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I agree a lot of advertising is awful, but there is still some purpose in demonstrating your wares for potential customers. Suppose someone develops a product

I agree a lot of advertising is awful, but there is still some purpose in demonstrating your wares for potential customers. Suppose someone develops a product that you would love and would make your life better; how do you think you should find out about it?

eatsyourtacos 4y ago
>how do you think you should find out about it? Word of mouth, basically. Or searching for something that I need. What I hate most about advertising is it just shoves everything in people's faces and makes people think they need this and that. I find myself somewhat immune to ads (as much as one can be I guess), maybe I just programmed myself to ignore them growing up in early internet days. But it's so obvious the large effect that ads can have on most people. I find out about new and cool stuff generally from peoples comments on sites like here, reddit etc. If you have a good product, word of mouth is generally pretty damn good. Or coming across something from searches for a specific need. I just can't think about anything that I needed and found out from a standard advertisement in like.. any recent memory. Maybe I'm the outlier here.. obviously ads must work well enough but I hate them with a passion.
- cortesoft 4y ago
  Word of mouth requires someone to learn about a product initially. Also, searching for something you ‘need’ presupposes that you know there is a product that addresses a need. You would never find improvements to things that you didn’t realize could be improved.
  - eatsyourtacos 4y ago
    I'm not sure how you found this website then.. I don't recall seeing superbowl ads for Hackernews.
haswell 4y ago
I believe marketplaces could/would form, acting as aggregators for sellers to list and promote their goods, and for consumers to go shopping. In the 2020s, the web is nearing a level of criticality to a functioning society as the neighborhoods, towns, cities we access it from. Those physical properties are heavily regulated and with good reason.
- cortesoft 4y ago
  A marketplace is limited… if you create a product that addresses an entirely new market, you wouldn’t be found. Also, physical properties are heavily regulated partially because there is a limited amount of physical space for them.
  - haswell 4y ago
    On the first point, I’m referring to a new kind of marketplace. Essentially something made explicitly to address the problem you mentioned. A generic marketplace that enables the discovery of new products/markets is conceivable. Regarding regulation, physical spade is definitely one part of it. But the public is also generally against nuisances, including too many advertisements. It’s an imperfect analogy, but not too far off.
mxkopy 4y ago
The other day in the middle of reading an article a green border popped up around the entire page, blocking the beginning and ending of most sentences. At the bottom of the page was an advertisement for a Sonic burger. I felt assaulted. There is no reasonable justification or purpose for this that takes into account basic human empathy. Granted this might be different from ads that do just make you aware of a product. But this reasoning is looking more and more like justification rather than purpose.
- cortesoft 4y ago
  I don’t think pointing out useless and intrusive advertising is the same as saying there should be no advertising at all. We can even agree that ALL current advertising is awful and should be abolished, but agree some form of promoting your product should be available.
  - mxkopy 4y ago
    Seems like you can't read. > Granted this might be different from ads that do just make you aware of a product. But this reasoning is looking more and more like justification rather than purpose. I have no problem with promoting a product, as long as it takes into account basic human empathy. But I guess if your bank account is directly correlated with product sales, you kind of forget about that.
    - cortesoft 4y ago
      Telling me I can’t read is not a very charitable response. I can read fine, I was assuming you were trying to respond to my original comment, where the very first thing I write is “I agree a lot of advertising is awful”. My original comment was arguing that even if a lot of advertising today is bad, that doesn’t mean we should get rid of all advertising. I don’t understand what your response has to do with that. Were you just agreeing with me?
      - mxkopy 4y ago
        I don't really have a stance on 'abolish all advertising'. I'm just pointing out that in practice, "promoting a product" is rarely the only effect of an advertisement, and having discussions about ads in the context of benign promotion isn't acknowledging that reality.

eatsyourtacos 4y ago

>how do you think you should find out about it? Word of mouth, basically. Or searching for something that I need. What I hate most about advertising is it just shoves everything in people's faces and makes people think they need this and that. I find myself somewhat immune to ads (as much as one can be I guess), maybe I just programmed myself to ignore them growing up in early internet days. But it's so obvious the large effect that ads can have on most people. I find out about new and cool stuff generally from peoples comments on sites like here, reddit etc. If you have a good product, word of mouth is generally pretty damn good. Or coming across something from searches for a specific need. I just can't think about anything that I needed and found out from a standard advertisement in like.. any recent memory. Maybe I'm the outlier here.. obviously ads must work well enough but I hate them with a passion.

cortesoft 4y ago
Word of mouth requires someone to learn about a product initially. Also, searching for something you ‘need’ presupposes that you know there is a product that addresses a need. You would never find improvements to things that you didn’t realize could be improved.
- eatsyourtacos 4y ago
  I'm not sure how you found this website then.. I don't recall seeing superbowl ads for Hackernews.

haswell 4y ago

I believe marketplaces could/would form, acting as aggregators for sellers to list and promote their goods, and for consumers to go shopping. In the 2020s, the web is nearing a level of criticality to a functioning society as the neighborhoods, towns, cities we access it from. Those physical properties are heavily regulated and with good reason.

cortesoft 4y ago
A marketplace is limited… if you create a product that addresses an entirely new market, you wouldn’t be found. Also, physical properties are heavily regulated partially because there is a limited amount of physical space for them.
- haswell 4y ago
  On the first point, I’m referring to a new kind of marketplace. Essentially something made explicitly to address the problem you mentioned. A generic marketplace that enables the discovery of new products/markets is conceivable. Regarding regulation, physical spade is definitely one part of it. But the public is also generally against nuisances, including too many advertisements. It’s an imperfect analogy, but not too far off.

mxkopy 4y ago

The other day in the middle of reading an article a green border popped up around the entire page, blocking the beginning and ending of most sentences. At the bottom of the page was an advertisement for a Sonic burger. I felt assaulted. There is no reasonable justification or purpose for this that takes into account basic human empathy. Granted this might be different from ads that do just make you aware of a product. But this reasoning is looking more and more like justification rather than purpose.

cortesoft 4y ago
I don’t think pointing out useless and intrusive advertising is the same as saying there should be no advertising at all. We can even agree that ALL current advertising is awful and should be abolished, but agree some form of promoting your product should be available.
- mxkopy 4y ago
  Seems like you can't read. > Granted this might be different from ads that do just make you aware of a product. But this reasoning is looking more and more like justification rather than purpose. I have no problem with promoting a product, as long as it takes into account basic human empathy. But I guess if your bank account is directly correlated with product sales, you kind of forget about that.
  - cortesoft 4y ago
    Telling me I can’t read is not a very charitable response. I can read fine, I was assuming you were trying to respond to my original comment, where the very first thing I write is “I agree a lot of advertising is awful”. My original comment was arguing that even if a lot of advertising today is bad, that doesn’t mean we should get rid of all advertising. I don’t understand what your response has to do with that. Were you just agreeing with me?
    - mxkopy 4y ago
      I don't really have a stance on 'abolish all advertising'. I'm just pointing out that in practice, "promoting a product" is rarely the only effect of an advertisement, and having discussions about ads in the context of benign promotion isn't acknowledging that reality.