4 ms·

> It's not like the money magically vanishes to never be seen again No, it remains in corporate budgets, which, without all the marketing spend, can be shifted

> It's not like the money magically vanishes to never be seen again No, it remains in corporate budgets, which, without all the marketing spend, can be shifted to better wages, charity work, capital investments, better wages, safety and health initiatives, better wages...

jtx22 7y ago
You should start a company and pay better wages.
organsnyder 7y ago
More likely it would go to stock buybacks and shareholder dividends.
velp 7y ago
....and without some of that marketing spend, revenue would decrease (or be co-opted by competition) and then we're back at the same problem. Companies probably over-index on advertising spend, but it's not as simple as "look no ads, now we can raise everyone's salary 2x"
buttheyare 7y ago
But it doesn't really work like that, does it? After all, it's up to an individual to create something meaningful. The money will always be there in one form or the other. Without google or facebook relaying on advertisements as their business model, coca cola would go for other channels. They'd pick billboards instead of instagram ads, or local newspapers ads instead of native ads. Now I may be a bit biased, however can you really argue that local newspapers and billboard owners will make better use of that capital? And it's not facebook/google restricted either; big companies like that have a very wide range of things they do and ways in which they promote the brand. And come to think of it, facebook, google, and all the other advertising giants we here seem to hate are in a much better position to use that money in a meaningful way. Definitely better then a random wannabe instagram influencer.
krumpet 7y ago
At the expense of all those marketers who just lost their jobs. Oh, and all those Google employees because nobody is buying ads anymore. I think Aperocky observation that following the money doesn't get at the root of the problem is spot on.
- wpietri 7y ago
  We'll find something else for them to do. Something that isn't just systemic waste. A good example for me comes from SF's MUNI system. For decades, they had people whose job it was to track bus arrival times so that schedulers had good data to work from. Eventually, the buses all got computer+GPS devices so they could be tracked continuously. Should we have refused to enable those because of the job losses? I say no. There's no point in having people doing something wasteful just to protect jobs. Where we find systemic waste, we should eliminate it and shift the people to doing something actually valuable. To say otherwise is a variant on the Broken Window Fallacy.

jtx22 7y ago

You should start a company and pay better wages.

organsnyder 7y ago

More likely it would go to stock buybacks and shareholder dividends.

velp 7y ago

....and without some of that marketing spend, revenue would decrease (or be co-opted by competition) and then we're back at the same problem. Companies probably over-index on advertising spend, but it's not as simple as "look no ads, now we can raise everyone's salary 2x"

buttheyare 7y ago

But it doesn't really work like that, does it? After all, it's up to an individual to create something meaningful. The money will always be there in one form or the other. Without google or facebook relaying on advertisements as their business model, coca cola would go for other channels. They'd pick billboards instead of instagram ads, or local newspapers ads instead of native ads. Now I may be a bit biased, however can you really argue that local newspapers and billboard owners will make better use of that capital? And it's not facebook/google restricted either; big companies like that have a very wide range of things they do and ways in which they promote the brand. And come to think of it, facebook, google, and all the other advertising giants we here seem to hate are in a much better position to use that money in a meaningful way. Definitely better then a random wannabe instagram influencer.

krumpet 7y ago

At the expense of all those marketers who just lost their jobs. Oh, and all those Google employees because nobody is buying ads anymore. I think Aperocky observation that following the money doesn't get at the root of the problem is spot on.

wpietri 7y ago
We'll find something else for them to do. Something that isn't just systemic waste. A good example for me comes from SF's MUNI system. For decades, they had people whose job it was to track bus arrival times so that schedulers had good data to work from. Eventually, the buses all got computer+GPS devices so they could be tracked continuously. Should we have refused to enable those because of the job losses? I say no. There's no point in having people doing something wasteful just to protect jobs. Where we find systemic waste, we should eliminate it and shift the people to doing something actually valuable. To say otherwise is a variant on the Broken Window Fallacy.