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Personally I am not viewing advertising as a way to make users buy things they otherwise wouldn't. As a full disclaimer, I did work on an advertising product an

Personally I am not viewing advertising as a way to make users buy things they otherwise wouldn't. As a full disclaimer, I did work on an advertising product and so my view may be biased. It is true that a large part of the industry is specialized in doing exactly that. However, advertising is also a way to help customers know that your business or product exists and that your offering might be better for them compared to the competition. This works well on Google, where the long tail is in effect. People are searching for stuff, often because of a certain need they've got. It is being driven by intent. When users search for payday loans or insurance, they are genuinely looking for loans or insurance. For apps or websites, this might also work well. For example if somebody is interested in losing weight and uses a website or maybe a mobile app that tracks his weight or something - an ad might actually help that person in doing what he wants. Now, of course, advertising is rarely ranked or served based on quality, with interstitials being won in general by the highest bidder. This often leads to less than optimal suggestions to many customers and some of them might get tricked into getting worse deals than they would otherwise. But, people shouldn't be as dumb as to stop at the first ad they see, without some research, especially if we're talking about something as important as taking a loan. This is an issue of education - if education is failing us, then pointing fingers at businesses that advertise doesn't help.

jlarocco 13y ago
That's why advertising is so pointless, IMO. For the people "dumb" enough to go to the first ad they see, advertising is taking advantage of them. For the people who know better, and who will do research, the ads just get in the way.
shubb 13y ago
Advertising has a real social usefulness sure - when a new company or product needs to break into an existing market, good advertising and marketing are the only way it will succeed against the current, possibly inferior products. That said, I think a lot of advertising is deception - you are trying to make the customer believe things that are useful to you, in spite of what they have seen. For instance, before the MS Surface launched, they spent a lot of money on product placement. In the TV series Dallas, when ever any science or engineering is done, it is done on a Surface, pre-released to the film crew. It does not matter if the Surface is really a good platform for doing science. It matters that the customer thinks 'innovation, science, business, profit, Surface'. What is true does not matter. The surface pro is actually a cool thing, and I hear students love them. Perhaps the above deception will help them succeed - deception is not necessarily evil, if it helps move people to a place where they can make a better decision. Generally, if a user is looking for your service (Payday Loan), then they are already intending to buy that product, and adwords bids or SEO decide which competitors they will choose between. This is the opposite to a comparison site that genuinely helps a user find the best product for them (and insurance friends tell me comparison sites have decimated profit in that industry). But more dangerously, SEO and adwords can make a user searching for 'moonlighting jobs' or 'how to get out of debt' see Payday Loans as an option, where the highest quality advice would actually be to negotiate with their bank, and maybe get a bigger overdraft. Obviously, the evil in the above example is Payday Loans, and not advertising. But the case I make, for the evil of google, is that the most money is made (advertising has the greatest effect) when it causes people to take bad decisions. Google make money most from helping make people make bad decisions.

jlarocco 13y ago

That's why advertising is so pointless, IMO. For the people "dumb" enough to go to the first ad they see, advertising is taking advantage of them. For the people who know better, and who will do research, the ads just get in the way.

shubb 13y ago

Advertising has a real social usefulness sure - when a new company or product needs to break into an existing market, good advertising and marketing are the only way it will succeed against the current, possibly inferior products. That said, I think a lot of advertising is deception - you are trying to make the customer believe things that are useful to you, in spite of what they have seen. For instance, before the MS Surface launched, they spent a lot of money on product placement. In the TV series Dallas, when ever any science or engineering is done, it is done on a Surface, pre-released to the film crew. It does not matter if the Surface is really a good platform for doing science. It matters that the customer thinks 'innovation, science, business, profit, Surface'. What is true does not matter. The surface pro is actually a cool thing, and I hear students love them. Perhaps the above deception will help them succeed - deception is not necessarily evil, if it helps move people to a place where they can make a better decision. Generally, if a user is looking for your service (Payday Loan), then they are already intending to buy that product, and adwords bids or SEO decide which competitors they will choose between. This is the opposite to a comparison site that genuinely helps a user find the best product for them (and insurance friends tell me comparison sites have decimated profit in that industry). But more dangerously, SEO and adwords can make a user searching for 'moonlighting jobs' or 'how to get out of debt' see Payday Loans as an option, where the highest quality advice would actually be to negotiate with their bank, and maybe get a bigger overdraft. Obviously, the evil in the above example is Payday Loans, and not advertising. But the case I make, for the evil of google, is that the most money is made (advertising has the greatest effect) when it causes people to take bad decisions. Google make money most from helping make people make bad decisions.