3 ms·

If those are troubling industries (which I agree) it should be illegal to advertise those products. That doesn't mean advertising as a methodology is bad.

• andrepd 6y ago
  What value does advertising produce? I mean it, if advertising magically ceased to exist tomorrow, would anything be worse? Advertising is in itself a manipulative activity, an attempt to pass a worse product as a better one, or to create a demand where there was none, or to persuade someone to do something they otherwise wouldn't.
  • edmundsauto 6y ago
    I think advertising has been crucial to increasing the economic size of the world. It's a valid argument if you think our world is crap, and we should never have switched to bigger civilizations. But the economic growth, driven significantly by increasing the available market for products, has led lots of people out of poverty, spurred innovation, and generally enabled a lot more humans to be born than would have. Advertising expands markets for goods.
    • chillacy 6y ago
      I think it's pretty much this, advertising is lubrication for an economy of consumption. Word of mouth and aggregators (like yelp) can help people find solutions when they know of a problem, but ads inform/manipulate (depending on how you see it) people to know they have a problem in the first place. Also if you've ever written ad copy it's all pretty structurally similar: hook, problem statement, solution, testimonials, etc.
  • cm2012 6y ago
    1) New small businesses (like Shopify stores) can reach customers without going through retail gatekeepers. Ask any Shopify seller, nothing beats FB. 2) New challenger SaaS brands can get in front of customers to compete with mammoth corporate brands with worse software (I see this all the time on my job). 3) Without good ad targeting, only bottom hanging fruit advertisers that appeal to the lowest common denominator can afford to spend. Weight loss, teeth whitening, etc. Good ad targeting means a better user experience with ads.