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This is a tad reductive. If there were no ads, how would people know that products existed? Would they just see the products on store shelves? What about servi

This is a tad reductive. If there were no ads, how would people know that products existed? Would they just see the products on store shelves? What about services? Would labels be ads? Would how stores merchandise things be advertisements? Could businesses negotiate for specific product placement? How would you find out about stores? Would store signs be ads? How about really big ones? How about at the edge of their property along a road highway? Could the sign say what the store sold? If you were to start a product guide to help people find what they need, how could you possibly afford to buy enough products to be useful and up-to-date enough while slow crawl word of mouth got the business off the ground? Would asking people to tell their friends be an ad? If not, could you pay someone to spread the word about your product? Would traveling sales reps be ads? What if they wore head to toe logo gear? Could you just pay people to do that without selling things? Manipulative advertising practices suck. Privacy destroying data-driven marketing sucks. Ads themselves often suck but I don’t see how a capitalist society could survive without them.

Ukv 2y ago
> This is a tad reductive. If there were no ads, how would people know that products existed? The post does say: > > Limited to honestly informing people about what's available on the market, it can serve a crucial function in enabling trade. In the real world however, it's moved way past that role. Real world advertising is not about informing, it's about convincing. Over time, it became increasingly manipulative and dishonest. I think it's largely that incentives are in the wrong place for advertising to work as an effective means to inform people. When trying to make an informed choice on a purchase, I'll typically look for enthusiast communities or unsponsored reviews. Marketing actually tends to actively get in the way.
- chefandy 2y ago
  > When trying to make an informed choice on a purchase, I'll typically look for enthusiast communities or unsponsored reviews. Marketing actually tends to actively get in the way. Right but where do they get their info? If there were no advertisements, would they call up companies to see what they offered? How would they know a new company existed? Would there be an online enthusiast group for toilet brushes and tape and granite blocks for curbs? How would you know if there was a new store to buy those things? Would that store having a sign that included what they sold constitute advertising? Could your local fish shop put a sign in the window advertising the weekly special? Could they post a picture of it online? Obviously circulars would be advertisements— would catalogs constitute advertisements? What would inspire any innovation at all if there was no way for anyone to discover some new competition existed? How would stores know that manufacturers and distributors existed? Is packaging advertising? Is there a limit to where you can place packages? Show them on the Internet? Do you really think those enthusiast communities wouldn’t be chock full of industry voices? Do you think they aren’t already? Do you really think your process is totally objective? There are a lot of shitty practices in marketing and advertising. Especially with data-driven marketing, I might be the harshest critic I’ve encountered. But advertising at its core is just telling people that products exist. That’s it. Capitalist societies don’t function without being able to communicate that products exist, but even communist countries have (and always had) advertising to tell people that things existed. I abhor many practices in marketing and advertising, but at some level, companies must be able to tell people that they have a product to sell. I have never encountered anybody that suggested a reasonable replacement that would work for everything from computers to condoms to lettuce to bars to bakeries to cars to cleaning services to email hosts to edge network caching to hobbyist clubs to camp grounds.
  - Ukv 2y ago
    > Right but where do they get their info? Hopefully from first-hand experience with the product, and not just from ads. > If there were no advertisements, would they call up companies to see what they offered? Searching product listings on a website is more common than a phone call, and if you're a reviewer you might want to sign up to industry mailing lists and press releases to get notified of new offerings. Generally speaking I believe this is what reviewers are doing already, opposed to just waiting to randomly get a targeted Facebook ad for products to review. I wouldn't typically consider cases where you solicit information and receive it to be an ad. You give a broad definition of ad ("just telling people that products exist", which would seemingly include even independent reviews and word of mouth) - and while it's up to you if you want to hold that definition, you should note that nobody's suggesting eliminating all that. > Would there be an online enthusiast group for toilet brushes and tape and granite blocks for curbs? There are online enthusiast groups for, say, DIY, that'll likely have advice on tape and edging stones. Doesn't need to be hyper-specific to one product. > Do you really think your process is totally objective? For determining what product to buy? No, it'll never be. But I do think it's better to at least try to get information from sources with well-aligned incentives, and I do think that companies spending billions on manipulation campaigns often makes doing so more difficult, despite increased informedness being the supposed benefit we get in return for the colossal waste of resources and time. > What would inspire any innovation at all if there was no way for anyone to discover some new competition existed? My argument wasn't that there should be "no way for anyone to discover some new competition existed" - my argument was that incentives are largely in the wrong place for ads to work as an effective means to inform consumers, since the company producing the ads has no reason to give unbiased information (and only really has reason to avoid outright lying because of restrictions already placed on advertising). Compare to an independent reviewer, where the incentive is hopefully (albeit not always) to give a relatively unbiased review to attract a readership. There can also be incentive there to review new/niche products that others are not yet reviewing. > There are a lot of shitty practices in marketing and advertising. Especially with data-driven marketing [...] I abhor many practices in marketing and advertising, but at some level [...] I'd claim that the problematic practices have not just arisen by coincidence - they stem from misaligned incentives. Also, while it'd certainly be beneficial to stamp out those practices, there'd still be the issue that resources are being wasted on what is largely a zero-sum game, instead of competing through more preoductive work (steal market share back and forth by improving the product, not just by repeatedly convincing people).

Ukv 2y ago

> This is a tad reductive. If there were no ads, how would people know that products existed? The post does say: > > Limited to honestly informing people about what's available on the market, it can serve a crucial function in enabling trade. In the real world however, it's moved way past that role. Real world advertising is not about informing, it's about convincing. Over time, it became increasingly manipulative and dishonest. I think it's largely that incentives are in the wrong place for advertising to work as an effective means to inform people. When trying to make an informed choice on a purchase, I'll typically look for enthusiast communities or unsponsored reviews. Marketing actually tends to actively get in the way.

chefandy 2y ago
> When trying to make an informed choice on a purchase, I'll typically look for enthusiast communities or unsponsored reviews. Marketing actually tends to actively get in the way. Right but where do they get their info? If there were no advertisements, would they call up companies to see what they offered? How would they know a new company existed? Would there be an online enthusiast group for toilet brushes and tape and granite blocks for curbs? How would you know if there was a new store to buy those things? Would that store having a sign that included what they sold constitute advertising? Could your local fish shop put a sign in the window advertising the weekly special? Could they post a picture of it online? Obviously circulars would be advertisements— would catalogs constitute advertisements? What would inspire any innovation at all if there was no way for anyone to discover some new competition existed? How would stores know that manufacturers and distributors existed? Is packaging advertising? Is there a limit to where you can place packages? Show them on the Internet? Do you really think those enthusiast communities wouldn’t be chock full of industry voices? Do you think they aren’t already? Do you really think your process is totally objective? There are a lot of shitty practices in marketing and advertising. Especially with data-driven marketing, I might be the harshest critic I’ve encountered. But advertising at its core is just telling people that products exist. That’s it. Capitalist societies don’t function without being able to communicate that products exist, but even communist countries have (and always had) advertising to tell people that things existed. I abhor many practices in marketing and advertising, but at some level, companies must be able to tell people that they have a product to sell. I have never encountered anybody that suggested a reasonable replacement that would work for everything from computers to condoms to lettuce to bars to bakeries to cars to cleaning services to email hosts to edge network caching to hobbyist clubs to camp grounds.
- Ukv 2y ago
  > Right but where do they get their info? Hopefully from first-hand experience with the product, and not just from ads. > If there were no advertisements, would they call up companies to see what they offered? Searching product listings on a website is more common than a phone call, and if you're a reviewer you might want to sign up to industry mailing lists and press releases to get notified of new offerings. Generally speaking I believe this is what reviewers are doing already, opposed to just waiting to randomly get a targeted Facebook ad for products to review. I wouldn't typically consider cases where you solicit information and receive it to be an ad. You give a broad definition of ad ("just telling people that products exist", which would seemingly include even independent reviews and word of mouth) - and while it's up to you if you want to hold that definition, you should note that nobody's suggesting eliminating all that. > Would there be an online enthusiast group for toilet brushes and tape and granite blocks for curbs? There are online enthusiast groups for, say, DIY, that'll likely have advice on tape and edging stones. Doesn't need to be hyper-specific to one product. > Do you really think your process is totally objective? For determining what product to buy? No, it'll never be. But I do think it's better to at least try to get information from sources with well-aligned incentives, and I do think that companies spending billions on manipulation campaigns often makes doing so more difficult, despite increased informedness being the supposed benefit we get in return for the colossal waste of resources and time. > What would inspire any innovation at all if there was no way for anyone to discover some new competition existed? My argument wasn't that there should be "no way for anyone to discover some new competition existed" - my argument was that incentives are largely in the wrong place for ads to work as an effective means to inform consumers, since the company producing the ads has no reason to give unbiased information (and only really has reason to avoid outright lying because of restrictions already placed on advertising). Compare to an independent reviewer, where the incentive is hopefully (albeit not always) to give a relatively unbiased review to attract a readership. There can also be incentive there to review new/niche products that others are not yet reviewing. > There are a lot of shitty practices in marketing and advertising. Especially with data-driven marketing [...] I abhor many practices in marketing and advertising, but at some level [...] I'd claim that the problematic practices have not just arisen by coincidence - they stem from misaligned incentives. Also, while it'd certainly be beneficial to stamp out those practices, there'd still be the issue that resources are being wasted on what is largely a zero-sum game, instead of competing through more preoductive work (steal market share back and forth by improving the product, not just by repeatedly convincing people).