10 ms·

As much as I hate ads, I don’t know that it’s so simple. There are products that do solve legitimate problems people have. Maybe there is less of that now, but

As much as I hate ads, I don’t know that it’s so simple. There are products that do solve legitimate problems people have. Maybe there is less of that now, but in this past this was very true, and advertising helped make people aware that solutions to their problems have been developed. The first washing machine, for example. The problem comes when the advertisement manufacturers problems that didn’t previously exist.

wolvoleo 10mo ago
If a product is really that good than people will legit recommend it. It's not a problem at all.
- kyralis 10mo ago
  Depends on the niche, really. I despise ads, but I can also admit to having learned about products from them that I have subsequently purchased and been pleased with. Sometimes the ad lets me know about an entire type of product that I didn't know existed but found very useful, and I probably didn't even by the actual brand that was advertised. If you consider the general concept of "letting people know what products are available for purchase", I think it's hard to disagree that it's a reasonable thing to do. That doesn't excuse the manner in which it is done today, of course, but that core functionality is not fundamentally evil.
  - master-lincoln 10mo ago
    There are still tests and reviews and content where people can show products without being paid by the people producing these products.
    - tpmoney 10mo ago
      Even without being paid, unless someone is advertising the product somewhere the reviewer won't know it exists to review. And if the reviewer is being sent free product or solicited directly by the producer, that's still advertising. It may be more trustworthy if the reviewer is strict about not letting the producer have editorial control, but you better believe that the company is sending out free products to reviewers because that gets the product in front of eye-balls just like any other ad. The cost of the free review product is the price of the ad.
      - wolvoleo 10mo ago
        It does also happen that people get stuff to review and have to send it back of course.
        tpmoney 10mo ago
        Sure, but that’s still not free. The company is spending time, money and resources on soliciting the reviews, sending units out, receiving units back and then scrapping or selling those units as refurbs/open box. They’re not spending that money unless they think it’s going to drive sales / awareness. It’s still advertising.
        yibg 10mo ago
        So the company that can afford to send the most stuff to the most reviewers win?
      - master-lincoln 10mo ago
        > unless someone is advertising the product somewhere the reviewer won't know it exists Why? If I need something I search for available options and find them e.g. on the producers web presence. Then I buy one or more and review them.
  - wat10000 10mo ago
    Advertising isn't the general concept of letting people know what products are available for purchase. It's more specifically doing this for money and showing it to people who don't want to see it. One might quibble about exactly what the word "advertising" encompasses, but that description covers the bad stuff pretty well, whatever name you want to give it. I'd boil it down to: if you added a "don't show this" option, would anyone use it? A catalog that comes in the mail because you requested it is not advertising, since you requested it. Products mentioned on the front page of this site aren't advertising, because they're organic, and it's part of what I'm here for. Classified ads, despite the name, don't really qualify since they're in a separate section that nobody reads unless they're specifically seeking out those ads. A useful product doesn't have "don't show this" buttons because it would be completely pointless. I seek it out because I want it. I don't get upset at the company that made my office chair foisting it on me, because they didn't. I ordered the chair and got what I wanted. But ad companies don't resist "skip" buttons because they think they're pointless because everyone loves their products. They resist "skip" buttons because they know people don't want to see their shit. Their entire business model is based around forcing people to see things they don't want to see, but might accept as part of a package deal for seeing the stuff they do want to see. That is the stuff that should be completely destroyed.
    - drdeca 10mo ago
      > and showing it to people who don't want to see it. So, do superbowl ads not count as ads because a non-negligible portion of the viewership wants to see them? Or are you saying that there needs to be a non-negligible fraction of the viewers who don’t want to see it for it to be an ad?
      - wat10000 10mo ago
        There's a spectrum. Movie trailers are closer to the "not ads" portion of the spectrum, although when shown in theaters they are much more ad-like than when made available online. There are probably a decent number of football fans who would use a "skip ads" button if they had one for the Super Bowl, so they're still some way toward the "ads" end of the spectrum. But they're certainly less objectionable than most TV ads.
  - wolvoleo 10mo ago
    I haven't really, most of the products I've bought after advertising were low quality. I do have some very high quality products that were recommended to me through friends. Like one local lady that makes really quality outfits. She doesn't advertise at all because she's already overwhelmed with orders as she's so good.
- cortesoft 10mo ago
  How does the first person find the product to recommend it, though? There has to be SOMEONE who tries the product without being recommended by a previous customer.
haritha-j 10mo ago
I wonder if there's a middle ground, where you only have statement based, textual ads. Amusing ourselves to Death (great book btw), discusses how until the 19th century, ads were basically just information dense textual statements. The invention of slogans and jingles was the start of the slow downfall in ads. I interned at an ad agency once, and I really enjoy creative advertising, but frankly there's just way too much advertising in this world.
- vel0city 10mo ago
  I just wanted to second recommend Amusing Ourselves to Death. A very good and short read that I find continually relevant applying the same ideas to social media.
- Gerard0 10mo ago
  Damn! I have been reading about Amusing Ourselves to Death on here since weeks and I assumed it was a new book from a contemporary author! I'll get it now, thanks for being the one who finally got me to :)
- tpmoney 10mo ago
  > until the 19th century, ads were basically just information dense textual statements. I'm curious how does this account for "town criers" and the like? And there seems to be quite a few examples of less "information dense textual statement" in some of the articles on Wikipedia about advertising [1] [2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_card https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_card
  - haritha-j 10mo ago
    I'm not an expert, but looking at those articles, most of the illustrated and colour designs seem to have become popular in the 19th century, though I do see a few illstrated examples from the 18th century as well.
phantasmish 10mo ago
This is what a fucking store is for. They have catalogs. You could ask for one. If they think people will want something they will try to sell it and will tell you about it if you go looking. I see this pro-ads argument all the time and it’s so obviously-stupid that I’m truly baffled. Is this the kind of lie ad folks tell themselves so they can sleep at night?
- Auracle 10mo ago
  There are also ads for services. I used to be a photographer, and without my little Facebook/Instagram ads people would have had to largely rely on word of mouth, meaning the more established photographers would absolutely dominate my little rural market even when their photography was worse. Also, I'm not sure we want a world where only the largest corporations get to sell things. That's what would happen if people could only find things through stores and catalogs, especially pre-internet.
  - phantasmish 10mo ago
    If I go looking for a directory of [service, in my area] that’s hardly an ad! If those include, say, reviews and pricing info, great! Yes, please! I definitely don’t want that directory to be skewed with ads in favor of those with the most money, or who have decided to burn the most of their limited resources on ads instead of improving their services, lowering their prices, or hell, just taking more profit. The ads were the biggest problem with the good ol’ yellow pages.
    - stickfigure 10mo ago
      [flagged]
      - phantasmish 10mo ago
        Oh, I know how it works. You could have read my whole comment and saved yourself typing anything about the yellow pages. You sweet summer child.
titzer 10mo ago
Magazines, phone books, friends, stores. You know you could go to a store (or call them on the phone!) and talk to a person. "Hello, I am trying to find a thing to help me with X." Turns out that products that work well tend to get remembered, and ones that don't get forgotten.
- vel0city 10mo ago
  Magazines and phone books are often largely ad-supported. They largely wouldn't exist without some amount of advertising.
  - hackable_sand 10mo ago
    Mmmmmno?
    - vel0city 10mo ago
      Go to any bookstore and open practically any paid magazine. Count how many pages are ads. It's far from a small percentage. Some I've looked at recently were practically 1/3 to 1/2 ads. This isn't far from how things were decades ago. Yellow pages (phone books) were essentially entirely advertising. They didn't just list businesses out of the goodness of their heart, they took listing fees. This is a form of advertising!
- cortesoft 10mo ago
  Call what store? How do I know a store even exists to call it? How do I find out the store’s name and phone number? How do I find out where the store is located? You say products that work tend to get remembered, and sure, for existing products with a market you might be right… people would continue buying those things even with no advertising. But how did the FIRST person who bought the product find out about it? Someone has to try it once before you can even know the product works. How would a new product enter the market?
  - xigoi 10mo ago
    > Call what store? How do I know a store even exists to call it? How do I find out the store’s name and phone number? How do I find out where the store is located? Maps exist. Search engines exist. Have you been stuck in a cave the last 50 years?
Panoramix 10mo ago
I have never in my several decades of life seen and ad for anything and thought "I need to get that".
- meindnoch 10mo ago
  I remember having that experience as a kid - seeing an ad for Action Man™ during my Saturday morning cartoon block, and feeling that I need that toy right now. My dad then explained to me that these advertisements are carefully crafted to elicit this response from kids, and that I should always think critically about the messaging in ads.
- Aloisius 10mo ago
  Not even movie advertisements like trailers? Or job ads? Housing ads? I've definitely investigated and eventually purchased things I first learned about through an advertisement. Mind, usually that was from print ads in things like magazines/newspapers, the occasional direct mail ad like the old Fry's electronics mailer or movie trailers. Online ads are overwhelmingly ugly attention grabbers for things I have zero interest in or no time for when displayed.
  - sjw987 10mo ago
    It would be interesting to be able to define if an advertisement is still an advertisement in the sense the OP was referring if it is something sought out. I myself usually choose to watch trailers for movies, look at job ads and housing ads when I actually want to watch a movie, change job or move house. What pisses me off is the 99% of ads in my life that are just blasted in front of me online and in public. It's probably silly and the answer is just that they are, but they at least meet two different types of advert to me, personally. I would partially agree with OP in that I can't believe any adverts I've ever seen have influence a purchase from me. I actually quite often blacklist brands and products for aggressively marketing to me.
- tpmoney 10mo ago
  I sincerely do not believe this. I suspect that you have a very specific definition of ad that is far narrower than I do, but I do not believe you never once saw a movie trailer and decided to go see the film, or saw a billboard or sign for a restaurant while out on vacation and decided to check it out. Or that you never went to the grocery store to pick up the steak that was on sale this week. Or that every single tech purchase you have ever made in your life was exclusively and solely on the word of mouth recommendation of your close friends, all of whom had previously purchased identical products with their own money. Look I'm not saying you can't live a low ad lifestyle. I don't have cable or network TV and run ad-blockers on every device I own. And yet I can look around my home and see numerous products purchased at least in part due to an ad. The Retroid Pocket sitting on my table, the M series laptop sitting in front of me. The Sony TV across the room, the game consoles under it. Heck the dog at my feet was the one I adopted because I went to an adoption event being sponsored at a local business. Even when I'm seeking a specific product out and then seeking out information, I'm looking for reviews and a lot of those reviews are given sample/free product for the purposes of making their review. That's an ad. I might be able to place more trust in that review if the reviewer doesn't give the product manufacturer editorial control they way they'd have in a sponsorship, but you can be damn sure if sending free product to independent reviewers wasn't paying off in terms of higher sales, the manufacturer wouldn't be doing it.
lm28469 10mo ago
If you waited for an ad to solve your "legitimate problem" you didn't have a problem to begin with imho
- hk__2 10mo ago
  You might not know it is a problem and that it is solvable.
  - elevatortrim 10mo ago
    Yes but the amount of that happening is nowhere near enough to justify the ad-world we are living in.
  - lm28469 10mo ago
    Why would I care then? If people lived until now without it it can't be that big of a problem. Electricity, a car, a fridge, &c. solve legitimate problems. 99% of things being advertised today create the problem they solve and trick you into thinking you really need to solve this problem in your life
    - hk__2 10mo ago
      > If people lived until now without it it can't be that big of a problem That’s a very weak argument that can justify anything. Why do you need electricity, a car, a fridge? There have been people living without these for thousands of years. Of course there are bad ads and useless products (probably 99% of them), but not all ads are useless.
- kube-system 10mo ago
  No, there are very few markets in which all of the buyers have perfect information. It is extremely common in the science/technology sector that buyers aren't looking for a solution to a problem they have because they are under the impression that a solution doesn't exist. The archetypal business-school case study for this is the story of Viagra. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/03/27/viagra-27-years-reshaped-attitudes-stigma-sex/82657650007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/03/27/viagra... But it applies to most new technology in a less dramatic sense.
tensor 10mo ago
The fix is actually fairly simple IMO, though will never be implemented. Make all ads passive, e.g. require people to explicitly ask to see them. For example, when I want to see what new video games are around, I go to review sites and forums. It's opt-in. Making all ads only legal in bazar-like environments, banning all other forms of "forced" ad viewing, and also banning personalized ads completely, would go a very long way to fixing the issues. Hell, we can start with simply banning personalized ads, that alone would effectively destroy the surveillance economy by making it illegal to use that data for anything other than providing the service the customer purchases.
- Aerroon 10mo ago
  But you are buying into viewing ads when you use services that show you ads. Also, ad bazaars sound great until you realize that every locality needs to have their own bazaar. Seeing ads for New York barbers is kind of useless when you're in Los Angeles. Now you have a million ad bazaars and that's the only advertisement allowed. A little bit of corruption and your ads outshine all your competitors in that locality and they go out of business, since signs are an ad too. Also also non-personalized ads mean that the only things that can be advertised online are digital goods or things that are available globally. Basically, it will work for Amazon and AliExpress but that's about it. And adsls in Russian or Japanese or Korean or German or French or Swedish or Portuguese aren't going to be that useful for you, are they? Ads in English but for a product in another country might be even worse.
pluralmonad 10mo ago
Word of mouth. It is okay for a system to be inefficient, especially when the tradeoff for efficiency is a poison pill (ad tech is definitely this).
mrweasel 10mo ago
Part of the issue may also be that to many companies rely on selling ads as their main source of revenue and there simply isn't enough money in "good ads" to fund all the services we've come to expect to be free. There simply isn't enough ads for soft drinks, supermarkets or cars to reasonably fund the tech industry as it currently exists. Ad funded Facebook, perfectly fine, but that's not a $200B company, not without questionable ads for gambling, scams and shitty China plastic products. Platforms should have higher standards, accept lower profit margins and charge users if needed, rather than resort to running ads for stuff we all now is garbage.
stubish 10mo ago
Historically, yes. People in their 70s might remember that time. But language has moved on. Advertising now means manipulation. The ad market is priced for that. The rare cases of someone wanting to use advertising channels to put out actual information now have to pay a premium.
SergeAx 10mo ago
Can you remember the last 3 times when ads showed you products that solved your problem? I cannot. The closest experience I have had was with ads for new restaurants, of which two turned out good and one - not good. Also, twice last year, I saw trailers of new movies I wasn't aware of at the moment. However, I am sure I would later discover it via reviews or word of mouth. And mind that it was not problem solving, just an entertainment suggestion. I can live comfortably without new restaurants, or I will eventually discover them via other channels.
tap-snap-or-nap 10mo ago
Ads should be centralised state department and run through only approved and regulated bodies at regulated sites.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]

wolvoleo 10mo ago

If a product is really that good than people will legit recommend it. It's not a problem at all.

kyralis 10mo ago
Depends on the niche, really. I despise ads, but I can also admit to having learned about products from them that I have subsequently purchased and been pleased with. Sometimes the ad lets me know about an entire type of product that I didn't know existed but found very useful, and I probably didn't even by the actual brand that was advertised. If you consider the general concept of "letting people know what products are available for purchase", I think it's hard to disagree that it's a reasonable thing to do. That doesn't excuse the manner in which it is done today, of course, but that core functionality is not fundamentally evil.
- master-lincoln 10mo ago
  There are still tests and reviews and content where people can show products without being paid by the people producing these products.
  - tpmoney 10mo ago
    Even without being paid, unless someone is advertising the product somewhere the reviewer won't know it exists to review. And if the reviewer is being sent free product or solicited directly by the producer, that's still advertising. It may be more trustworthy if the reviewer is strict about not letting the producer have editorial control, but you better believe that the company is sending out free products to reviewers because that gets the product in front of eye-balls just like any other ad. The cost of the free review product is the price of the ad.
    - wolvoleo 10mo ago
      It does also happen that people get stuff to review and have to send it back of course.
      - tpmoney 10mo ago
        Sure, but that’s still not free. The company is spending time, money and resources on soliciting the reviews, sending units out, receiving units back and then scrapping or selling those units as refurbs/open box. They’re not spending that money unless they think it’s going to drive sales / awareness. It’s still advertising.
      - yibg 10mo ago
        So the company that can afford to send the most stuff to the most reviewers win?
    - master-lincoln 10mo ago
      > unless someone is advertising the product somewhere the reviewer won't know it exists Why? If I need something I search for available options and find them e.g. on the producers web presence. Then I buy one or more and review them.
- wat10000 10mo ago
  Advertising isn't the general concept of letting people know what products are available for purchase. It's more specifically doing this for money and showing it to people who don't want to see it. One might quibble about exactly what the word "advertising" encompasses, but that description covers the bad stuff pretty well, whatever name you want to give it. I'd boil it down to: if you added a "don't show this" option, would anyone use it? A catalog that comes in the mail because you requested it is not advertising, since you requested it. Products mentioned on the front page of this site aren't advertising, because they're organic, and it's part of what I'm here for. Classified ads, despite the name, don't really qualify since they're in a separate section that nobody reads unless they're specifically seeking out those ads. A useful product doesn't have "don't show this" buttons because it would be completely pointless. I seek it out because I want it. I don't get upset at the company that made my office chair foisting it on me, because they didn't. I ordered the chair and got what I wanted. But ad companies don't resist "skip" buttons because they think they're pointless because everyone loves their products. They resist "skip" buttons because they know people don't want to see their shit. Their entire business model is based around forcing people to see things they don't want to see, but might accept as part of a package deal for seeing the stuff they do want to see. That is the stuff that should be completely destroyed.
  - drdeca 10mo ago
    > and showing it to people who don't want to see it. So, do superbowl ads not count as ads because a non-negligible portion of the viewership wants to see them? Or are you saying that there needs to be a non-negligible fraction of the viewers who don’t want to see it for it to be an ad?
    - wat10000 10mo ago
      There's a spectrum. Movie trailers are closer to the "not ads" portion of the spectrum, although when shown in theaters they are much more ad-like than when made available online. There are probably a decent number of football fans who would use a "skip ads" button if they had one for the Super Bowl, so they're still some way toward the "ads" end of the spectrum. But they're certainly less objectionable than most TV ads.
- wolvoleo 10mo ago
  I haven't really, most of the products I've bought after advertising were low quality. I do have some very high quality products that were recommended to me through friends. Like one local lady that makes really quality outfits. She doesn't advertise at all because she's already overwhelmed with orders as she's so good.
cortesoft 10mo ago
How does the first person find the product to recommend it, though? There has to be SOMEONE who tries the product without being recommended by a previous customer.

haritha-j 10mo ago

I wonder if there's a middle ground, where you only have statement based, textual ads. Amusing ourselves to Death (great book btw), discusses how until the 19th century, ads were basically just information dense textual statements. The invention of slogans and jingles was the start of the slow downfall in ads. I interned at an ad agency once, and I really enjoy creative advertising, but frankly there's just way too much advertising in this world.

vel0city 10mo ago
I just wanted to second recommend Amusing Ourselves to Death. A very good and short read that I find continually relevant applying the same ideas to social media.
Gerard0 10mo ago
Damn! I have been reading about Amusing Ourselves to Death on here since weeks and I assumed it was a new book from a contemporary author! I'll get it now, thanks for being the one who finally got me to :)
tpmoney 10mo ago
> until the 19th century, ads were basically just information dense textual statements. I'm curious how does this account for "town criers" and the like? And there seems to be quite a few examples of less "information dense textual statement" in some of the articles on Wikipedia about advertising [1] [2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_card https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_card
- haritha-j 10mo ago
  I'm not an expert, but looking at those articles, most of the illustrated and colour designs seem to have become popular in the 19th century, though I do see a few illstrated examples from the 18th century as well.

phantasmish 10mo ago

This is what a fucking store is for. They have catalogs. You could ask for one. If they think people will want something they will try to sell it and will tell you about it if you go looking. I see this pro-ads argument all the time and it’s so obviously-stupid that I’m truly baffled. Is this the kind of lie ad folks tell themselves so they can sleep at night?

Auracle 10mo ago
There are also ads for services. I used to be a photographer, and without my little Facebook/Instagram ads people would have had to largely rely on word of mouth, meaning the more established photographers would absolutely dominate my little rural market even when their photography was worse. Also, I'm not sure we want a world where only the largest corporations get to sell things. That's what would happen if people could only find things through stores and catalogs, especially pre-internet.
- phantasmish 10mo ago
  If I go looking for a directory of [service, in my area] that’s hardly an ad! If those include, say, reviews and pricing info, great! Yes, please! I definitely don’t want that directory to be skewed with ads in favor of those with the most money, or who have decided to burn the most of their limited resources on ads instead of improving their services, lowering their prices, or hell, just taking more profit. The ads were the biggest problem with the good ol’ yellow pages.
  - stickfigure 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    - phantasmish 10mo ago
      Oh, I know how it works. You could have read my whole comment and saved yourself typing anything about the yellow pages. You sweet summer child.

titzer 10mo ago

Magazines, phone books, friends, stores. You know you could go to a store (or call them on the phone!) and talk to a person. "Hello, I am trying to find a thing to help me with X." Turns out that products that work well tend to get remembered, and ones that don't get forgotten.

vel0city 10mo ago
Magazines and phone books are often largely ad-supported. They largely wouldn't exist without some amount of advertising.
- hackable_sand 10mo ago
  Mmmmmno?
  - vel0city 10mo ago
    Go to any bookstore and open practically any paid magazine. Count how many pages are ads. It's far from a small percentage. Some I've looked at recently were practically 1/3 to 1/2 ads. This isn't far from how things were decades ago. Yellow pages (phone books) were essentially entirely advertising. They didn't just list businesses out of the goodness of their heart, they took listing fees. This is a form of advertising!
cortesoft 10mo ago
Call what store? How do I know a store even exists to call it? How do I find out the store’s name and phone number? How do I find out where the store is located? You say products that work tend to get remembered, and sure, for existing products with a market you might be right… people would continue buying those things even with no advertising. But how did the FIRST person who bought the product find out about it? Someone has to try it once before you can even know the product works. How would a new product enter the market?
- xigoi 10mo ago
  > Call what store? How do I know a store even exists to call it? How do I find out the store’s name and phone number? How do I find out where the store is located? Maps exist. Search engines exist. Have you been stuck in a cave the last 50 years?

Panoramix 10mo ago

I have never in my several decades of life seen and ad for anything and thought "I need to get that".

meindnoch 10mo ago
I remember having that experience as a kid - seeing an ad for Action Man™ during my Saturday morning cartoon block, and feeling that I need that toy right now. My dad then explained to me that these advertisements are carefully crafted to elicit this response from kids, and that I should always think critically about the messaging in ads.
Aloisius 10mo ago
Not even movie advertisements like trailers? Or job ads? Housing ads? I've definitely investigated and eventually purchased things I first learned about through an advertisement. Mind, usually that was from print ads in things like magazines/newspapers, the occasional direct mail ad like the old Fry's electronics mailer or movie trailers. Online ads are overwhelmingly ugly attention grabbers for things I have zero interest in or no time for when displayed.
- sjw987 10mo ago
  It would be interesting to be able to define if an advertisement is still an advertisement in the sense the OP was referring if it is something sought out. I myself usually choose to watch trailers for movies, look at job ads and housing ads when I actually want to watch a movie, change job or move house. What pisses me off is the 99% of ads in my life that are just blasted in front of me online and in public. It's probably silly and the answer is just that they are, but they at least meet two different types of advert to me, personally. I would partially agree with OP in that I can't believe any adverts I've ever seen have influence a purchase from me. I actually quite often blacklist brands and products for aggressively marketing to me.
tpmoney 10mo ago
I sincerely do not believe this. I suspect that you have a very specific definition of ad that is far narrower than I do, but I do not believe you never once saw a movie trailer and decided to go see the film, or saw a billboard or sign for a restaurant while out on vacation and decided to check it out. Or that you never went to the grocery store to pick up the steak that was on sale this week. Or that every single tech purchase you have ever made in your life was exclusively and solely on the word of mouth recommendation of your close friends, all of whom had previously purchased identical products with their own money. Look I'm not saying you can't live a low ad lifestyle. I don't have cable or network TV and run ad-blockers on every device I own. And yet I can look around my home and see numerous products purchased at least in part due to an ad. The Retroid Pocket sitting on my table, the M series laptop sitting in front of me. The Sony TV across the room, the game consoles under it. Heck the dog at my feet was the one I adopted because I went to an adoption event being sponsored at a local business. Even when I'm seeking a specific product out and then seeking out information, I'm looking for reviews and a lot of those reviews are given sample/free product for the purposes of making their review. That's an ad. I might be able to place more trust in that review if the reviewer doesn't give the product manufacturer editorial control they way they'd have in a sponsorship, but you can be damn sure if sending free product to independent reviewers wasn't paying off in terms of higher sales, the manufacturer wouldn't be doing it.

lm28469 10mo ago

If you waited for an ad to solve your "legitimate problem" you didn't have a problem to begin with imho

hk__2 10mo ago
You might not know it is a problem and that it is solvable.
- elevatortrim 10mo ago
  Yes but the amount of that happening is nowhere near enough to justify the ad-world we are living in.
- lm28469 10mo ago
  Why would I care then? If people lived until now without it it can't be that big of a problem. Electricity, a car, a fridge, &c. solve legitimate problems. 99% of things being advertised today create the problem they solve and trick you into thinking you really need to solve this problem in your life
  - hk__2 10mo ago
    > If people lived until now without it it can't be that big of a problem That’s a very weak argument that can justify anything. Why do you need electricity, a car, a fridge? There have been people living without these for thousands of years. Of course there are bad ads and useless products (probably 99% of them), but not all ads are useless.
kube-system 10mo ago
No, there are very few markets in which all of the buyers have perfect information. It is extremely common in the science/technology sector that buyers aren't looking for a solution to a problem they have because they are under the impression that a solution doesn't exist. The archetypal business-school case study for this is the story of Viagra. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/03/27/viagra-27-years-reshaped-attitudes-stigma-sex/82657650007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/03/27/viagra... But it applies to most new technology in a less dramatic sense.

tensor 10mo ago

The fix is actually fairly simple IMO, though will never be implemented. Make all ads passive, e.g. require people to explicitly ask to see them. For example, when I want to see what new video games are around, I go to review sites and forums. It's opt-in. Making all ads only legal in bazar-like environments, banning all other forms of "forced" ad viewing, and also banning personalized ads completely, would go a very long way to fixing the issues. Hell, we can start with simply banning personalized ads, that alone would effectively destroy the surveillance economy by making it illegal to use that data for anything other than providing the service the customer purchases.

Aerroon 10mo ago
But you are buying into viewing ads when you use services that show you ads. Also, ad bazaars sound great until you realize that every locality needs to have their own bazaar. Seeing ads for New York barbers is kind of useless when you're in Los Angeles. Now you have a million ad bazaars and that's the only advertisement allowed. A little bit of corruption and your ads outshine all your competitors in that locality and they go out of business, since signs are an ad too. Also also non-personalized ads mean that the only things that can be advertised online are digital goods or things that are available globally. Basically, it will work for Amazon and AliExpress but that's about it. And adsls in Russian or Japanese or Korean or German or French or Swedish or Portuguese aren't going to be that useful for you, are they? Ads in English but for a product in another country might be even worse.

pluralmonad 10mo ago

Word of mouth. It is okay for a system to be inefficient, especially when the tradeoff for efficiency is a poison pill (ad tech is definitely this).

mrweasel 10mo ago

Part of the issue may also be that to many companies rely on selling ads as their main source of revenue and there simply isn't enough money in "good ads" to fund all the services we've come to expect to be free. There simply isn't enough ads for soft drinks, supermarkets or cars to reasonably fund the tech industry as it currently exists. Ad funded Facebook, perfectly fine, but that's not a $200B company, not without questionable ads for gambling, scams and shitty China plastic products. Platforms should have higher standards, accept lower profit margins and charge users if needed, rather than resort to running ads for stuff we all now is garbage.

stubish 10mo ago

Historically, yes. People in their 70s might remember that time. But language has moved on. Advertising now means manipulation. The ad market is priced for that. The rare cases of someone wanting to use advertising channels to put out actual information now have to pay a premium.

SergeAx 10mo ago

Can you remember the last 3 times when ads showed you products that solved your problem? I cannot. The closest experience I have had was with ads for new restaurants, of which two turned out good and one - not good. Also, twice last year, I saw trailers of new movies I wasn't aware of at the moment. However, I am sure I would later discover it via reviews or word of mouth. And mind that it was not problem solving, just an entertainment suggestion. I can live comfortably without new restaurants, or I will eventually discover them via other channels.

tap-snap-or-nap 10mo ago

Ads should be centralised state department and run through only approved and regulated bodies at regulated sites.

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