat model. People would research their options when they're in the market. Plus you'd have more word of mouth and thought leaders. Perhaps we'd even start expecting our friends and family to routinely talk about products they like. We'd develop new customs living in an ad vacuum?
Fnoord 10y ago
> What happened with the idea that ads were a means you had to get to know useful products? It died a long, long time ago. This guy, Freud's nephew, is what happened: Edward Bernays [1]. As covered in Adam Curtis excellent documentary on the subject of the history of propaganda and advertising "The Century Of The Self" [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self > If all ads were banned forever from existence, how would anyone discover anything new? By word of mouth. I know, not a novel idea, but it seems to work quite well on this very website! The fallacy is that ads were never informative anyway.
interpol_p 10y ago
The Wirecutter has a good business model here. Do the leg-work and review and compare the products to find the best. Make money on affiliate links for those products. People who go to that site to research a product want to be sold to. They want to give their attention and money up for a product. Advertisements on websites are completely backwards from that model.
- dtraid 10y ago
  Most content cannot live out of affiliate links, unless you want your website splattered with bullshit product placement everywhere so content creators can earn a dime. Affiliate marketing is a niche and bigger joke than traditional ads when content depends on it. Wirecutter just happens to be really good at what they do, but their business model can't be used by most of the web, not to mention ad blockers often block affiliate links too.
  - interpol_p 10y ago
    I agree that most affiliate link systems are abused and lead to a mess. > Wirecutter just happens to be really good at what they do By having automated software to block the bullshit, we might end up with an Internet where the people who are "really good at what they do" get more attention.
    - dtraid 10y ago
      There's no software that "automatically blocks affiliate bullshit", there are tens of thousands sites similar to Wirecutter with the exact same business model. Some of them are just bullshit, some of them are not. On the other hand, sites whose content doesn't work well with affiliate links are getting screwed by people blocking their only source of revenue, which is ads.
      - interpol_p 10y ago
        > There's no software that "automatically blocks affiliate bullshit" I'm not claiming that there is software for that. But if it becomes annoying enough I think there will be software written to filter it. Even if it needs to make use of deep learning or some other more advanced mechanism just to detect. > On the other hand, sites whose content doesn't work well with affiliate links are getting screwed by people blocking their only source of revenue, which is ads. This is short-term thinking. The people who block ads will not be making purchasing decisions based on ads they don't want to see. So by showing ads to them all you are doing is devaluing advertisements and driving down the cost of advertising placement in the long term. The only way around this is to make people enjoy ads. This is possible, but it requires work to integrate them with the content and you need the content creators actually making the ads, and they need to enjoy doing it.

by fiatjaf 10y ago

What happened with the idea that ads were a means you had to get to know useful products? If all ads were banned forever from existence, how would anyone discover anything new?

eric_the_read 10y ago

For one example, I discovered Joule (new immersion circulator from ChefSteps) when they appeared on Cooking Issues. While they've since taken advertising from ChefSteps, I'm pretty sure the initial appearance was Dave Arnold chatting with Chris Young(? I think it was him) because he (Dave) thought it was an interesting product.

eropple 10y ago
That example doesn't work, though. Follow the chain back to its source: how did ChefSteps get its first customers for its first product? And that question ends up being critical because it's kind of silly to use as an example a product that is from a company with existing direct-marketing channels with existing customers and existing relationships with what are functionally marketing venues (and while I like Dave Arnold and Cooking Issues a lot, it's in many ways a marketing venue--mostly for Arnold's own stuff, but for the occasional interesting-to-him product too, ChefSteps's guy wasn't going on there just to chat). Advertising can and regularly is done well; Giant Bomb, a CBSi joint, never takes ads for games or game-related accessories on their podcasts and the hosts don't endorse the product when they do the ad. I don't think an astroturfed universe (which is the inevitable end result of "oh, no advertising"--see the profusion of "native advertising" for similar) is a better universe.
- imagist 10y ago
  That's a false dichotomy. The options aren't advertising or astroturfing (which is just advertising). My goal is to not look at ads, be they pop-ups or sponsored Reddit posts. It's true that companies won't be able to saturate markets quickly without ads, but I'm not sure why we want that. I'd rather see small businesses grow slowly based on the quality of their products than see companies with the best advertising grow, crushing competitors with better products. Every dollar spent on advertising is a dollar not spent on developing a good product.

gpm 10y ago

I'd hear about it from a friend, family, on reddit/hn. I'd find it when I googled for "how to do X", or was browsing a store or Amazon. I.e. the exact same way I heard about 99.9% of products I actually use today.

analog31 10y ago

What happened with the idea that ads were a means you had to get to know useful products? Tragedy of the commons. That idea was OK when the state of technology placed a limit on the amount of advertising, on its psychological impact, and on its externalities such as erosion of privacy and malware. I discover new things all the time without being exposed to ads. I also have a modestly successful side business. Its advertising is limited to identifying my business when I participate in certain web forums, and maintaining a frightfully ugly web page.

psyc 10y ago

When I have a need, I go looking for it, and I find it. I want that part of my life to be strictly pull, no push. Advertising is one of the things I hate most about the commercial world.

blhack 10y ago
What do you pull on?
- imagist 10y ago
  People with expertise in the area, ideally.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

charlesism 10y ago

> What happened with the idea that ads were a means you had to get to know useful products? The internet. > If all ads were banned forever from existence, how would anyone discover anything new? What would happen for existing categories of products is "pull" instead of "push." And if it's an entirely new product category, word of mouth and news articles.

baddox 10y ago
Exactly. I don't think the author of this article would be opposed to googling [0] "best microwaves" and finding articles from sites like wirecutter [1] or even articles written by manufacturers about why their microwaves are the best. [0] Okay, maybe not Google, but a hypothetical search engine with a different business model [1] They may not like wirecutter's affiliate links either

imagist 10y ago

By searching for things we want instead of waiting for things other people want us to want to be shoved in our faces.

mrfusion 10y ago

Well I think it could be more of a "pull" model instead of a shove down your throat model. People would research their options when they're in the market. Plus you'd have more word of mouth and thought leaders. Perhaps we'd even start expecting our friends and family to routinely talk about products they like. We'd develop new customs living in an ad vacuum?

Fnoord 10y ago

> What happened with the idea that ads were a means you had to get to know useful products? It died a long, long time ago. This guy, Freud's nephew, is what happened: Edward Bernays [1]. As covered in Adam Curtis excellent documentary on the subject of the history of propaganda and advertising "The Century Of The Self" [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self > If all ads were banned forever from existence, how would anyone discover anything new? By word of mouth. I know, not a novel idea, but it seems to work quite well on this very website! The fallacy is that ads were never informative anyway.

interpol_p 10y ago

The Wirecutter has a good business model here. Do the leg-work and review and compare the products to find the best. Make money on affiliate links for those products. People who go to that site to research a product want to be sold to. They want to give their attention and money up for a product. Advertisements on websites are completely backwards from that model.

dtraid 10y ago
Most content cannot live out of affiliate links, unless you want your website splattered with bullshit product placement everywhere so content creators can earn a dime. Affiliate marketing is a niche and bigger joke than traditional ads when content depends on it. Wirecutter just happens to be really good at what they do, but their business model can't be used by most of the web, not to mention ad blockers often block affiliate links too.
- interpol_p 10y ago
  I agree that most affiliate link systems are abused and lead to a mess. > Wirecutter just happens to be really good at what they do By having automated software to block the bullshit, we might end up with an Internet where the people who are "really good at what they do" get more attention.
  - dtraid 10y ago
    There's no software that "automatically blocks affiliate bullshit", there are tens of thousands sites similar to Wirecutter with the exact same business model. Some of them are just bullshit, some of them are not. On the other hand, sites whose content doesn't work well with affiliate links are getting screwed by people blocking their only source of revenue, which is ads.
    - interpol_p 10y ago
      > There's no software that "automatically blocks affiliate bullshit" I'm not claiming that there is software for that. But if it becomes annoying enough I think there will be software written to filter it. Even if it needs to make use of deep learning or some other more advanced mechanism just to detect. > On the other hand, sites whose content doesn't work well with affiliate links are getting screwed by people blocking their only source of revenue, which is ads. This is short-term thinking. The people who block ads will not be making purchasing decisions based on ads they don't want to see. So by showing ads to them all you are doing is devaluing advertisements and driving down the cost of advertising placement in the long term. The only way around this is to make people enjoy ads. This is possible, but it requires work to integrate them with the content and you need the content creators actually making the ads, and they need to enjoy doing it.