4 ms·
Yes, ads suck. However, here's my take on advertising: Modern economic markets are a decentralized process via which we decide how to best allocate resources.
by maest 3y ago
Yes, ads suck. However, here's my take on advertising:
Modern economic markets are a decentralized process via which we decide how to best allocate resources. For this to work, we need a mechanism that allows information to be broadcasted through the system to ensure local decisions make sense. (In fact, information asymmetry is one of the main failure modes of modern markets).
So, yeah, advertising sucks, but 1. it's an important part of our market economy and 2. it therefore adds a lot of value to the world.
I actually have a hard time reconciling the reasoning above with how icky, insidious and unpleasant marketing feels when I get subjected to it.
- abenga 3y agoRelevant, non-obtrusive ads are kinda sort of fine, or at best bearable. What sucks is inability to opt out of specific ads due to inappropriateness or irrelevance. I need to to tell YouTube every couple of weeks that I don't want to see betting company ads just because I watch NBA and soccer videos. No matter how much I say this is "Not Appropriate" or "Not Relevant", every two weeks, there is Emmanuel Adebayor telling me to use some betting app (it's always the same ad). I finally caved and installed Smarttube on my Android TV.