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From my view as a person who owns a retail brand and absolutely needs to pay for advertising to get page views and resultant conversions. The current state is p

From my view as a person who owns a retail brand and absolutely needs to pay for advertising to get page views and resultant conversions. The current state is pure extortion. I need to pay over three dollars for a frigging click? Almost $20 per sale in advertising fees just to get page views on HoneyGear.com from both google or amazon. I’d like to sell the products for half the current list price, but in today’s market with advertising expense, it’s impossible to lower prices.

jordanpg 7y ago
What if it's the case that advertising (placing unwanted audio/visual solicitations in front of people) as a business model just goes away completely? And businesses have to instead find other ways to get people to buy their stuff? I, for one, have no trouble finding things to buy via search, rankings, or research, and give not one care if I never see another advertisement for the rest of my natural life. I do not hold to the notion that advertising, in any form, is a necessary evil of capitalism. An inevitable parasite, perhaps.
- Ancalagon 7y ago
  > I, for one, have no trouble finding things to buy via search, rankings, or research, and give not one care if I never see another advertisement for the rest of my natural life. How do you think those search results, those research rankings, are generated? People pay to advertise their sites at a certain level in search results too. Just because they are not immediately obvious advertisements doesn't mean they are not in fact advertisements.
  - asdff 7y ago
    My rule of thumb is the first couple of results are absolutely worthless. I don't even read the titles. SEO is a plague as well and should also be done away with. Right now there are no good search engines at all (I appreciate ddg but it needs another decade of polish imo).
  - smsm42 7y ago
    The question is not how they are generated now, the question is how they should be generated if the interests of both buyer and seller in making successful deal, and not the parasites in sucking off transaction costs and extracting rent by gatewaying access. When I'm shopping for something, search results are useful for me, but dozens of intermediaries that intervene in the process usually aren't. Actually, they often make it worse - e.g. when I am shopping for insurance, it's super-hard to find a site that gives you just straight competitive quotes, instead of collecting all your private info, reselling it to 20 other parasites, and then dumping you on a generic landing page of a provider telling you "call our 1-800 number and we'll give you best quote ever!". There's literally negative value in that - I wasted my time and got nothing. Nobody is better from the existence of these parasites - not me, not the insurer (I could call the 1-800 number before, and at least I wouldn't be pissed off like I am after dealing with the parasites).

jordanpg 7y ago

What if it's the case that advertising (placing unwanted audio/visual solicitations in front of people) as a business model just goes away completely? And businesses have to instead find other ways to get people to buy their stuff? I, for one, have no trouble finding things to buy via search, rankings, or research, and give not one care if I never see another advertisement for the rest of my natural life. I do not hold to the notion that advertising, in any form, is a necessary evil of capitalism. An inevitable parasite, perhaps.

Ancalagon 7y ago
> I, for one, have no trouble finding things to buy via search, rankings, or research, and give not one care if I never see another advertisement for the rest of my natural life. How do you think those search results, those research rankings, are generated? People pay to advertise their sites at a certain level in search results too. Just because they are not immediately obvious advertisements doesn't mean they are not in fact advertisements.
- asdff 7y ago
  My rule of thumb is the first couple of results are absolutely worthless. I don't even read the titles. SEO is a plague as well and should also be done away with. Right now there are no good search engines at all (I appreciate ddg but it needs another decade of polish imo).
- smsm42 7y ago
  The question is not how they are generated now, the question is how they should be generated if the interests of both buyer and seller in making successful deal, and not the parasites in sucking off transaction costs and extracting rent by gatewaying access. When I'm shopping for something, search results are useful for me, but dozens of intermediaries that intervene in the process usually aren't. Actually, they often make it worse - e.g. when I am shopping for insurance, it's super-hard to find a site that gives you just straight competitive quotes, instead of collecting all your private info, reselling it to 20 other parasites, and then dumping you on a generic landing page of a provider telling you "call our 1-800 number and we'll give you best quote ever!". There's literally negative value in that - I wasted my time and got nothing. Nobody is better from the existence of these parasites - not me, not the insurer (I could call the 1-800 number before, and at least I wouldn't be pissed off like I am after dealing with the parasites).