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The internet existed before advertising and it could continue to exist without it. People still desire instant communication and they would pay for it if a free

by ndnxhs 8y ago

The internet existed before advertising and it could continue to exist without it. People still desire instant communication and they would pay for it if a free option did not exist. A lot of garbage like Facebook would fall and real social networks would take place with real interactions not algorithms trying to drive fake engagement.

TomMarius 8y ago
I don't agree. The internet definitely did not exist in any form that would be today seen as sufficient ever before. The sheer scale makes it impossible, advertising is the only way poor people could afford it and pay for it without paying money at the same time (so the developer now has a new option too). The options these companies that exist thanks to ads gave to all businesses in my country are enormous and have definitely helped greatly to grow our GDP (I live in the country with the greatest number of online stores per citizen). I love Facebook and Google for the options their advertising platforms have created for people (however not being ethical is not cool at all).
- Moru 8y ago
  There is other ways to see ads. The companies don't pay money for advertising, they pay to make poor people buy things they don't need. If they would pay the site owner directly, maybe they would not be as poor?
  - mrep 8y ago
    I doubt it. One of the interesting things about the ad funded internet is that it is effectively progressive. Rich people have more money to spend which makes their clicks more valuable which means the revenue made by ad funded companies comes disproportionately from the rich and yet poor and rich get to use the same exact internet despite the fact the it is mostly paid for by the rich. I'm sad a lot of the top tier newspapers in America are starting to enforce their paywalls now because we are back to the state where only richer people can afford high quality news.
  - hopler 8y ago
    Almost every ad is targeted at richer people, not poor people, for obvious reasons -- right her people have money to spend. Most companies would be fine giving their product free or at marginal cost to poor people if they could require richer people to pay. That's how freemium works, when it works. That's how DVD region coding works. That's how international book publishing works. That's why airfare is so cheap in economy class.
geocar 8y ago
> The internet existed before advertising Advertising has been around for centuries, perhaps even millennia. I mean, I think you mean "before online advertising", but that's not true either! Online advertising predates the web and even the Internet by decades; We had ads in the BBS days, and people didn't hate it. So what's going on? China does a lot of "social" advertising and doesn't have the problems with ad fraud that the western world does: The trick is that "publishers" are responsible for what they serve. That's it. > People still desire instant communication and they would pay for it if a free option did not exist. People do pay for it. That's why we have slack and Cisco, and they aren't alone! The paid ones predate the "free" ones by decades too, but even the "paid" chat systems needed advertising to get those sales– we have throughout history always relied heavily on some form of sponsorship to bring products to market, so there will always be a channel for advertising.
- realusername 8y ago
  > Advertising has been around for centuries, perhaps even millennia. Not really, unless you stretch the definition so much that it does not make sense anymore. The problem here is the advertising industry, not the small sign on a local business, when you stretch definitions, of course the reasoning does not work anymore.
  - geocar 8y ago
    The advertising industry was not merely or limited to "a small sign on a local business" before the Internet. Not in the last few decades, or even in the last few centuries. Moving the goalposts doesn't help anyone.
    - Dylan16807 8y ago
      The internet existed in a major fashion before there was any notable amount of advertising on the internet. The original goalpost was not "advertising did not exist in the entire world". The discussion of the origin of advertising is a different issue. But I'd say that "advertising" as normally understood didn't really exist before mass-produced newspapers at the very least, so that's less than four centuries and nowhere near millennia.
rchaud 8y ago
> The internet existed before advertising and it could continue to exist without it. It would, but it would be much harder to find content, because the major search engines pretty much only show corporate content marketing pieces that are written specifically to rank well in search results. The other day, I was looking for some essays or blog posts about a particular TV show. The first 5 pages on Google were all variations of "10 things you didn't know", "this moment made our jaws drop", "How working in an office is like [completely dissimilar situation in the show]". The only way I was able to actually find a human-written post (completely different style from a conversion-focused copy writer's post) was when I was searching for a screencap from the show on Google images. It's easy to distinguish user-captured images from corporate, licensed images, so clicking on the source link showed me a beautifully written, hilariously annotated season review on a cheap blogspot domain. That reminded me of the early Internet, when the writing felt much more personal and relatable.
- Dylan16807 8y ago
  Harder to find? Wouldn't a lack of advertising money kill most of those garbage sites?
  - rchaud 8y ago
    SEO is SEO. Not all of those sites are ad-supported. You could have a copy writer post an article for that TV show, for the blog of a streaming service that offers it. There are also plenty of corporate sites offering some SaaS product that will put out semi-technical blog posts that rank high but don't give you the full picture and end with a CTA like "Want to learn more? Sign up for our webinar". The goal is for you to arrive on their blog page, and "convert" into a customer, or fill out a contact form. The content is a means to an end, which hurts content quality.

by ndnxhs 8y ago

TomMarius 8y ago

I don't agree. The internet definitely did not exist in any form that would be today seen as sufficient ever before. The sheer scale makes it impossible, advertising is the only way poor people could afford it and pay for it without paying money at the same time (so the developer now has a new option too). The options these companies that exist thanks to ads gave to all businesses in my country are enormous and have definitely helped greatly to grow our GDP (I live in the country with the greatest number of online stores per citizen). I love Facebook and Google for the options their advertising platforms have created for people (however not being ethical is not cool at all).

Moru 8y ago
There is other ways to see ads. The companies don't pay money for advertising, they pay to make poor people buy things they don't need. If they would pay the site owner directly, maybe they would not be as poor?
- mrep 8y ago
  I doubt it. One of the interesting things about the ad funded internet is that it is effectively progressive. Rich people have more money to spend which makes their clicks more valuable which means the revenue made by ad funded companies comes disproportionately from the rich and yet poor and rich get to use the same exact internet despite the fact the it is mostly paid for by the rich. I'm sad a lot of the top tier newspapers in America are starting to enforce their paywalls now because we are back to the state where only richer people can afford high quality news.
- hopler 8y ago
  Almost every ad is targeted at richer people, not poor people, for obvious reasons -- right her people have money to spend. Most companies would be fine giving their product free or at marginal cost to poor people if they could require richer people to pay. That's how freemium works, when it works. That's how DVD region coding works. That's how international book publishing works. That's why airfare is so cheap in economy class.

geocar 8y ago

> The internet existed before advertising Advertising has been around for centuries, perhaps even millennia. I mean, I think you mean "before online advertising", but that's not true either! Online advertising predates the web and even the Internet by decades; We had ads in the BBS days, and people didn't hate it. So what's going on? China does a lot of "social" advertising and doesn't have the problems with ad fraud that the western world does: The trick is that "publishers" are responsible for what they serve. That's it. > People still desire instant communication and they would pay for it if a free option did not exist. People do pay for it. That's why we have slack and Cisco, and they aren't alone! The paid ones predate the "free" ones by decades too, but even the "paid" chat systems needed advertising to get those sales– we have throughout history always relied heavily on some form of sponsorship to bring products to market, so there will always be a channel for advertising.

realusername 8y ago
> Advertising has been around for centuries, perhaps even millennia. Not really, unless you stretch the definition so much that it does not make sense anymore. The problem here is the advertising industry, not the small sign on a local business, when you stretch definitions, of course the reasoning does not work anymore.
- geocar 8y ago
  The advertising industry was not merely or limited to "a small sign on a local business" before the Internet. Not in the last few decades, or even in the last few centuries. Moving the goalposts doesn't help anyone.
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    The internet existed in a major fashion before there was any notable amount of advertising on the internet. The original goalpost was not "advertising did not exist in the entire world". The discussion of the origin of advertising is a different issue. But I'd say that "advertising" as normally understood didn't really exist before mass-produced newspapers at the very least, so that's less than four centuries and nowhere near millennia.

rchaud 8y ago

> The internet existed before advertising and it could continue to exist without it. It would, but it would be much harder to find content, because the major search engines pretty much only show corporate content marketing pieces that are written specifically to rank well in search results. The other day, I was looking for some essays or blog posts about a particular TV show. The first 5 pages on Google were all variations of "10 things you didn't know", "this moment made our jaws drop", "How working in an office is like [completely dissimilar situation in the show]". The only way I was able to actually find a human-written post (completely different style from a conversion-focused copy writer's post) was when I was searching for a screencap from the show on Google images. It's easy to distinguish user-captured images from corporate, licensed images, so clicking on the source link showed me a beautifully written, hilariously annotated season review on a cheap blogspot domain. That reminded me of the early Internet, when the writing felt much more personal and relatable.

Dylan16807 8y ago
Harder to find? Wouldn't a lack of advertising money kill most of those garbage sites?
- rchaud 8y ago
  SEO is SEO. Not all of those sites are ad-supported. You could have a copy writer post an article for that TV show, for the blog of a streaming service that offers it. There are also plenty of corporate sites offering some SaaS product that will put out semi-technical blog posts that rank high but don't give you the full picture and end with a CTA like "Want to learn more? Sign up for our webinar". The goal is for you to arrive on their blog page, and "convert" into a customer, or fill out a contact form. The content is a means to an end, which hurts content quality.