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Any cost required to be paid to a third party to conduct a transaction between two parties is "rent". Any entity attempting to establish or increase such a cost

Any cost required to be paid to a third party to conduct a transaction between two parties is "rent". Any entity attempting to establish or increase such a cost is "rent-seeking". Ad agencies try to encourage companies to buy more advertising. If they are successful, then other competitors will be forced to buy more advertising to maintain their existing customers. Whatever it cost before to have 5% of the market, it now costs more to maintain the same 5%. The additional advertising expenditure required because of the ad agency's actions is very much rent that was being seeked. The fact that the rent may not be paid to the same ad agency, or that ad agencies have costs themselves (such as content creators), does not change the nature of their actions. Personally, I would like to live in a world where advertising was limited to industry/geographic-specific publications published by the government. A generic list of products, randomized once a day. Listings have a fixed fee and identical formats. Each listing has a description of the product, its price, and one or two photos. You can show people using the product but no faces. No other products/aspirational imagery/language unless it is required to demonstrate the use of the product. Plus curated confirmed reviews. Or just a law that said that ad-supported business models were illegal. You can sell a product or a service but that's it. No "give it away for free and sell ads".

petre 9y ago
> geographic-specific publications published by the government Sounds like product advertising under totalitarian regimes. It goes like: "Register to purchase the national car!” as if you had a choice. Sometimes the choice was between two equally crappy national products. I don't have a solution to fix advertising, but government published ads are only going to fuel corruption. Maybe regulation of advertising would work, such as the EU's GDPR, maybe not. Government regulation is too slow to react to market challenges and there's always an agenda behind it.
- philipodonnell 9y ago
  I don't think the government would need (or even want) to limit the number of advertisers for a given product. Its more like the registry that contractors sign up to when they want government contracts. Here's me and here's what I can do. Having the government control it would at least remove the profit motive behind the advertising service itself. A non-profit could potentially play the same role if having a government do so caused problems.

petre 9y ago

> geographic-specific publications published by the government Sounds like product advertising under totalitarian regimes. It goes like: "Register to purchase the national car!” as if you had a choice. Sometimes the choice was between two equally crappy national products. I don't have a solution to fix advertising, but government published ads are only going to fuel corruption. Maybe regulation of advertising would work, such as the EU's GDPR, maybe not. Government regulation is too slow to react to market challenges and there's always an agenda behind it.

philipodonnell 9y ago
I don't think the government would need (or even want) to limit the number of advertisers for a given product. Its more like the registry that contractors sign up to when they want government contracts. Here's me and here's what I can do. Having the government control it would at least remove the profit motive behind the advertising service itself. A non-profit could potentially play the same role if having a government do so caused problems.