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Advertising is not a 'foreign exchange for attention currency' (metaphor used by author). On average, it's manipulation, brainwashing and commodification of we

Advertising is not a 'foreign exchange for attention currency' (metaphor used by author). On average, it's manipulation, brainwashing and commodification of well told lies. But that isn't the real problem - the real problem with advertising is that it works. Why is that a problem ? Because advertising is manufactured demand. Last time I looked at the 'Law of Supply and Demand' on Wikipedia some time ago, the word 'advertising' appeared 0 times in there. I've just checked, the word is there 1 time as the 6th item in a list. I think it deserves way more attention (pun intended) in the economic theory. Just look at that simple chart. A positive shift in demand results in an increase in price and quantity sold of the product. In other words, you can make people consume considerably more stuff they don't want by constantly nagging them with ads. Given that 'stuff' are nature converted into object we temporarily use and discard, the result of this macroeconomic ideology - destruction of nature and change of climate in half a century. We all know the names of the big tech companies who are exceedingly efficient at pushing up the global demand curve. This business model really needs to stop.

WalterBright 5y ago
Linux got its start from advertising. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux#The_creation_of_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux#The_creation_...
pjerem 5y ago
Thank you.
vatican_banker 5y ago
> Because advertising is manufactured demand. I see advertising radically different. People exhibit an spectrum of interest in products in the market, from “zero interest in buying” to “shut up and take my money”. Advertising works by convincing people close to the “shut up and take my money” part of the spectrum to actually buy. Disclaimer: I’m not a marketeer.
- tomaskafka 5y ago
  Yes. And sometimes it even connects people with 'I have this thorny problem to which I would love to buy a solution instead of relying on manual workarounds' with people selling the actual solution, leading to win-win for everyone.
  - amelius 5y ago
    Or they could just Google for it, or ask an expert.
    - shard 5y ago
      Interesting ironic comment. Googling for a solution is implicitly asking Google to serve you ads regarding that solution.
      - alpaca128 5y ago
        Search results aren't ads, they're links to resources you asked for. Just like the contact list on your phone.
        shard 5y ago
        I'm sure you know that when you use Google, search results are a side effect which is used to draw you to use Google, the main product being provided are the ads.
        alpaca128 5y ago
        We're talking about the user's perspective here, not Google's. For the user the search has one purpose, and that isn't looking at ads. Just like nobody opens a newspaper to look at them. The point was that nobody really needs advertising to learn about available products. Google search stays just as useful if you block the ads, the other way around nobody would use it.
ergonaught 5y ago
Babies and bathwater, here. Many people legitimately would like to have Thing/Service but don’t know it exists, and may even not realize the possibility of other options exists.
- b112 5y ago
  I think, logically, if they wanted thing or service, they'd know they want it, yes? What you mean is, they want it after being told how this and that it is, how utterly special, how pathetic they are for not having it, how bad they look without it, and a spell of desire and want are cast over them, to covet thing $x. So many things, are only a thing because someone else has it.
  - theamk 5y ago
    "Covet"? "pathetic"? "someone else has it"? You are taking this too close to heart and/or paying too much attention to the ads. For example, I just went to wired.com and saw: - Many ads for some sort of business-related website, looks like an mix of Slack and Google Calendar with some extra bells + whistles. - A Outbrain block with junk like "Top 25 photos of..." and "You would be surprised about ..." While none of those was interesting to me, none of them made me feel "pathetic" either.
  - sanedigital 5y ago
    Most successful startups provide products or services that address problems that lack solutions, where the solutions aren't sufficient, or where they cause additional problems. When these new, "disruptive" products emerge, the marketplace needs to be educated about them. This is what the term "Marketing" means: it's about creating a market by injecting demand into the marketplace. If people aren't aware that a product exists, they can't demand it. It's easy to focus on Budweiser ads, because those are the memorable ones. But only ~50% of advertising spend is brand advertising [1]. Most advertising isn't about making you feel less cool, or promising increased sex appeal. It's about identifying with a customer, calling out a problem they're having, and educating them about a solution to that problem. [1: I'd love better evidence for this but this was all I could find: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1108407/share-of-brand-vs-performance-mobile-marketing-budgets/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1108407/share-of-brand-v...]
kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
But certainly you want advertising for things you consider good and important, like maybe climate protection things, or mask wearing and vaccinations, and so on. For example a company could offer a more efficient heating appliance for homes. Then it would be a good thing if they advertised it, so that home builders could become aware of it.
- amelius 5y ago
  Advertising is not the only way people can become aware of products ...
  - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
    What would be other ways?
alecbz 5y ago
I'm sure this is a line of reasoning ad-apologists use all the time but... philosophically, is there really a way we can claim that advertising makes you want things in a way that's wrong, as opposed to in way that causes enjoyment just like when you normally want things? Like implicit in this line of reasoning is a bit of a sense that like, there's a "true", base set of desires that we all have that would exist completely independently of any kind of outside influence, and that advertising is bad because it tricks us into addressing other manufactured desires instead of our real, true desires. And that there's something wrong with addressing a manufactured desire instead of a "true" desire? Like, when you address a manufactured desire you don't actually feel the joy/fulfillment you would from fulfilling a "true" desire? I don't think that's right. I don't think we really have true, "pure" desires. Almost all of our desires are a result of social influence in one way or another. And even to the extent that some desires are less a product of influence than others, I'm not sure satisfying those desires is necessarily better. I've bought things after I saw an ad about them, and they're things I now genuinely enjoy. Why does it matter if that enjoyment is a result of the ad or would have existed either way? Maybe a much shorter way of saying this: > In other words, you can make people consume considerably more stuff they don't want by constantly nagging them with ads. Are you sure ads are "nagging" people as opposed to genuinely changing what they want? I share the gut sentiment that it feels wrong to be manipulated by ads, but I feel like there needs to be more to this argument. Though I think you can still think advertising is bad in an "arms race" kind of way (if everyone stopped doing it at once we'd possibly not really be any worse off and have all that time/money to spend elsewhere).
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  Are you pretty or ugly? Are you smart or stupid? Are you successful or failing? Do you have high status or low status? Causing someone to internalize the later rather than the former could certainly lead them to enjoy a product while I have simultaneously ’manufactured’ a ‘need’ where there was/is none.
- the8472 5y ago
  Is wireheading happiness?
- 5y ago
toss1 5y ago
I'd say it REALLY depends on the implementation model. Non-intrusive adverts that are relevant to the content are something that I sometimes literally seek out - because they bring me information that I want, and may lead me closer to buying a thing I want. I've even been frustrated that an advert displays, and when I try to view it again to get more info, it's already gone. Sometimes, I buy trade magazines just for the adverts, or to scan the sponsors/advertisers guide at the back. At the other extreme are popup/pop-over/slide-over adverts especially on mobile that we cannot get rid of. Those are not an exchange of a portion of my attention to support what I'm reading, they are a wholesale hijacking of my attention and holding hostage the thing I want to read/view. It is literally like walking into the store and having my pocket picked. One model is completely legit, and the other is pretty much spam and legal constraints could be justified.
projektfu 5y ago
An interesting read is Galbraith's "The New Industrial State" which lays out an argument that the US is also a planned economy, just with non-state planners. It came out before the 80s so things have changed from the era of corporate conglomerates in the US, but the underlying nature of advertising as a mechanism for generating the demand that is allowing companies to continue to convert resources into sellable products I think is spot on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Industrial_State https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Industrial_State
spullara 5y ago
Without advertising how are you going to find out about anything? Are you going to search all the buildings in your neighborhood to try and figure out which one sells food? Signage is advertising. Every way for you to find out about anything to buy is advertising. You can have an opinion that some forms of advertising you would like to curtail but a blanket statement is nonsensical.
- lm28469 5y ago
  > Without advertising how are you going to find out about anything? If I don't know I have a problem to solve I probably don't have a problem to solve, or at least not a problem big enough that it requires me to be forced to consume hours of advertisement per year
  - libertine 5y ago
    But that's the same as saying ignorance is a bliss. You might have problems but you haven't thought about them, or in some case you can't even verbalize them. Other times problems just become background noise, and they're there in plain sight but you're used to them - and they can have negative impact on your life. We're not machines, problems aren't binary. Now if you say that we as a society, sometimes, value the "wrong things" (which is subjective) and see problems that aren't a big deal, it's true. But you can't pin that on advertising - those are symptoms of poor education systems, poor health, and I'd go as far as poor value systems.
  - elvis10ten 5y ago
    Well a problem could be averted before you have it. There are lots of examples: Like buying a kinesis keyboard before you actually get RSI. Or an ergonomic chair. You were heading towards a problem, but might not know without an “ad”.
- amelius 5y ago
  Information can spread without advertising being involved.
  - 5y ago
ambientenv 5y ago
Advertising, marketing, propaganda [1], campaigning, “persuasion”, there are lots of words across a broad spectrum of, what is, a variation on a theme. Ultimately it comes down to manipulation delivered through multiple methods. Perhaps sometimes that manipulation is unavoidable, maybe even beneficial and not nefarious. But when you look at it in the context of economics - a “science” that is an artificial construct with none of the immutability of, say, the laws of physics, even though in some circles it is treated and discussed as such - and our false god, capitalism, it is vital, if not intrinsic to that domain. It is our system a values, collectively, as a culture and a society, that allows it to continue and thrive, albeit often having to adapt. Because to ultimate goal is to keep us spending. To keep us acquiescing, complacent and conforming even when we believe we are not, striving to contribute to the not-so-greater good. Generating monetary wealth, not necessarily for ourselves, at the expense of, one could say, the wealth of the planet. We’ve been groomed [2] in this way for a long time now. And the discontinuities that are beginning to manifest [3] are revealing how brittle and finite it all is. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self [3a] https://alexsteffen.substack.com/p/were-not-yet-ready-for-whats-already https://alexsteffen.substack.com/p/were-not-yet-ready-for-wh... [3b] https://alexsteffen.substack.com/p/discontinuity-is-the-job https://alexsteffen.substack.com/p/discontinuity-is-the-job
fleddr 5y ago
I couldn't agree more and I too am shocked by how people continue to believe we live in a simplistic demand-supply economy. We live in a supply economy that fabricates demand by means of marketing. And there's an additional amplifier: social demand. My neighbor has it so now I want it too.
nathias 5y ago
All demand beyond necessities (fixed demand) is manufactured. The problem with advertizing is that it became ubiquitous and lost all function (product discovery, comparison, brand recognition etc.), now its just self-referential self-replicating garbage that spreads across the Earth on all surface areas like a weird semantic plague.
endymi0n 5y ago
> This business model really needs to stop. Let me offer a different perspective: I'm as little pro advertising as I am pro drugs, but I see both of them in a similar way: As having some negative consequences to society, but also being backed by a real world demand that doesn't stop at the borders of legality. And the same way alcohol prohibition counter-intuitively had an even more negative effect on society, the same thing would happen with advertising. I would rather tolerate transparent advertising with a clear, public framework and enforceable rules than I would want to tolerate a world where advertising demand creeps into every other form of communication. We already live in a world where it's hard to trust any person or organization. I'm personally against drastically making that problem worse.
- wpietri 5y ago
  Your theory is that people who are willing to manipulate others choose to stop at standard advertising? A long time ago I had a friend who did "contemporary marketing" for Budweiser. Half her hours were spent getting bar owners Bud Light neons. The other half were sitting in bars, drinking Bud with other beautiful people while wearing Budweiser clothing. Who knows what horrors they've invented in the years since. But I will bet cash money that there are a lot of them. The main difference between advertising and booze is that beer consumers wanted beer, but advertising consumers don't want ads. (In the rare case that they do, they can just go look at corporate YouTube channels.) So there's no particular reason to suspect society would be any worse off if we banned advertising.
blahblahblah75 5y ago
well I would go as far as saying advertising is corporate propaganda...
toto444 5y ago
> Because advertising is manufactured demand. Some companies spend a lot on advertising but their product does not sell. How does your model explains this ?
- alpaca128 5y ago
  Of course there are many factors involved, but in the end increased demand is the primary goal of advertising. If it were purely about informing that the product exists, ads could just be text instead of flashy animated popups. That's a form of advertising I could get behind. Would even be more accessible.
cryptica 5y ago
What makes matters worse is that the current monetary system of centralized currency issuance creates an anti-competitive environment which increases the power of advertising. Supply-side economics is demand-constrained so the game is all about the monopolization of consumers... Which is good for advertising. Under a demand side economy, nobody has priority access to cheap capital so the constraint is on the production side (this is more natural)... So acquisition of consumers is a secondary concern. It's more about product quality and production efficiency. It's not feasible to fool consumers with artificially deflated prices (subsidized by cheap capital from above) and spamming of ads.
mping 5y ago
Advertising: I agree with the interface, the implementation sucks.
andrepd 5y ago
Thanks for summing up my thoughts exactly. I'm radically anti-advertisement for these reasons exactly. The world would be a much better place without ads.
loceng 5y ago
Eloquently put. I can't quickly find the bookmark to the source, but someone had clearly framed how advertising is used towards increasing demand to make production highly profitable via economies of scales but also at the added expense of creating more of a monoculture, a similar problem that exists with agriculture. I'm planning soon to launch a platform to compete with Twitter/Facebook, and one of the foundational design principles will be having no ads. "Commercial forces are determining your consciousness - that's the sickest way to develop the human society." - Sadhguru
pesfandiar 5y ago
> Advertising is manufactured demand. [...] This business model really needs to stop. While I don't agree that all forms of advertising is about manufacturing demand (i.e. creating desire for stuff people don't really need), let's assume a significant portion of it is. The huge problem with "stopping this business model" is consumer markets are huge; it's $20T in the US alone, and I imagine a significant part of the whole ecosystem will implode if people only bought things they needed with cash the actually have. Suggesting we move away from advertising is equivalent to going against the economic status quo. Not saying there's no merit to this (e.g. we can argue the impact on the environment), but it's an incredibly uphill battle.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  Sometimes forests need to be cleansed with fire to stay healthy. I hate the idea that we need to project jobs, even if those jobs are significant net harms for society. Advertisers, private health insurance, political fundraising. I will have no sympathy for the unemployed, should they lose their unethical jobs.
samwillis 5y ago
> On average, it's manipulation, brainwashing and commodification of well told lies. > Because advertising is manufactured demand. > This business model really needs to stop. Understandable advertising is a controversial topic, and change needs to happen, but this is just ridiculous. True the “consumer culture” does need to shift for environmental reasons. But your argument is that effectively there should be “no unnesisery spend ever”. So that’s an end of: - coffee shops, cafes, restaurants, for pleasure. - all entertainment, no tvs, film, theatre. - all travel for pleasure, no tourism. How is buying a few unnecessary nick nacks online worse than the global travel industry? Obviously that’s all completely mad, but so is your argument. Frankly HN is completely bizarre at times. For a community focussed on entrepreneurship when it comes to advertising it’s become so incredibly negative, practically toxic. I imagine the vast majority of people on here would be out of a job (directly or indirectly) without advertising.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  This is a weird superlative strawman. You are extrapolating way past the content of the comment you're replying to.
  - samwillis 5y ago
    Quite right, I got carried away. But my final two points stand, it frustrates me when I see arguments suggesting that all advertising is a net negative to society (ethically, environmentally, socially). The economic growth, and increase in quality of life, we have seen in the last 30 years is directly related to the web and therefore advertising.
    - delegate 5y ago
      Of course. And now that we've done that, it's time to use all those resources and knowledge and rethink the core algorithms of society. That is, if we want a chance to bring back the beautiful world we've inherited intact from so many generations of ancestors. My daughter can only see half of what I saw when I grew up, maybe less. There is no horizon without smoke, mountain snow contains ash and there are few bird that sing in the forests because insects are nowhere to be found. Eyelashes or plane tickets, those things cannot be compared to what we're losing in the process. No amount of micro optimization is going to stop this train, we have to look at the algorithms.
ravenstine 5y ago
It's psychological warfare, plain and simple. Even the father of modern advertising and PR admit this in his own literature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays#Books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays#Books https://www.slideshare.net/reneehobbs/excerpts-from-bernays-classic-book-propaganda https://www.slideshare.net/reneehobbs/excerpts-from-bernays-... Of course his is a sort of perverted view that focuses on the supposed good that comes from the shaping public opinion to the exclusion of the form of slavery that is inherent in its successful application.
- otabdeveloper4 5y ago
  Media agences and creative agencies are completely different worlds and do not mix.
xnx 5y ago
It gets worse when you realize that a lot of manufacturing demand is convincing people to feel bad about their current situation.
js8 5y ago
I agree, I think people who ask "well how do you know the product exists" are missing the point of advertisement, which is not to inform people by factual arguments and discussion, but to convince them through emotional manipulation. > On average, it's manipulation, brainwashing and commodification of well told lies. What's even worse, the same emotional manipulation methods that are used in advertising are now applied to the political domain, and they seem to lead to increased misinformation and political spectrum fragmentation. It is especially easy to instill hate or anger into people. I don't think modern society, where people are expected to be as rational as possible (in order to participate in improving the society), can survive if at the same time, we weaken this rationality by circumventing it through an endless stream of emotional manipulation. In the 18th and 19th century, it became widely accepted that public education is beneficial for everyone, i.e. it's worth teaching everybody how to read and write, as well as other stuff like civics. It's not obvious at all this is the case, there certainly was lot of resistance to this idea from elitist classes of nobles and clerics. I think there is a similar conflict coming up in 21st century, where we will have to recognize, to progress as a civilization, all humans should have the right to be as emotionally stable as possible (and learn the psychological tools to that effect), so they could make rational decisions most of the time. But the very existence of advertising and other forms of commercial psychological manipulation threatens this general right, and so they will fight against that very idea.
jacobobryant 5y ago
> On average, it's manipulation, brainwashing and commodification of well told lies. This belief is actually compatible with my argument, thanks to the "on average" qualifier! I've never said that "most advertising as it exists today is good," rather my point is "advertising in a fundamental sense doesn't have to be bad." I think there is a real need that can be served by advertising, and thus we should find good ways of serving that need which don't involve "manipulation, brainwashing and commodification of well told lies."
munk-a 5y ago
I think it's quite necessary to differentiate two different values that advertising delivers. Advertising allows products to overcome obscurity so that consumers are made aware of the product and Advertising allows products to stimulate demand in the market. The first kind of advertising is the one we can pretty much all get behind - if you offer a service that's better than a competitor advertising can allow you to overcome the natural knowledge and networking advantages that your competitors might be skating by on to keep their sub-par product selling. This kind of advertising allows goliaths to be thrown down by davids and can help improve folks quality of life by minimizing the amount they're spending on unnecessarily inefficient products. This kind of advertising has been around forever and constituted the vast majority of advertising up until very recently - once a brand was well established they'd start slashing advertising since their reach was already pretty effectively covering the market space. The second kind of advertising is to drive up demand in consumers that already know who you are - into this bucket falls every ford advertisement since about 1940 and every Coke ad since the 60s - these products are already completely known by consumers. CocaCola doesn't run advertisements because they're afraid you've never heard of their product, it runs advertisements to drive up demand - and the advertisements of competitors products are usually symbiotic - whether Coke or Pepsi sponsored the ad you just saw doesn't generally matter, you're going to end up buying a soda and in a significant number of places you can purchase one there is a local monopoly anyways - rare is the restaurant where you can get a Coke and your date can get a Pepsi. These advertisements intend to modify your preferences and create demand - rather than insuring that their product is known as one of the options to fulfill an existing demand... if you believe Coke advertisers don't believe everyone on earth is aware of their product then I've got a bridge to sell you. The second kind of advertising makes up nearly all of modern advertising, it is a parasitic practice that reduces the efficacy of the free market (by levying a cost on attention in exchange for no added information delivered to the consumer). It is also responsible for the aggressive increase in obnoxiousness of advertising - since you're not trying to simply inform a consumer but you're actively competing with other advertisers for the limited amount of manufactured demand that each consumer can afford. In my eye this second form of advertising is utterly without value and if we need to ditch the first form to safely escape the second form its still absolutely worth it.
WalterBright 5y ago
> Because advertising is manufactured demand Not at all. When there's something I need, how am I supposed to find it without looking at advertising and marketing materials? How am I supposed to even find out a product I could use exists? If you need your roof fixed, whatcha going to do? If your favorite band is coming to town, how would you know? If your bank is now offering a cash back credit card you want, how are you going to find out about it? If you're on a road trip and you're hungry, which exit has your favorite burgers?
- yifanl 5y ago
  So should it be pull or push-based? Because all the cases you've stated imply one, whereas the active tracking pervasive in modern advertising implies the other. Disclaimer: I work in adtech.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    I've bought things I didn't know existed because of push advertising. For example, ads for upcoming movies I didn't know would interest me. Songs I hear on the radio I never heard before and like and want to buy. Tools that make my life easier working on my car that I didn't know existed.
    - yifanl 5y ago
      Sure, but the demand for these things didn't exist _until_ you saw the ad, and the value add becomes that much more abstract: i.e. what if there's a movie you would've liked more instead?
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        Um, a product that saves me time and money doesn't help me if I don't know about it. > what if there's a movie you would've liked more instead? Since they didn't advertise it, I lose, and the movie company lost.
- amelius 5y ago
autokad 5y ago
a lot of people opine on adds have no idea what its like to run a business. do you think big businesses want adds? they'd love to get rid of them. then no one could ever knock them out of their spot. They'd just rule by dominance and no one would ever know about the competition. its not brain washing. advertising is no different than finding a mate, finding an employer, finding an employee. what needs to stop is absolute narrow minded thought. thats what 'This business model really needs to stop.' is. like really, stop. the world isnt like you, what you propose is not feasible and is in fact harmful to almost everyone. I dont want to pay for facebook, so I deal with adds. Also, quite a few times I saw things I really needed/wanted on facebook. it was beneficial. I don't want to view adds on youtube, so I pay for the premium service. vey few people are willing to do so, even when capable. but there is a key point here, CHOICE. Stop this one way thinking and understand the world is more complex
secondcoming 5y ago
I can't recall the last time I bought something I didn't want.
f154hfds 5y ago
Advertisements exist on a spectrum of manipulation. For example, old ads in the 50's sometimes used phallic subliminal messaging to attempt to get viewers to misappropriate their sexual urges with the thing being advertised (no kidding, see [1]). Even though it probably doesn't work it's the mindset behind the attempt that is gross. The goal was to manipulate. On the other side of the spectrum you have the ole soap in the pickup's window saying For Sale. Somewhere between these two extremes is a line where advertisements go from being ethical to being unethical. Clean one-size-fits-all solutions don't work here, we have to go through the trouble of defining what manipulation is and when it applies. Simply telling people that your product/service exists in the world is not by itself manipulation period. [1] https://www.tonyacardinali.com/blog/18-hidden-messages-in-advertising-old-new https://www.tonyacardinali.com/blog/18-hidden-messages-in-ad...
actually_a_dog 5y ago
I totally, 100% agree. I tell people sometimes that if I could go back in time and do one thing I thought would make the world better today, I would try and kill Hitler. Partly because everybody tries to kill Hitler, and it never works. He survived about a zillion assassination plots and quite a few actual attempts. It's almost like he's got some kind of special protection or something. No, I would kill a contemporary of his, though: Sigmund Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays. He is single-handedly responsible for most of the way advertising and PR are constructed today. He literally introduced the concept of FOMO in advertising. He's not everything that's wrong with society today, but taking him out has a decent chance of improving things. Besides, he's not constantly guarded by SS soldiers, or anything, so it would be easier than killing Hitler. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
sergnio 5y ago
> Because advertising is manufactured demand. Sorry, this is dogmatic and thoroughly ignorant. Here's an example from yesterday. I'm visiting a new country. I knew I wanted to go on a tour, not sure which one. I went to Airbnb to check my messages, and was ADVERTISED an "Architecture tour of the city". We booked it and had an amazing time. Advertising isn't strictly immoral and artificial, but a lot can be. Spreading dogmatism based on emotion is _generally_ (see what I did there?) not a viable way to spread information.

WalterBright 5y ago

Linux got its start from advertising. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux#The_creation_of_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux#The_creation_...

pjerem 5y ago

Thank you.

vatican_banker 5y ago

> Because advertising is manufactured demand. I see advertising radically different. People exhibit an spectrum of interest in products in the market, from “zero interest in buying” to “shut up and take my money”. Advertising works by convincing people close to the “shut up and take my money” part of the spectrum to actually buy. Disclaimer: I’m not a marketeer.

tomaskafka 5y ago
Yes. And sometimes it even connects people with 'I have this thorny problem to which I would love to buy a solution instead of relying on manual workarounds' with people selling the actual solution, leading to win-win for everyone.
- amelius 5y ago
  Or they could just Google for it, or ask an expert.
  - shard 5y ago
    Interesting ironic comment. Googling for a solution is implicitly asking Google to serve you ads regarding that solution.
    - alpaca128 5y ago
      Search results aren't ads, they're links to resources you asked for. Just like the contact list on your phone.
      - shard 5y ago
        I'm sure you know that when you use Google, search results are a side effect which is used to draw you to use Google, the main product being provided are the ads.
        alpaca128 5y ago
        We're talking about the user's perspective here, not Google's. For the user the search has one purpose, and that isn't looking at ads. Just like nobody opens a newspaper to look at them. The point was that nobody really needs advertising to learn about available products. Google search stays just as useful if you block the ads, the other way around nobody would use it.

ergonaught 5y ago

Babies and bathwater, here. Many people legitimately would like to have Thing/Service but don’t know it exists, and may even not realize the possibility of other options exists.

b112 5y ago
I think, logically, if they wanted thing or service, they'd know they want it, yes? What you mean is, they want it after being told how this and that it is, how utterly special, how pathetic they are for not having it, how bad they look without it, and a spell of desire and want are cast over them, to covet thing $x. So many things, are only a thing because someone else has it.
- theamk 5y ago
  "Covet"? "pathetic"? "someone else has it"? You are taking this too close to heart and/or paying too much attention to the ads. For example, I just went to wired.com and saw: - Many ads for some sort of business-related website, looks like an mix of Slack and Google Calendar with some extra bells + whistles. - A Outbrain block with junk like "Top 25 photos of..." and "You would be surprised about ..." While none of those was interesting to me, none of them made me feel "pathetic" either.
- sanedigital 5y ago
  Most successful startups provide products or services that address problems that lack solutions, where the solutions aren't sufficient, or where they cause additional problems. When these new, "disruptive" products emerge, the marketplace needs to be educated about them. This is what the term "Marketing" means: it's about creating a market by injecting demand into the marketplace. If people aren't aware that a product exists, they can't demand it. It's easy to focus on Budweiser ads, because those are the memorable ones. But only ~50% of advertising spend is brand advertising [1]. Most advertising isn't about making you feel less cool, or promising increased sex appeal. It's about identifying with a customer, calling out a problem they're having, and educating them about a solution to that problem. [1: I'd love better evidence for this but this was all I could find: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1108407/share-of-brand-vs-performance-mobile-marketing-budgets/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1108407/share-of-brand-v...]

kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago

But certainly you want advertising for things you consider good and important, like maybe climate protection things, or mask wearing and vaccinations, and so on. For example a company could offer a more efficient heating appliance for homes. Then it would be a good thing if they advertised it, so that home builders could become aware of it.

amelius 5y ago
Advertising is not the only way people can become aware of products ...
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  What would be other ways?

alecbz 5y ago

I'm sure this is a line of reasoning ad-apologists use all the time but... philosophically, is there really a way we can claim that advertising makes you want things in a way that's wrong, as opposed to in way that causes enjoyment just like when you normally want things? Like implicit in this line of reasoning is a bit of a sense that like, there's a "true", base set of desires that we all have that would exist completely independently of any kind of outside influence, and that advertising is bad because it tricks us into addressing other manufactured desires instead of our real, true desires. And that there's something wrong with addressing a manufactured desire instead of a "true" desire? Like, when you address a manufactured desire you don't actually feel the joy/fulfillment you would from fulfilling a "true" desire? I don't think that's right. I don't think we really have true, "pure" desires. Almost all of our desires are a result of social influence in one way or another. And even to the extent that some desires are less a product of influence than others, I'm not sure satisfying those desires is necessarily better. I've bought things after I saw an ad about them, and they're things I now genuinely enjoy. Why does it matter if that enjoyment is a result of the ad or would have existed either way? Maybe a much shorter way of saying this: > In other words, you can make people consume considerably more stuff they don't want by constantly nagging them with ads. Are you sure ads are "nagging" people as opposed to genuinely changing what they want? I share the gut sentiment that it feels wrong to be manipulated by ads, but I feel like there needs to be more to this argument. Though I think you can still think advertising is bad in an "arms race" kind of way (if everyone stopped doing it at once we'd possibly not really be any worse off and have all that time/money to spend elsewhere).

germinalphrase 5y ago
Are you pretty or ugly? Are you smart or stupid? Are you successful or failing? Do you have high status or low status? Causing someone to internalize the later rather than the former could certainly lead them to enjoy a product while I have simultaneously ’manufactured’ a ‘need’ where there was/is none.
the8472 5y ago
Is wireheading happiness?
5y ago

toss1 5y ago

I'd say it REALLY depends on the implementation model. Non-intrusive adverts that are relevant to the content are something that I sometimes literally seek out - because they bring me information that I want, and may lead me closer to buying a thing I want. I've even been frustrated that an advert displays, and when I try to view it again to get more info, it's already gone. Sometimes, I buy trade magazines just for the adverts, or to scan the sponsors/advertisers guide at the back. At the other extreme are popup/pop-over/slide-over adverts especially on mobile that we cannot get rid of. Those are not an exchange of a portion of my attention to support what I'm reading, they are a wholesale hijacking of my attention and holding hostage the thing I want to read/view. It is literally like walking into the store and having my pocket picked. One model is completely legit, and the other is pretty much spam and legal constraints could be justified.

projektfu 5y ago

An interesting read is Galbraith's "The New Industrial State" which lays out an argument that the US is also a planned economy, just with non-state planners. It came out before the 80s so things have changed from the era of corporate conglomerates in the US, but the underlying nature of advertising as a mechanism for generating the demand that is allowing companies to continue to convert resources into sellable products I think is spot on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Industrial_State https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Industrial_State

spullara 5y ago

Without advertising how are you going to find out about anything? Are you going to search all the buildings in your neighborhood to try and figure out which one sells food? Signage is advertising. Every way for you to find out about anything to buy is advertising. You can have an opinion that some forms of advertising you would like to curtail but a blanket statement is nonsensical.

lm28469 5y ago
> Without advertising how are you going to find out about anything? If I don't know I have a problem to solve I probably don't have a problem to solve, or at least not a problem big enough that it requires me to be forced to consume hours of advertisement per year
- libertine 5y ago
  But that's the same as saying ignorance is a bliss. You might have problems but you haven't thought about them, or in some case you can't even verbalize them. Other times problems just become background noise, and they're there in plain sight but you're used to them - and they can have negative impact on your life. We're not machines, problems aren't binary. Now if you say that we as a society, sometimes, value the "wrong things" (which is subjective) and see problems that aren't a big deal, it's true. But you can't pin that on advertising - those are symptoms of poor education systems, poor health, and I'd go as far as poor value systems.
- elvis10ten 5y ago
  Well a problem could be averted before you have it. There are lots of examples: Like buying a kinesis keyboard before you actually get RSI. Or an ergonomic chair. You were heading towards a problem, but might not know without an “ad”.
amelius 5y ago
Information can spread without advertising being involved.
- 5y ago

ambientenv 5y ago

Advertising, marketing, propaganda [1], campaigning, “persuasion”, there are lots of words across a broad spectrum of, what is, a variation on a theme. Ultimately it comes down to manipulation delivered through multiple methods. Perhaps sometimes that manipulation is unavoidable, maybe even beneficial and not nefarious. But when you look at it in the context of economics - a “science” that is an artificial construct with none of the immutability of, say, the laws of physics, even though in some circles it is treated and discussed as such - and our false god, capitalism, it is vital, if not intrinsic to that domain. It is our system a values, collectively, as a culture and a society, that allows it to continue and thrive, albeit often having to adapt. Because to ultimate goal is to keep us spending. To keep us acquiescing, complacent and conforming even when we believe we are not, striving to contribute to the not-so-greater good. Generating monetary wealth, not necessarily for ourselves, at the expense of, one could say, the wealth of the planet. We’ve been groomed [2] in this way for a long time now. And the discontinuities that are beginning to manifest [3] are revealing how brittle and finite it all is. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self [3a] https://alexsteffen.substack.com/p/were-not-yet-ready-for-whats-already https://alexsteffen.substack.com/p/were-not-yet-ready-for-wh... [3b] https://alexsteffen.substack.com/p/discontinuity-is-the-job https://alexsteffen.substack.com/p/discontinuity-is-the-job

fleddr 5y ago

I couldn't agree more and I too am shocked by how people continue to believe we live in a simplistic demand-supply economy. We live in a supply economy that fabricates demand by means of marketing. And there's an additional amplifier: social demand. My neighbor has it so now I want it too.

nathias 5y ago

All demand beyond necessities (fixed demand) is manufactured. The problem with advertizing is that it became ubiquitous and lost all function (product discovery, comparison, brand recognition etc.), now its just self-referential self-replicating garbage that spreads across the Earth on all surface areas like a weird semantic plague.

endymi0n 5y ago

> This business model really needs to stop. Let me offer a different perspective: I'm as little pro advertising as I am pro drugs, but I see both of them in a similar way: As having some negative consequences to society, but also being backed by a real world demand that doesn't stop at the borders of legality. And the same way alcohol prohibition counter-intuitively had an even more negative effect on society, the same thing would happen with advertising. I would rather tolerate transparent advertising with a clear, public framework and enforceable rules than I would want to tolerate a world where advertising demand creeps into every other form of communication. We already live in a world where it's hard to trust any person or organization. I'm personally against drastically making that problem worse.

wpietri 5y ago
Your theory is that people who are willing to manipulate others choose to stop at standard advertising? A long time ago I had a friend who did "contemporary marketing" for Budweiser. Half her hours were spent getting bar owners Bud Light neons. The other half were sitting in bars, drinking Bud with other beautiful people while wearing Budweiser clothing. Who knows what horrors they've invented in the years since. But I will bet cash money that there are a lot of them. The main difference between advertising and booze is that beer consumers wanted beer, but advertising consumers don't want ads. (In the rare case that they do, they can just go look at corporate YouTube channels.) So there's no particular reason to suspect society would be any worse off if we banned advertising.

blahblahblah75 5y ago

well I would go as far as saying advertising is corporate propaganda...

toto444 5y ago

> Because advertising is manufactured demand. Some companies spend a lot on advertising but their product does not sell. How does your model explains this ?

alpaca128 5y ago
Of course there are many factors involved, but in the end increased demand is the primary goal of advertising. If it were purely about informing that the product exists, ads could just be text instead of flashy animated popups. That's a form of advertising I could get behind. Would even be more accessible.

cryptica 5y ago

What makes matters worse is that the current monetary system of centralized currency issuance creates an anti-competitive environment which increases the power of advertising. Supply-side economics is demand-constrained so the game is all about the monopolization of consumers... Which is good for advertising. Under a demand side economy, nobody has priority access to cheap capital so the constraint is on the production side (this is more natural)... So acquisition of consumers is a secondary concern. It's more about product quality and production efficiency. It's not feasible to fool consumers with artificially deflated prices (subsidized by cheap capital from above) and spamming of ads.

mping 5y ago

Advertising: I agree with the interface, the implementation sucks.

andrepd 5y ago

Thanks for summing up my thoughts exactly. I'm radically anti-advertisement for these reasons exactly. The world would be a much better place without ads.

loceng 5y ago

Eloquently put. I can't quickly find the bookmark to the source, but someone had clearly framed how advertising is used towards increasing demand to make production highly profitable via economies of scales but also at the added expense of creating more of a monoculture, a similar problem that exists with agriculture. I'm planning soon to launch a platform to compete with Twitter/Facebook, and one of the foundational design principles will be having no ads. "Commercial forces are determining your consciousness - that's the sickest way to develop the human society." - Sadhguru

pesfandiar 5y ago

> Advertising is manufactured demand. [...] This business model really needs to stop. While I don't agree that all forms of advertising is about manufacturing demand (i.e. creating desire for stuff people don't really need), let's assume a significant portion of it is. The huge problem with "stopping this business model" is consumer markets are huge; it's $20T in the US alone, and I imagine a significant part of the whole ecosystem will implode if people only bought things they needed with cash the actually have. Suggesting we move away from advertising is equivalent to going against the economic status quo. Not saying there's no merit to this (e.g. we can argue the impact on the environment), but it's an incredibly uphill battle.

cwkoss 5y ago
Sometimes forests need to be cleansed with fire to stay healthy. I hate the idea that we need to project jobs, even if those jobs are significant net harms for society. Advertisers, private health insurance, political fundraising. I will have no sympathy for the unemployed, should they lose their unethical jobs.

samwillis 5y ago

> On average, it's manipulation, brainwashing and commodification of well told lies. > Because advertising is manufactured demand. > This business model really needs to stop. Understandable advertising is a controversial topic, and change needs to happen, but this is just ridiculous. True the “consumer culture” does need to shift for environmental reasons. But your argument is that effectively there should be “no unnesisery spend ever”. So that’s an end of: - coffee shops, cafes, restaurants, for pleasure. - all entertainment, no tvs, film, theatre. - all travel for pleasure, no tourism. How is buying a few unnecessary nick nacks online worse than the global travel industry? Obviously that’s all completely mad, but so is your argument. Frankly HN is completely bizarre at times. For a community focussed on entrepreneurship when it comes to advertising it’s become so incredibly negative, practically toxic. I imagine the vast majority of people on here would be out of a job (directly or indirectly) without advertising.

cwkoss 5y ago
This is a weird superlative strawman. You are extrapolating way past the content of the comment you're replying to.
- samwillis 5y ago
  Quite right, I got carried away. But my final two points stand, it frustrates me when I see arguments suggesting that all advertising is a net negative to society (ethically, environmentally, socially). The economic growth, and increase in quality of life, we have seen in the last 30 years is directly related to the web and therefore advertising.
  - delegate 5y ago
    Of course. And now that we've done that, it's time to use all those resources and knowledge and rethink the core algorithms of society. That is, if we want a chance to bring back the beautiful world we've inherited intact from so many generations of ancestors. My daughter can only see half of what I saw when I grew up, maybe less. There is no horizon without smoke, mountain snow contains ash and there are few bird that sing in the forests because insects are nowhere to be found. Eyelashes or plane tickets, those things cannot be compared to what we're losing in the process. No amount of micro optimization is going to stop this train, we have to look at the algorithms.

ravenstine 5y ago

It's psychological warfare, plain and simple. Even the father of modern advertising and PR admit this in his own literature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays#Books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays#Books https://www.slideshare.net/reneehobbs/excerpts-from-bernays-classic-book-propaganda https://www.slideshare.net/reneehobbs/excerpts-from-bernays-... Of course his is a sort of perverted view that focuses on the supposed good that comes from the shaping public opinion to the exclusion of the form of slavery that is inherent in its successful application.

otabdeveloper4 5y ago
Media agences and creative agencies are completely different worlds and do not mix.

xnx 5y ago

It gets worse when you realize that a lot of manufacturing demand is convincing people to feel bad about their current situation.

js8 5y ago

I agree, I think people who ask "well how do you know the product exists" are missing the point of advertisement, which is not to inform people by factual arguments and discussion, but to convince them through emotional manipulation. > On average, it's manipulation, brainwashing and commodification of well told lies. What's even worse, the same emotional manipulation methods that are used in advertising are now applied to the political domain, and they seem to lead to increased misinformation and political spectrum fragmentation. It is especially easy to instill hate or anger into people. I don't think modern society, where people are expected to be as rational as possible (in order to participate in improving the society), can survive if at the same time, we weaken this rationality by circumventing it through an endless stream of emotional manipulation. In the 18th and 19th century, it became widely accepted that public education is beneficial for everyone, i.e. it's worth teaching everybody how to read and write, as well as other stuff like civics. It's not obvious at all this is the case, there certainly was lot of resistance to this idea from elitist classes of nobles and clerics. I think there is a similar conflict coming up in 21st century, where we will have to recognize, to progress as a civilization, all humans should have the right to be as emotionally stable as possible (and learn the psychological tools to that effect), so they could make rational decisions most of the time. But the very existence of advertising and other forms of commercial psychological manipulation threatens this general right, and so they will fight against that very idea.

jacobobryant 5y ago

> On average, it's manipulation, brainwashing and commodification of well told lies. This belief is actually compatible with my argument, thanks to the "on average" qualifier! I've never said that "most advertising as it exists today is good," rather my point is "advertising in a fundamental sense doesn't have to be bad." I think there is a real need that can be served by advertising, and thus we should find good ways of serving that need which don't involve "manipulation, brainwashing and commodification of well told lies."

munk-a 5y ago

I think it's quite necessary to differentiate two different values that advertising delivers. Advertising allows products to overcome obscurity so that consumers are made aware of the product and Advertising allows products to stimulate demand in the market. The first kind of advertising is the one we can pretty much all get behind - if you offer a service that's better than a competitor advertising can allow you to overcome the natural knowledge and networking advantages that your competitors might be skating by on to keep their sub-par product selling. This kind of advertising allows goliaths to be thrown down by davids and can help improve folks quality of life by minimizing the amount they're spending on unnecessarily inefficient products. This kind of advertising has been around forever and constituted the vast majority of advertising up until very recently - once a brand was well established they'd start slashing advertising since their reach was already pretty effectively covering the market space. The second kind of advertising is to drive up demand in consumers that already know who you are - into this bucket falls every ford advertisement since about 1940 and every Coke ad since the 60s - these products are already completely known by consumers. CocaCola doesn't run advertisements because they're afraid you've never heard of their product, it runs advertisements to drive up demand - and the advertisements of competitors products are usually symbiotic - whether Coke or Pepsi sponsored the ad you just saw doesn't generally matter, you're going to end up buying a soda and in a significant number of places you can purchase one there is a local monopoly anyways - rare is the restaurant where you can get a Coke and your date can get a Pepsi. These advertisements intend to modify your preferences and create demand - rather than insuring that their product is known as one of the options to fulfill an existing demand... if you believe Coke advertisers don't believe everyone on earth is aware of their product then I've got a bridge to sell you. The second kind of advertising makes up nearly all of modern advertising, it is a parasitic practice that reduces the efficacy of the free market (by levying a cost on attention in exchange for no added information delivered to the consumer). It is also responsible for the aggressive increase in obnoxiousness of advertising - since you're not trying to simply inform a consumer but you're actively competing with other advertisers for the limited amount of manufactured demand that each consumer can afford. In my eye this second form of advertising is utterly without value and if we need to ditch the first form to safely escape the second form its still absolutely worth it.

WalterBright 5y ago

> Because advertising is manufactured demand Not at all. When there's something I need, how am I supposed to find it without looking at advertising and marketing materials? How am I supposed to even find out a product I could use exists? If you need your roof fixed, whatcha going to do? If your favorite band is coming to town, how would you know? If your bank is now offering a cash back credit card you want, how are you going to find out about it? If you're on a road trip and you're hungry, which exit has your favorite burgers?

yifanl 5y ago
So should it be pull or push-based? Because all the cases you've stated imply one, whereas the active tracking pervasive in modern advertising implies the other. Disclaimer: I work in adtech.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  I've bought things I didn't know existed because of push advertising. For example, ads for upcoming movies I didn't know would interest me. Songs I hear on the radio I never heard before and like and want to buy. Tools that make my life easier working on my car that I didn't know existed.
  - yifanl 5y ago
    Sure, but the demand for these things didn't exist _until_ you saw the ad, and the value add becomes that much more abstract: i.e. what if there's a movie you would've liked more instead?
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      Um, a product that saves me time and money doesn't help me if I don't know about it. > what if there's a movie you would've liked more instead? Since they didn't advertise it, I lose, and the movie company lost.
amelius 5y ago

autokad 5y ago

a lot of people opine on adds have no idea what its like to run a business. do you think big businesses want adds? they'd love to get rid of them. then no one could ever knock them out of their spot. They'd just rule by dominance and no one would ever know about the competition. its not brain washing. advertising is no different than finding a mate, finding an employer, finding an employee. what needs to stop is absolute narrow minded thought. thats what 'This business model really needs to stop.' is. like really, stop. the world isnt like you, what you propose is not feasible and is in fact harmful to almost everyone. I dont want to pay for facebook, so I deal with adds. Also, quite a few times I saw things I really needed/wanted on facebook. it was beneficial. I don't want to view adds on youtube, so I pay for the premium service. vey few people are willing to do so, even when capable. but there is a key point here, CHOICE. Stop this one way thinking and understand the world is more complex

secondcoming 5y ago

I can't recall the last time I bought something I didn't want.

f154hfds 5y ago

Advertisements exist on a spectrum of manipulation. For example, old ads in the 50's sometimes used phallic subliminal messaging to attempt to get viewers to misappropriate their sexual urges with the thing being advertised (no kidding, see [1]). Even though it probably doesn't work it's the mindset behind the attempt that is gross. The goal was to manipulate. On the other side of the spectrum you have the ole soap in the pickup's window saying For Sale. Somewhere between these two extremes is a line where advertisements go from being ethical to being unethical. Clean one-size-fits-all solutions don't work here, we have to go through the trouble of defining what manipulation is and when it applies. Simply telling people that your product/service exists in the world is not by itself manipulation period. [1] https://www.tonyacardinali.com/blog/18-hidden-messages-in-advertising-old-new https://www.tonyacardinali.com/blog/18-hidden-messages-in-ad...

actually_a_dog 5y ago

I totally, 100% agree. I tell people sometimes that if I could go back in time and do one thing I thought would make the world better today, I would try and kill Hitler. Partly because everybody tries to kill Hitler, and it never works. He survived about a zillion assassination plots and quite a few actual attempts. It's almost like he's got some kind of special protection or something. No, I would kill a contemporary of his, though: Sigmund Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays. He is single-handedly responsible for most of the way advertising and PR are constructed today. He literally introduced the concept of FOMO in advertising. He's not everything that's wrong with society today, but taking him out has a decent chance of improving things. Besides, he's not constantly guarded by SS soldiers, or anything, so it would be easier than killing Hitler. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

sergnio 5y ago

> Because advertising is manufactured demand. Sorry, this is dogmatic and thoroughly ignorant. Here's an example from yesterday. I'm visiting a new country. I knew I wanted to go on a tour, not sure which one. I went to Airbnb to check my messages, and was ADVERTISED an "Architecture tour of the city". We booked it and had an amazing time. Advertising isn't strictly immoral and artificial, but a lot can be. Spreading dogmatism based on emotion is _generally_ (see what I did there?) not a viable way to spread information.