3 ms·

I want to hear more about how advertising is a doomed business model. We've had advertising for centuries... But I'd love to know it was going away...

titzer 4y ago
I must have missed the viagra ads in "A Tale of Two Cities."
- AlanYx 4y ago
  You jest, but "A Tale of Two Cities" was published in just under three-dozen weekly instalments in a periodical that did have advertising.
harpiaharpyja 4y ago
I think there's some confusion here. By "advertising" GP is referring to the business model where you offer a product to users, but your revenue comes from advertisers targeting those users. IIUC they are not claiming that basic practice of advertising goods and services you provide is doomed.
dredmorbius 4y ago
Mass-market advertising in the modern sense dates to about 1860, or about 160 years. That's over a century, but not "centuries". As a significant social and economic dynamic, it's younger yet. As I've recently posted to this thread, Hamilton Holt's 1909 account is an excellent introduction to the beginning of this period: <https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft> Google's Ngram Viewer suggest that the terms "advertising agency" and "advertising copywriter" only came into vogue during the 1920s, which would be only just at the century mark: <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=advertising+agency%2C%28advertising+copywriter+%2A+20%29&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cadvertising%20agency%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C%28advertising%20copywriter%20%2A%2020%29%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=advertising+ag...> I don't have a ready reference for ad spend evolution over the entire 20th century, but based on the 1980--2000 data, it seems likely highly skewed to more recent times: <https://www.visualcapitalist.com/evolution-global-advertising-spend-1980-2020/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/evolution-global-advertisin...> There's probably a pretty good historical basis for the series Mad Men to have been set in the years 1960--1970. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Men https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Men>

titzer 4y ago

I must have missed the viagra ads in "A Tale of Two Cities."

AlanYx 4y ago
You jest, but "A Tale of Two Cities" was published in just under three-dozen weekly instalments in a periodical that did have advertising.

harpiaharpyja 4y ago

I think there's some confusion here. By "advertising" GP is referring to the business model where you offer a product to users, but your revenue comes from advertisers targeting those users. IIUC they are not claiming that basic practice of advertising goods and services you provide is doomed.

dredmorbius 4y ago

Mass-market advertising in the modern sense dates to about 1860, or about 160 years. That's over a century, but not "centuries". As a significant social and economic dynamic, it's younger yet. As I've recently posted to this thread, Hamilton Holt's 1909 account is an excellent introduction to the beginning of this period: <https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft> Google's Ngram Viewer suggest that the terms "advertising agency" and "advertising copywriter" only came into vogue during the 1920s, which would be only just at the century mark: <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=advertising+agency%2C%28advertising+copywriter+%2A+20%29&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cadvertising%20agency%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C%28advertising%20copywriter%20%2A%2020%29%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=advertising+ag...> I don't have a ready reference for ad spend evolution over the entire 20th century, but based on the 1980--2000 data, it seems likely highly skewed to more recent times: <https://www.visualcapitalist.com/evolution-global-advertising-spend-1980-2020/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/evolution-global-advertisin...> There's probably a pretty good historical basis for the series Mad Men to have been set in the years 1960--1970. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Men https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Men>