5 ms·

The Death of Advertising

25 points by ptrptr 10y ago

mjevans 10y ago
While I agree with the initial observations, I disagree with the concluding thoughts. The headline is click-bait; I would love a world in which ads, useless things which only annoy me, cease to exist. They do not offer me utility or value. I already know what I want, and when I don't I /then/ use a search engine. Brand names are also a form of consumer protection. In that respect I believe they shall remain.
- williamtrask 10y ago
  Can't upvote this enough. +1 +1 +1 + 1 billion
- lighthazard 10y ago
  You know what you need, not what you want. When new products come out, how do you find out about it? Without advertising, do you hope to discover their store on the Internet randomly?
  - jumpCastle 10y ago
    I subscribe to a newsletter of a product recommendation service like wirecutter.com, which provides discovery. Ideally I would be able to pay for this service so that their incentive to provide quality recommendations would align better with the business model
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    > You know what you need, not what you want. That's all I need.
  - FridgeSeal 10y ago
    In the many years I've used the internet, I don't think I've ever seen an add where I've been like "I didn't know I wanted this", and the increasing invasion of privacy from advertisers is not worth the incredibly vague promise of "ads for things you didn't know you wanted". Much like OP, if there's something I want, I go and research it, or use a community or activity related site (Reddit, BikeRadar/Polygon etc), where there's community discussion and conversation on what's good, bad, relative differences etc. For the most part, this means you get the actually better product, not the one with the biggest advertising spend. No it's not a perfect system, but it's far better than being spammed with ads for things I "don't know I want", which is a spectacularly absurd concept.
    - Denzel 10y ago
      Let's take a step back. I want to see how you think I should solve this problem... I have a startup with a new product. No one knows about the company or the product, but they have a basic desire. That desire can currently be fulfilled with other options. But our offering is vastly different, in fact it's never been done before, and the only way you can realize you need it is by experiencing it. That's why we started the company. How do I get the product to them? They don't know that they want this product. I can assure you though, once they experience it, they don't know how they lived without it. Although they never thought to ask for it because it was literally an unknown unknown. This isn't a hypothetical, this is a real-world example from my brother's company. And I can tell you, targeted advertisement was insanely effective. I'm open to hear other possible ways to get the same ROI using another method.
      - intrasight 10y ago
        Clearly advertising must work - otherwise companies wouldn't have endeavored to make Google and Facebook multi-billion dollar companies. As for ROI, I've heard mostly that internet ads aren't so good. Lots of ad buy is for brand awareness, and there's no way to quantify ROI.
      - dingaling 10y ago
        > and the only way you can realize you need it is by experiencing it. That is part of the problem with modern advertising: hyperbole. By definition, if people have survived this long without knowing about Product-X then they don't need it. The OP's perspective was that he'd rather not know about Product-X ahead of need-time. If he identified a need or desire for a solution to a problem he would search for "grill-thing that keeps leaves out of drain" or "brace that keeps daffodils upright in the wind" and he'd stumble across your brother's product. So the product marketing strategy would be to place Product-X in places where it would likely be found by people pursuing that particular need or desire. I found myself doing that recently for what transpired to be called a 'tamping rammer'. I appreciate that's not ideal from a corporate perspective when the goal is to 'make' a market by leveraging perceived need, but that's not the primary concern of those who are fatigued by advertising.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    That's... actually what I'm going for. I don't want to discover new wants that I previously didn't have, and which I don't need. I hope not to discover their stores, their endless stores with their endless attempts to sell some minute variation on something old, endless attempts to convince me of a need I don't have, and endless begging for feedback. Fuck. That.
  - bittercynic 10y ago
    The Whole Earth Catalog used to provide that service. I'd like to know if there's a current equivalent.
    - intrasight 10y ago
      amazon.com. The Whole Internet Catalog. But I get what you mean - it's not very fun or informative to browse Amazon. I'd say the closest thing are the good product-focused blogs. But they are narrowly focused.
  - intrasight 10y ago
    Ignorance is bliss
- Denzel 10y ago
  Your definition of ads as "useless things which only annoy" that offer no "utility or value" is amusing. It presupposes that you know of everything that exists in the world: thus you can use search to fulfill your needs. Which, I think we can agree, no human knows everything, not even their needs. Not to mention, your search in an ad-less world will simply return... ads. Because that's what ads are meant be: persuasive arguments -- salespeople calcified in text. Let's take this ad-less world to its logical extreme. Burn down the billboards; remove all the signs on any buildings announcing "Wal-Mart" or "Sleepy Valley Hospital", so on and so forth; design and paint every building so it's the perfect shade of uniformity; strike down any person that so chooses to wear any clothing but our perfect shade. Because anything else is an advertisement, a representation of what that property or brand has to offer... and we don't want that. Perfect. Now we can live in peaceful search-supported bliss. The world is complex, but it's not so complex as to not understand that ads serve a purpose. Try looking at it from a different angle. Because as much as I hate useless ads, I love useful ads.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    I know what you mean. I stopped listening to the radio a couple of decades ago, and while I don't miss it, I did miss the occasional good new song in the mess. The thing is... I never lost touch. How many people really work hard to isolate themselves from advertising when it can confer so much convenience? So I, lamprey-like, gain the benefit of their feeding on the airwaves and ads, and I get the good stuff. That said, if I had no friends to rely on, I'd rather be cut off from novelty than be inundated with advertising, the latter of which I find intolerable.
    - Denzel 10y ago
      I can understand your last point. The reason I urge people to use a cautious hand when using such a broad stroke of the brush (ad-blockers/calling for an ad-less world) is because I'm not sure they're considering the third-order, even fourth-order, effects of their actions. Ads, in the broadest definition, are not going anywhere, no matter how much we push them into the shadows. As much as I hate being inundated with ads, at least I know that they're ads. Know what I hate even more? When you can't distinguish ads. So the more we tip the scale from explicit advertising, the more we welcome indistinguishable inline, sponsored, content advertising. Where you start asking yourself, are they being paid for this? That's just one effect that we're already seeing. I don't know whether we'll reach a steady-state for ad blocking or not. Regardless, it doesn't keep me up at night; I'm perfectly content watching others burn themselves. I just wish they'd do it quicker. Why don't people use site-blockers instead of ad-blockers, i.e., they don't get the content if they don't want the ads. Problem solved, and we can accelerate faster to whatever point we're headed to.
davemel37 10y ago
I think this article completely fails to consider the human element in consumerism and advertising. Big data will never replace human decision making. It is a nice observation from someone figuring out the world...but is very early in that discovery process. Brands are more than just a tool...they are a direct byproduct of how our brains perceive and recall things. Human nature hasnt changed since the caveman days and never will. It can evolve and manifest itself in different ways, but our core drivers are fundamental to our existence.

25 points by ptrptr 10y ago

While I agree with the initial observations, I disagree with the concluding thoughts. The headline is click-bait; I would love a world in which ads, useless things which only annoy me, cease to exist. They do not offer me utility or value. I already know what I want, and when I don't I /then/ use a search engine. Brand names are also a form of consumer protection. In that respect I believe they shall remain.

williamtrask 10y ago
Can't upvote this enough. +1 +1 +1 + 1 billion
lighthazard 10y ago
You know what you need, not what you want. When new products come out, how do you find out about it? Without advertising, do you hope to discover their store on the Internet randomly?
- jumpCastle 10y ago
  I subscribe to a newsletter of a product recommendation service like wirecutter.com, which provides discovery. Ideally I would be able to pay for this service so that their incentive to provide quality recommendations would align better with the business model
- jacquesm 10y ago
  > You know what you need, not what you want. That's all I need.
- FridgeSeal 10y ago
  In the many years I've used the internet, I don't think I've ever seen an add where I've been like "I didn't know I wanted this", and the increasing invasion of privacy from advertisers is not worth the incredibly vague promise of "ads for things you didn't know you wanted". Much like OP, if there's something I want, I go and research it, or use a community or activity related site (Reddit, BikeRadar/Polygon etc), where there's community discussion and conversation on what's good, bad, relative differences etc. For the most part, this means you get the actually better product, not the one with the biggest advertising spend. No it's not a perfect system, but it's far better than being spammed with ads for things I "don't know I want", which is a spectacularly absurd concept.
  - Denzel 10y ago
    Let's take a step back. I want to see how you think I should solve this problem... I have a startup with a new product. No one knows about the company or the product, but they have a basic desire. That desire can currently be fulfilled with other options. But our offering is vastly different, in fact it's never been done before, and the only way you can realize you need it is by experiencing it. That's why we started the company. How do I get the product to them? They don't know that they want this product. I can assure you though, once they experience it, they don't know how they lived without it. Although they never thought to ask for it because it was literally an unknown unknown. This isn't a hypothetical, this is a real-world example from my brother's company. And I can tell you, targeted advertisement was insanely effective. I'm open to hear other possible ways to get the same ROI using another method.
    - intrasight 10y ago
      Clearly advertising must work - otherwise companies wouldn't have endeavored to make Google and Facebook multi-billion dollar companies. As for ROI, I've heard mostly that internet ads aren't so good. Lots of ad buy is for brand awareness, and there's no way to quantify ROI.
    - dingaling 10y ago
      > and the only way you can realize you need it is by experiencing it. That is part of the problem with modern advertising: hyperbole. By definition, if people have survived this long without knowing about Product-X then they don't need it. The OP's perspective was that he'd rather not know about Product-X ahead of need-time. If he identified a need or desire for a solution to a problem he would search for "grill-thing that keeps leaves out of drain" or "brace that keeps daffodils upright in the wind" and he'd stumble across your brother's product. So the product marketing strategy would be to place Product-X in places where it would likely be found by people pursuing that particular need or desire. I found myself doing that recently for what transpired to be called a 'tamping rammer'. I appreciate that's not ideal from a corporate perspective when the goal is to 'make' a market by leveraging perceived need, but that's not the primary concern of those who are fatigued by advertising.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  That's... actually what I'm going for. I don't want to discover new wants that I previously didn't have, and which I don't need. I hope not to discover their stores, their endless stores with their endless attempts to sell some minute variation on something old, endless attempts to convince me of a need I don't have, and endless begging for feedback. Fuck. That.
- bittercynic 10y ago
  The Whole Earth Catalog used to provide that service. I'd like to know if there's a current equivalent.
  - intrasight 10y ago
    amazon.com. The Whole Internet Catalog. But I get what you mean - it's not very fun or informative to browse Amazon. I'd say the closest thing are the good product-focused blogs. But they are narrowly focused.
- intrasight 10y ago
  Ignorance is bliss
Denzel 10y ago
Your definition of ads as "useless things which only annoy" that offer no "utility or value" is amusing. It presupposes that you know of everything that exists in the world: thus you can use search to fulfill your needs. Which, I think we can agree, no human knows everything, not even their needs. Not to mention, your search in an ad-less world will simply return... ads. Because that's what ads are meant be: persuasive arguments -- salespeople calcified in text. Let's take this ad-less world to its logical extreme. Burn down the billboards; remove all the signs on any buildings announcing "Wal-Mart" or "Sleepy Valley Hospital", so on and so forth; design and paint every building so it's the perfect shade of uniformity; strike down any person that so chooses to wear any clothing but our perfect shade. Because anything else is an advertisement, a representation of what that property or brand has to offer... and we don't want that. Perfect. Now we can live in peaceful search-supported bliss. The world is complex, but it's not so complex as to not understand that ads serve a purpose. Try looking at it from a different angle. Because as much as I hate useless ads, I love useful ads.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  I know what you mean. I stopped listening to the radio a couple of decades ago, and while I don't miss it, I did miss the occasional good new song in the mess. The thing is... I never lost touch. How many people really work hard to isolate themselves from advertising when it can confer so much convenience? So I, lamprey-like, gain the benefit of their feeding on the airwaves and ads, and I get the good stuff. That said, if I had no friends to rely on, I'd rather be cut off from novelty than be inundated with advertising, the latter of which I find intolerable.
  - Denzel 10y ago
    I can understand your last point. The reason I urge people to use a cautious hand when using such a broad stroke of the brush (ad-blockers/calling for an ad-less world) is because I'm not sure they're considering the third-order, even fourth-order, effects of their actions. Ads, in the broadest definition, are not going anywhere, no matter how much we push them into the shadows. As much as I hate being inundated with ads, at least I know that they're ads. Know what I hate even more? When you can't distinguish ads. So the more we tip the scale from explicit advertising, the more we welcome indistinguishable inline, sponsored, content advertising. Where you start asking yourself, are they being paid for this? That's just one effect that we're already seeing. I don't know whether we'll reach a steady-state for ad blocking or not. Regardless, it doesn't keep me up at night; I'm perfectly content watching others burn themselves. I just wish they'd do it quicker. Why don't people use site-blockers instead of ad-blockers, i.e., they don't get the content if they don't want the ads. Problem solved, and we can accelerate faster to whatever point we're headed to.

davemel37 10y ago

I think this article completely fails to consider the human element in consumerism and advertising. Big data will never replace human decision making. It is a nice observation from someone figuring out the world...but is very early in that discovery process. Brands are more than just a tool...they are a direct byproduct of how our brains perceive and recall things. Human nature hasnt changed since the caveman days and never will. It can evolve and manifest itself in different ways, but our core drivers are fundamental to our existence.