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I disagree. Advertising is a zero-sum game. If nobody advertised, every solution would be equally discoverable via search and word-of-mouth. It's only when som
by lukev 2y ago
I disagree. Advertising is a zero-sum game. If nobody advertised, every solution would be equally discoverable via search and word-of-mouth.
It's only when some actors start advertising that the others must as well, so they don't fall behind. And so billions of dollars are spent that could have gone to making better products.
It's basically the prisoner's dilemma at scale.
- logicchains 2y ago>If nobody advertised, every solution would be equally discoverable via search and word-of-mouth. No it wouldn't. If someone opens up a new restaurant a block away there's not going to be much word of mouth when it just opened, and even if they make a website, web search will prioritise the websites of existing restaurants because their domains have been around longer and have more inbound links.
- drilbo 2y agowell, web search is one thing that would look very different
- milesrout 2y agoIDK what your community is like but if a new restaurant opened a block away from me then: 1. Every one would see it, because they have eyes and leave the house. 2. Every one would be talking about it.
- bdangubic 2y agoit is 2025, no one just leaves the house. my wife leaves the house once per week for an hour to go to cosco :)
- hedayet 2y agoTheoretically: yes. Realistically: no, you can’t stop big companies from advertising. Just having multiple shops bearing your logo gives you a level of brand recognition that’s hard to beat. Even if no one advertised, they’d still find ways to dominate the conversation and outshine competitors through sheer presence. You’re right that it becomes a kind of arms race, but in practice, trying to "opt out" often means falling behind.
- okr 2y agoSo, if no one competed to get ahead of competitors, by making better or cheaper products and to grab the available marketshare, we would just have better and cheaper products without it? Sounds flawed to me.
- saulpw 2y agoWhy? It's another prisoner's dilemma.
- lukev 2y agoNot sure what you mean. People would definitely still compete on quality and price in a world without advertising: much moreso, because they couldn't just spend money for sales without improving their product. If they wanted to improve sales, they'd have to either get better or cheaper.
- echoangle 2y agoI disagree, one component of advertising is discovering things you didn’t even know existed. Having to actively look stuff like that up would be much harder.
- em-bee 2y agoi haven't come across a single ad that would have helped me to discover things i didn't know existed. and i don't think i missed out on anything because of that.
- mulmen 2y agoReally? I definitely learned about Send Cut Send and PCBWay from advertising. I had no idea that kind of custom manufacturing was even possible let alone affordable.
- ambicapter 2y agoThat component doesn’t matter because advertising also makes it harder to find what you need, since everyone is doing it. If you didn’t know it previously existed, how do you even know if it will solve your problem like it says it does?
- echoangle 2y agoI see an ad for the steam deck and think “wow, a portable gaming console allowing me to play computer games while on trips. Very cool!”, but I am not actively googling for gaming consoles every month to see what’s released. Or movies, basically all movies I went to a cinema for were because the trailers were played as ads somewhere. I’m not actively monitoring movie releases.
- lukev 2y agoNobody is saying there wouldn't be catalogs and "new release" feeds... they would just have to be dedicated and voluntary and not polluting everything else I'm trying to do.
- Uvix 2y agoWithout advertising you won't have search, because that's how search engines are funded. And you'll also lose pretty much all of the online options for word-of-mouth, too.
- kelseyfrog 2y agoI pay for search. What do you do?
- phreeza 2y agoI don't think it's a zero sum game. Some degree of advertising will make a product more discoverable regardless of whether competitors advertise or not.
- jdietrich 2y ago>If nobody advertised, every solution would be equally discoverable via search and word-of-mouth. Most consumers don't do extensive research before making a purchasing decision, or any research at all - they buy whatever catches their eye on a store shelf or the front page of Amazon search results, they buy what they're already familiar with, they buy what they see everyone else buying. Consumer behaviour is deeply habitual and it takes enormous effort to convince most consumers to change their habits. Advertising is arguably the best tool we have for changing consumer behaviour, which is precisely why so much money is spent on it. Banning advertising only further concentrates the power of incumbents - the major retailers who decide which products get prime shelf position or the first page of search results, and the established brands with name recognition and ubiquitous distribution. Consumers go on buying the things they've always bought and are never presented with a reason to try something different. A market without advertising isn't a level playing field, but a near-unbreakable oligopoly.
- lukev 2y agoI think a market without advertising is sufficiently "alternative reality" that it's difficult to say what it would look like. The giant incumbents are only giant incumbents because of ads to start with. In a world without advertising, our entire cultural approach to consumption would necessarily be different. Maybe it would be as you say. But, maybe we'd be more thoughtful and value-driven. Maybe objects would be created to last longer, and less driven by a constant sales cycle. Maybe craftsmanship would still be a valued aspect of everyday goods.
- therealdrag0 2y agoRemoving ads won’t remove people’s desire for cheap stuff.
- sebastianz 2y agoWhy would it be difficult to say what it would look like? Humans and markets exist for many thousands of years. Advertising in its current form for a couple of hundred. Just look back in time, there were markets then too :)
- owebmaster 2y ago> every solution would be equally discoverable via search I hate ads but there would be no search engines without ads unless they were backed by governments
- tcfhgj 2y agoWe don't know, we just can't imagine
- simonsarris 2y ago> If nobody advertised, every solution would be equally discoverable via search and word-of-mouth. This is unbelievably untrue. Consider clothing brands, large and older labels have an immense advantage over newcomers. Newcomer word of mouth will never come close to some brand that has a store in every mall across the US. With (say) Instagram ads alone, tiny labels can spend and target very effectively to create a niche, and begin word of mouth. Gap and Lululemon would love it if all advertising was shut off today. It would basically guarantee their position forever because of the real estate and present day distribution Schelling point.
- milesrout 2y agoIf nobody advertised then first mover advantage would be everything. How would a new product come to market and compete with no way of getting new users except word of mouth?