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You can reform the Ad industry in several ways (enhancing "truth in advertisment") i) You can only use factual information. ii) You can't use visual props unr

You can reform the Ad industry in several ways (enhancing "truth in advertisment") i) You can only use factual information. ii) You can't use visual props unrelated to the product (sexy women, beaches, fancy cars, spas) But to burn advertisements due to shortcomings is like hating/shutting down internet because of 4chan or QAnon

MichaelCollins 4y ago
Advertisers have done more to attack my ego and self image than 4chan or Qanon, or any other fuckwit internet forum ever has.
tsimionescu 4y ago
If 4chan and QAnon were the vast majority of the internet, I would agree with the comparison. But as I said, the vast vast majority of advertising by any measure you chose to use is of the manipulative kind, not informative. And this despite the existence of truth-in-advertising laws for decades. And banning advertising is not even that harmful to industry - we have the case study of the tabacco industry, which didn't exactly die away once advertising of all of its products was entirely prohibited in all wealthy countries.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  Limiting advertising created bigger tabacco companies that shut out newer companies. Demand remained constant because it's a drug...That might work for other drug like coffee or pop/soda or social media but will not work for Tom's hardware and nails having an excess inventory of power drills
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    People will still always need power drills and nails, even more so than cigarettes. Do you honestly believe the hardware industry would collapse if it were forced to stop advertising? Now, the biggest problem with advertising is that it is an arms race. If your competitors are advertising and you are not, or are investing significantly less than them, you're very unlikely to remain competitive for long (assuming the products are even vaguely similar in quality).
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      With a ban on advertising the biggest companies the ones we all know will benefit as no alternatives would be known. Some brands can spend endless amounts of money and I wouldn't purchase their product because of past experience or reputation. Banning advertising would collapse industries or reduce market size and limit any expansion efforts.
      - tsimionescu 4y ago
        > With a ban on advertising the biggest companies the ones we all know will benefit as no alternatives would be known. Why? If I go to a hardware store and see a new power tool on the shelves that looks sturdy and costs less than the existing ones, why would I not buy it, or at least look for reviews on it? Edit: this would be especially true in the longer term, as consumers start forgetting the marketing and there are no more "premium brands". In the near term after a ban, the older advertising still holds some sway, which of course creates a disadvantage for new brands. Still, a small price to pay for making the market more rational.
- withinboredom 4y ago
  I’ve worked at two places that turned off Google ads for some number of months (except trademarked keywords they had a license for). There wasn’t a significant change to sales or traffic.
  - bzmrgonz 4y ago
    I don't know about this, I suspect it depends on the product. What about that experiment AMAZON did down in Mexico, where it stopped advertising on google for 6 months and their revenue tanked?
    - withinboredom 4y ago
      Amazon and e-commerce, in general, have a different usecase for search engines. IME, the two products were people searching for the best solution to a problem and had fairly strong organic channels because they solved the problems people were looking to solve and were blogged about all over the internet. E-commerce: people are looking for the best deal. You pay google to “show up first” and capitalize on brand awareness once they see your competitors. The customer is going to think, “ah nice, at least it’s on Amazon in case all these other stores are too sketchy.” The other stores probably play a better SEO game than Amazon because /they have to to survive/ while Amazon merely throws money at the problem to capitalize on the brand.
ajl666 4y ago
Define advertising by segmenting off of Poetry, Prose, and Aphorism. You can't. I don't understand how so many engineers can't do basic logic.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  Advertising is "pay someone to say/show something about your product", where "pay" can refer to any kind of payment. It's really really easy to separate, conceptually, from any other discourse. Now, there are situations where this is more ambiguous, and in general any display of a company's products or brands, especially one that is not critical, is suspect of being advertisement for that brand. I'm not even sure how you can even claim that there is any sort of ambiguity between, say, The Raven and a Super Bowl commercial.
  - ajl666 4y ago
    Advertising is a judgement. It is a synthetic definition (defined but it's relationship to other concepts), but you want it to be analytic (ex: the number 5). You completely dodge my point because it's a stake in the vampire heart of your non sequiturs.
BlueTemplar 4y ago
Ads => Consumerism => Destruction of the biosphere and depletion of natural resources => Hundreds of millions of extra deaths over the next few hundred years. Now, this is simplified, they don't get to bear all the blame, and there are worse industries, but we better reform them fast, and radically.

MichaelCollins 4y ago

Advertisers have done more to attack my ego and self image than 4chan or Qanon, or any other fuckwit internet forum ever has.

tsimionescu 4y ago

If 4chan and QAnon were the vast majority of the internet, I would agree with the comparison. But as I said, the vast vast majority of advertising by any measure you chose to use is of the manipulative kind, not informative. And this despite the existence of truth-in-advertising laws for decades. And banning advertising is not even that harmful to industry - we have the case study of the tabacco industry, which didn't exactly die away once advertising of all of its products was entirely prohibited in all wealthy countries.

ipaddr 4y ago
Limiting advertising created bigger tabacco companies that shut out newer companies. Demand remained constant because it's a drug...That might work for other drug like coffee or pop/soda or social media but will not work for Tom's hardware and nails having an excess inventory of power drills
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  People will still always need power drills and nails, even more so than cigarettes. Do you honestly believe the hardware industry would collapse if it were forced to stop advertising? Now, the biggest problem with advertising is that it is an arms race. If your competitors are advertising and you are not, or are investing significantly less than them, you're very unlikely to remain competitive for long (assuming the products are even vaguely similar in quality).
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    With a ban on advertising the biggest companies the ones we all know will benefit as no alternatives would be known. Some brands can spend endless amounts of money and I wouldn't purchase their product because of past experience or reputation. Banning advertising would collapse industries or reduce market size and limit any expansion efforts.
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
      > With a ban on advertising the biggest companies the ones we all know will benefit as no alternatives would be known. Why? If I go to a hardware store and see a new power tool on the shelves that looks sturdy and costs less than the existing ones, why would I not buy it, or at least look for reviews on it? Edit: this would be especially true in the longer term, as consumers start forgetting the marketing and there are no more "premium brands". In the near term after a ban, the older advertising still holds some sway, which of course creates a disadvantage for new brands. Still, a small price to pay for making the market more rational.
withinboredom 4y ago
I’ve worked at two places that turned off Google ads for some number of months (except trademarked keywords they had a license for). There wasn’t a significant change to sales or traffic.
- bzmrgonz 4y ago
  I don't know about this, I suspect it depends on the product. What about that experiment AMAZON did down in Mexico, where it stopped advertising on google for 6 months and their revenue tanked?
  - withinboredom 4y ago
    Amazon and e-commerce, in general, have a different usecase for search engines. IME, the two products were people searching for the best solution to a problem and had fairly strong organic channels because they solved the problems people were looking to solve and were blogged about all over the internet. E-commerce: people are looking for the best deal. You pay google to “show up first” and capitalize on brand awareness once they see your competitors. The customer is going to think, “ah nice, at least it’s on Amazon in case all these other stores are too sketchy.” The other stores probably play a better SEO game than Amazon because /they have to to survive/ while Amazon merely throws money at the problem to capitalize on the brand.

ajl666 4y ago

Define advertising by segmenting off of Poetry, Prose, and Aphorism. You can't. I don't understand how so many engineers can't do basic logic.

tsimionescu 4y ago
Advertising is "pay someone to say/show something about your product", where "pay" can refer to any kind of payment. It's really really easy to separate, conceptually, from any other discourse. Now, there are situations where this is more ambiguous, and in general any display of a company's products or brands, especially one that is not critical, is suspect of being advertisement for that brand. I'm not even sure how you can even claim that there is any sort of ambiguity between, say, The Raven and a Super Bowl commercial.
- ajl666 4y ago
  Advertising is a judgement. It is a synthetic definition (defined but it's relationship to other concepts), but you want it to be analytic (ex: the number 5). You completely dodge my point because it's a stake in the vampire heart of your non sequiturs.

BlueTemplar 4y ago

Ads => Consumerism => Destruction of the biosphere and depletion of natural resources => Hundreds of millions of extra deaths over the next few hundred years. Now, this is simplified, they don't get to bear all the blame, and there are worse industries, but we better reform them fast, and radically.