6 ms·

If you ask me, we should simply delete the entire advertisement sector—influencers included—and start from scratch. The amount of wasted resources (i.e. attenti

by emaro 4y ago

If you ask me, we should simply delete the entire advertisement sector—influencers included—and start from scratch. The amount of wasted resources (i.e. attention, money, electricity, bandwidth, time, smart people) is just insane! The benefits I see are mostly lot's of jobs and means for the biggest businesses to sell more stuff. That can hardly be worth it. I know I'm dreaming and it will never happen, but still... let me dream.

fdewrewrewf 4y ago
The internet and all related technology is largely funded by advertising. It would indeed be very fun to watch that all disappear.
- emaro 4y ago
  Ads, military and porn, the three pillars of the internet!
- themoonisachees 4y ago
  Major websites are ad-funded, the internet isn't. Networking technology, IPV4/6, http, ssl and most website frameworks aren't funded by advertising ( and even if they are eg react, they won't disappear.) Let FAANGs fail. Let them try to disguise ads into content, fail and go off the deep end. What is there to lose, really? Search? Someone will take their place. Instant gratification online ordering (not funded by ads but fuck it) orchestrating modern slavery? We'l be fine. Facebook products? Might be a bit of a panic as chat for 50% of the world population goes down, but we'll manage. RCS is good now, matrix is right there, we'll manage. TikTok? We'l be fine. Pretty much any thing funded by advertising is not vital to society (otherwise they could make you pay for it) and like half of it is parasitic.
  - kritiko 4y ago
    Photo & video hosting for all of your major life events that delivers the content to all of your friends and family?
    - max51 4y ago
      Is there any cloud that is ad-supported? AFAIK, all of them (including google) is supported by charging directly for it and/or bundling it a different purchase (physical phone, software subscription, etc.)
      - kritiko 4y ago
        I'm referring here to Instagram / Facebook. How are you going to send your wedding or vacation or dog photos to your network? Mass email? The social platforms have a utility for most people at this point.
        Melatonic 4y ago
        Group chats work pretty damn well
        fdewrewrewf 4y ago
        >vacation or dog photos >social platforms have a utility for most people Hard to tell if you're serious! I quit all social media and gave up my smartphone. I don't miss that brief "huh, that's nice" moment when being seeing an acquaintance's random photo they felt they had to share, and moments when visual imagery are shared now feel much more special.
        Dove 4y ago
        I, for one, would love to see the existing incumbents fail, and a mad scramble by upstarts to do this better. This could be done way, way, way better, and I would love to see what happened if the network effect got out of the way of that happening.
        fyvhbhn 4y ago
        If they have an utility, people will pay for it (they don't even have to pay as much as they pay indirectly via advertising). If not, not gonna miss it
        duderific 4y ago
        You can create a group share in Apple Photos. Non-Apple folks can use a web link to view photos.
- Joker_vD 4y ago
  But that advertising money still come from somewhere and someone, right? Surely there is some other way to make those someones to spend that money on the internet and all related technology?
  - fyvhbhn 4y ago
    That someone is the one watching the ad by buying products the person sees in ads
    - Joker_vD 4y ago
      Back in 2015, there was this "The Website Obesity Crisis" talk that claimed [0], among other things, that in fact most money in the ad industry is coming not from the ad-seeing consumers, but from VC investors. Has something changed in 7 years? Or was it never true in the first place? [0] https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm#fatads https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm#fatads
kylebyproxy 4y ago
I'm just amazed ads work at all. Anytime I receive an ad I didn't explicitly request, I boycott that company. I'd have hoped enough likeminded people in the world would naturally defeat the ad sector, but evidently I'm an outlier. I'll never understand why the average consumer rewards and reinforces ad spend
- aliqot 4y ago
  > Anytime I receive an ad I didn't explicitly request, I boycott that company. Can we see your list? Is it in Git somewhere?
  - driverdan 4y ago
    I do something similar. I block every account that shows me ads on Twitter and Instagram. I wouldn't say I boycott them but 99% are companies I wouldn't buy anything from in the first place.
- calrueb 4y ago
  Actually curious, do you hold the same standard for print media (a newspaper/magazine ad), out-of-home (billboard), and television advertising? How do you primarily discover businesses and products?
- lm28469 4y ago
  > I'm just amazed ads work at all. Same, I don't recall a single time an ad made me want to buy something, if anything I think "if they have to shove this in front of my eyes and I don't already know the product it probably is bad or useless to me"
rr888 4y ago
> If you ask me, we should simply delete the entire advertisement sector—influencers included—and start from scratch. The amount of wasted resources (i.e. attention, money, electricity, bandwidth, time, smart people) is just insane! I agree there is lots of wasted time out there. But the advertising paid for Google, Facebook etc. It pays for Chrome, Android, React, PyTorch etc.
- cwkoss 4y ago
  That's a small sacrifice for ending pervasive thought manipulation and surveillance.
- potamic 4y ago
  If free software that runs nearly everything could be done without advertising, so could these.
- fyvhbhn 4y ago
  The software would be cheaper if financed without ads
user456324234 4y ago
Agree. And this is yet another proof that lots of meanningless jobs exist!
FiatLuxDave 4y ago
Here's a plan: Tax it. Tax the everliving hell out of it. The problem isn't the existence of advertising, it is that there is so much of the crap advertising. Taxing ads would raise the price of advertising, which would lower the ROI on advertising and force ad buyers to be more careful about which ads they buy. Crappy advertisers who are not actually connecting buyers with sellers would tend to go out of business, shrinking the industry. The remaining ad industry would have to create less ads with higher quality to compete in the newer high cost marketplace. Basically, the idea is to move the supply curve on the (on the supply and demand curves) to a place where they meet at a higher price and a lower quantity. See for example, https://www.economicshelp.org/microessays/equilibrium/price-elasticity-demand/ https://www.economicshelp.org/microessays/equilibrium/price-... (scroll down to Tax Incidence). Note that for advertising the 'producer' on this graph is the company making the ads and the 'consumer' is the company buying an ad for their product. The part about moving the curve to a lower quantity is the key! The goal here being to reduce the ratio of 'attention used' to 'product-consumer fit created'. We would have a smaller, better ad industry. We can't have that with current market conditions; competition won't allow it. The nice thing about a tax plan is that it is pretty easy to sell people on the idea of 'take money away from these people who annoy all of us and give it to [insert social good here]' . The best people in advertising would likely benefit from it as well, as they would likely stay in business and have better margins in a smaller industry with less competition. So, keep dreaming, but feel free to spread this idea around. Maybe it will grow by word-of-mouth.
omgomgomgomg 4y ago
Well, I have to say though, those little influencers do deliver results. I have spoken with many of them and they come up with ideas regarding gamification, retention and acquisition being far superior to the ad networks. They have a community and I would hire some of them on the spot, no need, though, some of them earn my salary many times over. The ad networks might be ok for flight by night ops like selling viagra copies on porn websites, but they will always be that annoying pop up, I am not sure it they count towards the result if people have ad blockers. Or let me ask, which businesses can actually convert measurably from ad networks? Assuming life time value of customers being more than 50 usd. Its always sold as for "brand propagation", an excuse to inform you ahead that no conversion at all will happen. If you have a fast paces business which relies on large throughput and a constantl flow of new customers it is not very useful. I know facebook could convert very well, but they will not allow any product.
lm28469 4y ago
> If you ask me, we should simply delete the entire advertisement sector—influencers included—and start from scratch The thing is Alphabet and Meta revenues are 95% ads. All the big players are either products to show ads or products to gather data to show more ads

by emaro 4y ago

fdewrewrewf 4y ago

The internet and all related technology is largely funded by advertising. It would indeed be very fun to watch that all disappear.

emaro 4y ago
Ads, military and porn, the three pillars of the internet!
themoonisachees 4y ago
Major websites are ad-funded, the internet isn't. Networking technology, IPV4/6, http, ssl and most website frameworks aren't funded by advertising ( and even if they are eg react, they won't disappear.) Let FAANGs fail. Let them try to disguise ads into content, fail and go off the deep end. What is there to lose, really? Search? Someone will take their place. Instant gratification online ordering (not funded by ads but fuck it) orchestrating modern slavery? We'l be fine. Facebook products? Might be a bit of a panic as chat for 50% of the world population goes down, but we'll manage. RCS is good now, matrix is right there, we'll manage. TikTok? We'l be fine. Pretty much any thing funded by advertising is not vital to society (otherwise they could make you pay for it) and like half of it is parasitic.
- kritiko 4y ago
  Photo & video hosting for all of your major life events that delivers the content to all of your friends and family?
  - max51 4y ago
    Is there any cloud that is ad-supported? AFAIK, all of them (including google) is supported by charging directly for it and/or bundling it a different purchase (physical phone, software subscription, etc.)
    - kritiko 4y ago
      I'm referring here to Instagram / Facebook. How are you going to send your wedding or vacation or dog photos to your network? Mass email? The social platforms have a utility for most people at this point.
      - Melatonic 4y ago
        Group chats work pretty damn well
      - fdewrewrewf 4y ago
        >vacation or dog photos >social platforms have a utility for most people Hard to tell if you're serious! I quit all social media and gave up my smartphone. I don't miss that brief "huh, that's nice" moment when being seeing an acquaintance's random photo they felt they had to share, and moments when visual imagery are shared now feel much more special.
      - Dove 4y ago
        I, for one, would love to see the existing incumbents fail, and a mad scramble by upstarts to do this better. This could be done way, way, way better, and I would love to see what happened if the network effect got out of the way of that happening.
      - fyvhbhn 4y ago
        If they have an utility, people will pay for it (they don't even have to pay as much as they pay indirectly via advertising). If not, not gonna miss it
      - duderific 4y ago
        You can create a group share in Apple Photos. Non-Apple folks can use a web link to view photos.
Joker_vD 4y ago
But that advertising money still come from somewhere and someone, right? Surely there is some other way to make those someones to spend that money on the internet and all related technology?
- fyvhbhn 4y ago
  That someone is the one watching the ad by buying products the person sees in ads
  - Joker_vD 4y ago
    Back in 2015, there was this "The Website Obesity Crisis" talk that claimed [0], among other things, that in fact most money in the ad industry is coming not from the ad-seeing consumers, but from VC investors. Has something changed in 7 years? Or was it never true in the first place? [0] https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm#fatads https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm#fatads

kylebyproxy 4y ago

I'm just amazed ads work at all. Anytime I receive an ad I didn't explicitly request, I boycott that company. I'd have hoped enough likeminded people in the world would naturally defeat the ad sector, but evidently I'm an outlier. I'll never understand why the average consumer rewards and reinforces ad spend

aliqot 4y ago
> Anytime I receive an ad I didn't explicitly request, I boycott that company. Can we see your list? Is it in Git somewhere?
- driverdan 4y ago
  I do something similar. I block every account that shows me ads on Twitter and Instagram. I wouldn't say I boycott them but 99% are companies I wouldn't buy anything from in the first place.
calrueb 4y ago
Actually curious, do you hold the same standard for print media (a newspaper/magazine ad), out-of-home (billboard), and television advertising? How do you primarily discover businesses and products?
lm28469 4y ago
> I'm just amazed ads work at all. Same, I don't recall a single time an ad made me want to buy something, if anything I think "if they have to shove this in front of my eyes and I don't already know the product it probably is bad or useless to me"

rr888 4y ago

> If you ask me, we should simply delete the entire advertisement sector—influencers included—and start from scratch. The amount of wasted resources (i.e. attention, money, electricity, bandwidth, time, smart people) is just insane! I agree there is lots of wasted time out there. But the advertising paid for Google, Facebook etc. It pays for Chrome, Android, React, PyTorch etc.

cwkoss 4y ago
That's a small sacrifice for ending pervasive thought manipulation and surveillance.
potamic 4y ago
If free software that runs nearly everything could be done without advertising, so could these.
fyvhbhn 4y ago
The software would be cheaper if financed without ads

user456324234 4y ago

Agree. And this is yet another proof that lots of meanningless jobs exist!

FiatLuxDave 4y ago

Here's a plan: Tax it. Tax the everliving hell out of it. The problem isn't the existence of advertising, it is that there is so much of the crap advertising. Taxing ads would raise the price of advertising, which would lower the ROI on advertising and force ad buyers to be more careful about which ads they buy. Crappy advertisers who are not actually connecting buyers with sellers would tend to go out of business, shrinking the industry. The remaining ad industry would have to create less ads with higher quality to compete in the newer high cost marketplace. Basically, the idea is to move the supply curve on the (on the supply and demand curves) to a place where they meet at a higher price and a lower quantity. See for example, https://www.economicshelp.org/microessays/equilibrium/price-elasticity-demand/ https://www.economicshelp.org/microessays/equilibrium/price-... (scroll down to Tax Incidence). Note that for advertising the 'producer' on this graph is the company making the ads and the 'consumer' is the company buying an ad for their product. The part about moving the curve to a lower quantity is the key! The goal here being to reduce the ratio of 'attention used' to 'product-consumer fit created'. We would have a smaller, better ad industry. We can't have that with current market conditions; competition won't allow it. The nice thing about a tax plan is that it is pretty easy to sell people on the idea of 'take money away from these people who annoy all of us and give it to [insert social good here]' . The best people in advertising would likely benefit from it as well, as they would likely stay in business and have better margins in a smaller industry with less competition. So, keep dreaming, but feel free to spread this idea around. Maybe it will grow by word-of-mouth.

omgomgomgomg 4y ago

Well, I have to say though, those little influencers do deliver results. I have spoken with many of them and they come up with ideas regarding gamification, retention and acquisition being far superior to the ad networks. They have a community and I would hire some of them on the spot, no need, though, some of them earn my salary many times over. The ad networks might be ok for flight by night ops like selling viagra copies on porn websites, but they will always be that annoying pop up, I am not sure it they count towards the result if people have ad blockers. Or let me ask, which businesses can actually convert measurably from ad networks? Assuming life time value of customers being more than 50 usd. Its always sold as for "brand propagation", an excuse to inform you ahead that no conversion at all will happen. If you have a fast paces business which relies on large throughput and a constantl flow of new customers it is not very useful. I know facebook could convert very well, but they will not allow any product.

lm28469 4y ago

> If you ask me, we should simply delete the entire advertisement sector—influencers included—and start from scratch The thing is Alphabet and Meta revenues are 95% ads. All the big players are either products to show ads or products to gather data to show more ads