3 ms·

Except they do. They help connect buyers with needs/wants to sellers with solutions. I know this breaks HNs brain so I don't expect to win this one however. C

Except they do. They help connect buyers with needs/wants to sellers with solutions. I know this breaks HNs brain so I don't expect to win this one however. Can ads encourage people to buy stuff they don't need? Yes. Like most things (including humans), they aren't perfectly rational.

bdangubic 2y ago
I agree except when it is overwhelming. ads are so prevalent these days that many brains (mine included) look at every ad as a scam
- adaptbrian 2y ago
  It just depends where you consume media. I've never felt so unreachable (via ads) online in 25 years of using the internet for play and work.
  - bdangubic 2y ago
    It just depends where you consume media. hmmmm I am not sure what you mean here? wherever I consume the media I will be bombarded with ads (regardless of my blocking skills...) :)
seanhunter 2y ago
> They help connect buyers with needs/wants to sellers with solutions. You know what else does this but in a non-creepy, non-tracking way that doesn't try to artificially create needs/wants in people? Accurate search results. If I want something I can search for it and find it. SEO and advertising and sponsored results are the way companies try to skew search results (usually by making them less accurate and useful for the person searching) in a way that benefits them.
- pembrook 2y ago
  The problem is the best way to weight the accuracy of results (as you say, SEO exists) is with skin in the game. A bidding-based advertising system ultimately results in the most valuable solution winning, since the ad spend will be marginally bid up as close to the value the consumer is willing to pay for the product/service minus producer input costs. The most successful companies ultimately have the most to spend on ads. Again, this does not result in perfectly rational outcomes all the time (because humans are irrational), but comes damn close. Now, whether we should let one company take the profits off of that ad bidding system (since it inherently trends to monopoly) is another question.
  - seanhunter 2y ago
    If you genuinely believe that then I’m delighted for you. You are living in paradise
  - ndriscoll 2y ago
    An auction system for ads results in the most profitable solution winning, not the most valuable. Marginally bidding toward the largest difference between consumer price and input cost is a bad thing; that's the least efficient solution, and means you are maximally overpaying for value received. An ideal search would find products with the smallest difference between price and input cost, i.e. items near the Pareto frontier. For a more distilled scenario, if you manually accepted open stock trade offers, and your broker took kickbacks to always show you the worst bids/asks that they think you might fall for and make it difficult to find the best quotes, that would obviously be bad. In fact not providing best execution is illegal. The ad economy runs on exactly this conflict of interest. Money flowing through ads represents inflated transaction costs.
gjm11 2y ago
I gladly affirm that in principle it is possible for advertisements to be beneficial on net by informing people with needs about how suitable products meet those needs. Now turn off your ad-blocker, look at the next ten ads you see on the internet, and count how many of them fall into that category.
- brewtide 2y ago
  They are just helping you redefine 'need'. Obviously.
hakfoo 2y ago
Ads can be a matter of quality and relevance, just like search. I'm happy to read ads relevant to my interests in an appropriate context. Unfortunately, this is a clear clash of "line goes up" versus "corporate integrity". In the print media days, there was somewhat of a code of conduct-- publishers generally didn't want to run outright fraudulent or misleading ads because it damaged the image of the publication itself. I'm not sure that Google has proven itself capable of rising to the same standards.

bdangubic 2y ago

I agree except when it is overwhelming. ads are so prevalent these days that many brains (mine included) look at every ad as a scam

adaptbrian 2y ago
It just depends where you consume media. I've never felt so unreachable (via ads) online in 25 years of using the internet for play and work.
- bdangubic 2y ago
  It just depends where you consume media. hmmmm I am not sure what you mean here? wherever I consume the media I will be bombarded with ads (regardless of my blocking skills...) :)

seanhunter 2y ago

> They help connect buyers with needs/wants to sellers with solutions. You know what else does this but in a non-creepy, non-tracking way that doesn't try to artificially create needs/wants in people? Accurate search results. If I want something I can search for it and find it. SEO and advertising and sponsored results are the way companies try to skew search results (usually by making them less accurate and useful for the person searching) in a way that benefits them.

pembrook 2y ago
The problem is the best way to weight the accuracy of results (as you say, SEO exists) is with skin in the game. A bidding-based advertising system ultimately results in the most valuable solution winning, since the ad spend will be marginally bid up as close to the value the consumer is willing to pay for the product/service minus producer input costs. The most successful companies ultimately have the most to spend on ads. Again, this does not result in perfectly rational outcomes all the time (because humans are irrational), but comes damn close. Now, whether we should let one company take the profits off of that ad bidding system (since it inherently trends to monopoly) is another question.
- seanhunter 2y ago
  If you genuinely believe that then I’m delighted for you. You are living in paradise
- ndriscoll 2y ago
  An auction system for ads results in the most profitable solution winning, not the most valuable. Marginally bidding toward the largest difference between consumer price and input cost is a bad thing; that's the least efficient solution, and means you are maximally overpaying for value received. An ideal search would find products with the smallest difference between price and input cost, i.e. items near the Pareto frontier. For a more distilled scenario, if you manually accepted open stock trade offers, and your broker took kickbacks to always show you the worst bids/asks that they think you might fall for and make it difficult to find the best quotes, that would obviously be bad. In fact not providing best execution is illegal. The ad economy runs on exactly this conflict of interest. Money flowing through ads represents inflated transaction costs.

gjm11 2y ago

I gladly affirm that in principle it is possible for advertisements to be beneficial on net by informing people with needs about how suitable products meet those needs. Now turn off your ad-blocker, look at the next ten ads you see on the internet, and count how many of them fall into that category.

brewtide 2y ago
They are just helping you redefine 'need'. Obviously.

hakfoo 2y ago

Ads can be a matter of quality and relevance, just like search. I'm happy to read ads relevant to my interests in an appropriate context. Unfortunately, this is a clear clash of "line goes up" versus "corporate integrity". In the print media days, there was somewhat of a code of conduct-- publishers generally didn't want to run outright fraudulent or misleading ads because it damaged the image of the publication itself. I'm not sure that Google has proven itself capable of rising to the same standards.