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Something like 30% of our GDP is advertising - a pursuit I’d claim not just worthless but actively making everyone else’s life just a little worse. Sports are
by spencerflem 1y ago
Something like 30% of our GDP is advertising - a pursuit I’d claim not just worthless but actively making everyone else’s life just a little worse.
Sports are part of what makes life worth living though :)
- dragonwriter 1y ago> Something like 30% of our GDP is advertising It peaked at under 2.5% of GDP in the late 1990s, and is significantly less now. https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/oct/rise-digital-advertising-economic-implications https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/oct/rise-digi...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- FabHK 1y agoGuess it depends on whether you consider Google, Facebook, Instagram, X, etc. to be tech or advertising.
- spencerflem 1y agoYeah realized that was a pretty bad source. I know I had one I liked somewhere I’m trying to find. I think the 30% number might have been from Graeber’s bullshit jobs. Definitely remember reading a number and being shocked at how high it was though
- at-fates-hands 1y agoYou're both right, but were thinking in different terms: As of 2025, advertising is responsible for approximately 21.9% of the total U.S. economic output, according to a study by S&P Global Market Intelligence commissioned by The Advertising Coalition. [prnewswire.com] Here are some key figures from the study: Total U.S. GDP (2024): $47.5 trillion Advertising-driven economic activity: $10.4 trillion Direct advertising spend: $491 billion Jobs supported by advertising: 29 million (about 18.3% of the U.S. workforce) So while direct advertising expenditures account for about 1–2% of GDP, the broader economic impact—including downstream sales and employee spending—brings the total contribution to nearly 22% of GDP.
- dragonwriter 1y ago> Advertising-driven economic activity: $10.4 trillion That’s not advertising, that's almost entirely sales “stimulated by” advertising, which are, even in theory, sales the particular seller would not have made without advertising, but not, even in principal, necessarily additional economic activity from advertising. So even in expanding “advertising” to “due to advertising”, its at best a vast overestimate (and the “jobs supported by advertising” statistic is downstream of that statistic and suffers the same problem when treated as if it were additional rather than largely reallocation.)
- WalterBright 1y agoWithout advertising, how would you know what products were available? How would you know where to obtain them?
- spencerflem 1y agoCoke is the biggest spender - what about their product do we not know about?
- WalterBright 1y agoYou know about them because of their advertising.
- spencerflem 1y agoWhen I see an ostrich chasing a limo driver and a liberty mutual jingle plays, I’m not being given any useful information. I know about jarritos too and don’t recall having seen any ads for them. If ads were useful and benefited my life, I’d watch them on purpose instead of them being forced on me.
- WalterBright 1y ago> When I see an ostrich chasing a limo driver and a liberty mutual jingle plays, I’m not being given any useful information. You remember Liberty Mutual. > them being forced on me That's the price you pay for "free" streaming.
- spencerflem 1y agoThat’s not useful to me & I know, it’s free because me internalizing their propaganda is useful for someone else. your original pitch was that without ads I’d never know about new products that I might legitimately be interested in. The vast majority of ads are not that i also see ads in digital billboards and there’s nothing I can do about that