8 ms·

It's strange to have some moral objection to advertising because advertising is, ultimately, a form of discovery, a way of connecting people who want or need so

by cletus 15y ago

It's strange to have some moral objection to advertising because advertising is, ultimately, a form of discovery, a way of connecting people who want or need something with those that supply it. Ad revenue on the Internet, almost by definition, means someone found something they wanted. How exactly is it bad to connect people with things they want and need? The problem with advertising is when it gets too obtrusive, like on TV when, near the end of a movie, you'll see an ad break every 6 minutes (at least in Australia). I generally like the way Google does advertising (disclaimer: I work for Google). It doesn't get in your way (except in some cases on Youtube). It pays for a lot of great services that are free to the end user (search, GMail) and Google clearly separates organic search results from paid promotion. How anyone can have a moral objection to that baffles me.

mayank 15y ago
It's not always a moral objection to advertising per se, but to the methods that enable targeted advertising. I wrote a short piece about the scope of modeling and mining algorithms if you're interested: http://blog.twodeg.net/when-your-data-sings http://blog.twodeg.net/when-your-data-sings (there's a TL;DR in the form of a figure at the link)
clobber 15y ago
PPC ads in Google SERPs are a great thing because they're keyword-based, highly relevant and targeted. The problem with ads starts to happen when we get into behavioral targeting, remarketing/retargeting, data exchanges, etc. This is where things get a little creepy. People don't want profiles built up on them with all of their likes and dislikes so that display ads can be better served to them. What's worse is that Google has been testing out banner ads on some of their other properties like Google Image Search, and Facebook-style ads are showing up in Gmail (see the Groupon ones?). I'm worried that some day the Google we know and love will end up looking like Yahoo around the late 90's, littered with banner ads. I remember people making a switch back then to Google when it was banner ad-free and had great search results.
a3_nm 15y ago
> How exactly is it bad to connect people with things they want and need? Ads aren't always about giving people what they want or need, because there is that clever hack of creating the need in the first place. Besides, even if ads were really about satisfying existing desires, there is also the problem that people don't necessarily want or need the things that are right for them or for society.
codeup 15y ago
First this: "advertising is, ultimately, a form of discovery, a way of connecting people who want or need something with those that supply it." Then this: "How exactly is it bad to connect people with things they want and need?" And this: "How anyone can have a moral objection to that baffles me." This is misleading. There may be people who object to advertising in principle, but even if you don't, if you are seriously trying to think about "moral objections", you need to at least consider what is being advertised and how it is being advertised. Instead, your comment is an example of how advertising advertises itself. Edit: clarified for coherence
- esrauch 15y ago
  For almost any nonessential item, no one knows what they want until they see it. That might be seeing it when you are walking around a store, seeing your friend who had it, or seeing an ad for it on google but no one would ever think "I need an XBox360" if they have literally never heard of it. There are rare exceptions, eg someone is hiking and their toes are too cold and they think "I wish I had boots that would keep my toes warmer", then they go find an item that matches that, but I think that is a tiny percentage of the purchases.
- starwed 15y ago
  That's a weird way to read the OP comment, and I think you're way overreacting to it. You seem to be drawing some insidious connection between those two statements that simply isn't there. OP didn't claim all advertisements were morally acceptable, but that there was nothing inherently wrong with the enterprise.
mbateman 15y ago
There's a big difference between a moral objection and just not liking ads. I don't have any moral objection to ads, but I share this guy's dislike for them. I never click them and would, for various reasons, generally prefer to pay for a service rather than use it for free and have it monetize via advertising.
scubaguy 15y ago
It's one thing to not like advertising in general; I think we all prefer to avoid them. A lot of times, ads are crap. Its another thing to entirely dismiss adverting and the people that are involved in advertisement. It's just down right shitty to be condescending about it. My counter point (http://blog.fisharefriends.us/2011/08/never-work-for-google-twitter-facebook.html http://blog.fisharefriends.us/2011/08/never-work-for-google-...) is that good ads are beneficial to businesses and consumers. Businesses need to make money to invest in future products, and advertising is a necessity to making money.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
rbarooah 15y ago
This is effectively a straw-man. Treating advertising a way to connect suppliers with those with a need is a common, benign interpretation of what it is, but that view rests on assumptions of trust or informational parity between buyers and sellers. i.e. the sellers have to be meeting genuine needs, or the buyers have to have the information necessary to make good determinations. I don't see why we should assume that's generally true. There are plenty of counterexamples (e.g. Drug companies advertising drugs for conditions for which there is not good evidence of efficacy, and consumers being unable to evaluate the statements for themselves). Google makes its revenue by auctioning qualified snippets of human attention. By qualified, I mean that it makes algorithmic inferences about the users demographics and intentions and uses these to bucket these snippets of attention so that they can be priced differentially. This is why Google's advertising is so much more profitable than most other forms. At best, I think you can say that Google's advertising is neutral. The value it provides to society is determined by the qualities of the buyers and sellers. A more skeptical view would be to point out that buyers are better informed than sellers when they enter these transactions. For example, google's search users don't get to see the price that google is charging for their attention, nor are the mechanisms by which google intends to use, say the Google+ network to improve classification transparent to us. You can reasonably claim that it would be preposterous (or uncompetitive) for Google to reveal these mechanisms, or that Google couldn't survive such a climate of openness. Certainly their competitors are probably worse. That doesn't mean we should be any less critical. I think that the more informed we are about how we use our attention, the better, and it's not clear that Google, or any other advertising company is automatically aligned with society in this regard.
- nazgulnarsil 15y ago
  "genuine demand" is a true scotsman fallacy waiting to happen. Purchases are revealed preferences. That people have incoherent preferences doesn't mean you get to pontificate about what they should have.
  - rbarooah 15y ago
    Where is anyone pontificating about what people should have? I also don't see any mention of whether people's preferences are coherent or not. I didn't use the words 'genuine demand', but I did talk about genuine need. This isn't a true Scotsman fallacy because I am talking about the buyers ability to get their needs met, and not debating what qualifies as a genuine need - which is as you say, a revealed preference.
wzdd 15y ago
Normally I think your posts are very thoughful, but this time you are attacking a straw man. The OP clearly indicates near the bottom of the post that it's not about working for the betterment of humanity, but about work he personally finds fulfilling. Serving ads is not fulfilling work for him. Morals don't come into it.
- cletus 15y ago
  If your interpretation is correct--which it may well be--then the OP fundamentally doesn't understand the business of any of these companies. Relatively few engineers work directly on serving ads. The vast majority work on other things. At Google this includes, but is not limited to, Android, Chrome, search, Google+, Maps and self-driving cars.
  - sbierwagen 15y ago
    Except all those projects are about serving ads. Android is about serving ads on cellphones. Chrome about making browsers better, so consumers will use more Google products, and see more ads. G+ is about harvesting social graph data to serve ads. Self driving cars is so people will check their mail on the way into work, and see more ads.
    - munificent 15y ago
      None of that nullifies the direct value those products provide. If self driving cars mean I check my mail on the way to work and see more ads, it's still a self-driving car. I don't see the problem in staring at a couple of electronic billboards if I can live in the future (and not have to stare at real billboards whizzing past me, for that matter).
    - andylei 15y ago
      so journalism doesn't serve society because its "about serving ads"?
    - baq 15y ago
      I'd be extremely happy to watch ads instead of waste time getting angry on people. Self-driving car would be a dream come true for many, many people.
tripzilch 15y ago
> I generally like the way Google does advertising (disclaimer: I work for Google). It doesn't get in your way (except in some cases on Youtube). > It pays for a lot of great services that are free to the end user (search, GMail) and Google clearly separates organic search results from paid promotion. Got any links/reports to back that up? Which ads pay for what parts of what great services? Cause it's a wonderful assumption, except the "great services" you quote hardly have any ads on them, but they are everywhere else, where they do (sort of, sometimes), get in your way. I'm just saying. Google's advertising profits are quite mysterious. And possibly rightly so, they are a company, after all, and it's probably in their best interest not to share that data. Except it refers statements about what great services their advertising crap exactly pays for to the realm of pure speculation.
nikcub 15y ago
you missed the step where they build profiles of users who haven't opted into having their information and details discovered in order to serve them advertising tv advertisers don't have my email, don't know which websites I am visiting, don't know what I am searching for etc. etc.
atdt 15y ago
Someone smarter than me put it thus: [Advertising] cannot be reconciled with the notion of independently determined desires, for [its] central function is to create desires – to bring into being wants that previously did not exist.
megablast 15y ago
It is strange to have some moral objection to being shot because being shot is, ultimately, a chemical reaction, and isn't our existence based on all sorts of chemical reactions. How exactly is one chemical reaction bad, but so many other reactions good? It makes no sense.
known 15y ago
Unsolicited advertisement is spam.

by cletus 15y ago

mayank 15y ago

It's not always a moral objection to advertising per se, but to the methods that enable targeted advertising. I wrote a short piece about the scope of modeling and mining algorithms if you're interested: http://blog.twodeg.net/when-your-data-sings http://blog.twodeg.net/when-your-data-sings (there's a TL;DR in the form of a figure at the link)

clobber 15y ago

PPC ads in Google SERPs are a great thing because they're keyword-based, highly relevant and targeted. The problem with ads starts to happen when we get into behavioral targeting, remarketing/retargeting, data exchanges, etc. This is where things get a little creepy. People don't want profiles built up on them with all of their likes and dislikes so that display ads can be better served to them. What's worse is that Google has been testing out banner ads on some of their other properties like Google Image Search, and Facebook-style ads are showing up in Gmail (see the Groupon ones?). I'm worried that some day the Google we know and love will end up looking like Yahoo around the late 90's, littered with banner ads. I remember people making a switch back then to Google when it was banner ad-free and had great search results.

a3_nm 15y ago

> How exactly is it bad to connect people with things they want and need? Ads aren't always about giving people what they want or need, because there is that clever hack of creating the need in the first place. Besides, even if ads were really about satisfying existing desires, there is also the problem that people don't necessarily want or need the things that are right for them or for society.

codeup 15y ago

First this: "advertising is, ultimately, a form of discovery, a way of connecting people who want or need something with those that supply it." Then this: "How exactly is it bad to connect people with things they want and need?" And this: "How anyone can have a moral objection to that baffles me." This is misleading. There may be people who object to advertising in principle, but even if you don't, if you are seriously trying to think about "moral objections", you need to at least consider what is being advertised and how it is being advertised. Instead, your comment is an example of how advertising advertises itself. Edit: clarified for coherence

esrauch 15y ago
For almost any nonessential item, no one knows what they want until they see it. That might be seeing it when you are walking around a store, seeing your friend who had it, or seeing an ad for it on google but no one would ever think "I need an XBox360" if they have literally never heard of it. There are rare exceptions, eg someone is hiking and their toes are too cold and they think "I wish I had boots that would keep my toes warmer", then they go find an item that matches that, but I think that is a tiny percentage of the purchases.
starwed 15y ago
That's a weird way to read the OP comment, and I think you're way overreacting to it. You seem to be drawing some insidious connection between those two statements that simply isn't there. OP didn't claim all advertisements were morally acceptable, but that there was nothing inherently wrong with the enterprise.

mbateman 15y ago

There's a big difference between a moral objection and just not liking ads. I don't have any moral objection to ads, but I share this guy's dislike for them. I never click them and would, for various reasons, generally prefer to pay for a service rather than use it for free and have it monetize via advertising.

scubaguy 15y ago

It's one thing to not like advertising in general; I think we all prefer to avoid them. A lot of times, ads are crap. Its another thing to entirely dismiss adverting and the people that are involved in advertisement. It's just down right shitty to be condescending about it. My counter point (http://blog.fisharefriends.us/2011/08/never-work-for-google-twitter-facebook.html http://blog.fisharefriends.us/2011/08/never-work-for-google-...) is that good ads are beneficial to businesses and consumers. Businesses need to make money to invest in future products, and advertising is a necessity to making money.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

rbarooah 15y ago

This is effectively a straw-man. Treating advertising a way to connect suppliers with those with a need is a common, benign interpretation of what it is, but that view rests on assumptions of trust or informational parity between buyers and sellers. i.e. the sellers have to be meeting genuine needs, or the buyers have to have the information necessary to make good determinations. I don't see why we should assume that's generally true. There are plenty of counterexamples (e.g. Drug companies advertising drugs for conditions for which there is not good evidence of efficacy, and consumers being unable to evaluate the statements for themselves). Google makes its revenue by auctioning qualified snippets of human attention. By qualified, I mean that it makes algorithmic inferences about the users demographics and intentions and uses these to bucket these snippets of attention so that they can be priced differentially. This is why Google's advertising is so much more profitable than most other forms. At best, I think you can say that Google's advertising is neutral. The value it provides to society is determined by the qualities of the buyers and sellers. A more skeptical view would be to point out that buyers are better informed than sellers when they enter these transactions. For example, google's search users don't get to see the price that google is charging for their attention, nor are the mechanisms by which google intends to use, say the Google+ network to improve classification transparent to us. You can reasonably claim that it would be preposterous (or uncompetitive) for Google to reveal these mechanisms, or that Google couldn't survive such a climate of openness. Certainly their competitors are probably worse. That doesn't mean we should be any less critical. I think that the more informed we are about how we use our attention, the better, and it's not clear that Google, or any other advertising company is automatically aligned with society in this regard.

nazgulnarsil 15y ago
"genuine demand" is a true scotsman fallacy waiting to happen. Purchases are revealed preferences. That people have incoherent preferences doesn't mean you get to pontificate about what they should have.
- rbarooah 15y ago
  Where is anyone pontificating about what people should have? I also don't see any mention of whether people's preferences are coherent or not. I didn't use the words 'genuine demand', but I did talk about genuine need. This isn't a true Scotsman fallacy because I am talking about the buyers ability to get their needs met, and not debating what qualifies as a genuine need - which is as you say, a revealed preference.

wzdd 15y ago

Normally I think your posts are very thoughful, but this time you are attacking a straw man. The OP clearly indicates near the bottom of the post that it's not about working for the betterment of humanity, but about work he personally finds fulfilling. Serving ads is not fulfilling work for him. Morals don't come into it.

cletus 15y ago
If your interpretation is correct--which it may well be--then the OP fundamentally doesn't understand the business of any of these companies. Relatively few engineers work directly on serving ads. The vast majority work on other things. At Google this includes, but is not limited to, Android, Chrome, search, Google+, Maps and self-driving cars.
- sbierwagen 15y ago
  Except all those projects are about serving ads. Android is about serving ads on cellphones. Chrome about making browsers better, so consumers will use more Google products, and see more ads. G+ is about harvesting social graph data to serve ads. Self driving cars is so people will check their mail on the way into work, and see more ads.
  - munificent 15y ago
    None of that nullifies the direct value those products provide. If self driving cars mean I check my mail on the way to work and see more ads, it's still a self-driving car. I don't see the problem in staring at a couple of electronic billboards if I can live in the future (and not have to stare at real billboards whizzing past me, for that matter).
  - andylei 15y ago
    so journalism doesn't serve society because its "about serving ads"?
  - baq 15y ago
    I'd be extremely happy to watch ads instead of waste time getting angry on people. Self-driving car would be a dream come true for many, many people.

tripzilch 15y ago

> I generally like the way Google does advertising (disclaimer: I work for Google). It doesn't get in your way (except in some cases on Youtube). > It pays for a lot of great services that are free to the end user (search, GMail) and Google clearly separates organic search results from paid promotion. Got any links/reports to back that up? Which ads pay for what parts of what great services? Cause it's a wonderful assumption, except the "great services" you quote hardly have any ads on them, but they are everywhere else, where they do (sort of, sometimes), get in your way. I'm just saying. Google's advertising profits are quite mysterious. And possibly rightly so, they are a company, after all, and it's probably in their best interest not to share that data. Except it refers statements about what great services their advertising crap exactly pays for to the realm of pure speculation.

nikcub 15y ago

you missed the step where they build profiles of users who haven't opted into having their information and details discovered in order to serve them advertising tv advertisers don't have my email, don't know which websites I am visiting, don't know what I am searching for etc. etc.

atdt 15y ago

Someone smarter than me put it thus: [Advertising] cannot be reconciled with the notion of independently determined desires, for [its] central function is to create desires – to bring into being wants that previously did not exist.

megablast 15y ago

It is strange to have some moral objection to being shot because being shot is, ultimately, a chemical reaction, and isn't our existence based on all sorts of chemical reactions. How exactly is one chemical reaction bad, but so many other reactions good? It makes no sense.

known 15y ago

Unsolicited advertisement is spam.