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Ask HN: Why do you hate advertising as a business so much?

• DanBC 13y ago
  I hate advertisers because: 1) The sense of entitlement they feel - "I should have a right to telephone you at any time, or to mail you junk, or to interrupt your viewing, or to scrape your email address from somewhere and email you garbage, or to use obnoxious loud music or other weird techniques." 2) The destruction of the WWW as a useful source of information, moving instead to really foul pointless content farms or link farms or other weird useless broken sites. Or to sites that are just massive collections of everything, but with no concept of curation. I don't want (eg) every different spectacles case ever made anywhere in the world available from one website - because most of them really are pretty similar. I want a nicely chosen list of twenty different cases. 3) The fear of most sites to let go of advertisers and to just let me pay for the content.
  • vinceleo 13y ago
    Agree.Tradition is not a business model http://www.internet-manifesto.org/ http://www.internet-manifesto.org/
  • nfailor 13y ago
    1) those are not advertisers, those are direct mailing etc., outfits. I think they're annoying too. I don't use them. If a client suggests using them, I suggest they find a new agency. I suggest you write a note to the CEO and discontinue your association with the brand. they pay attention to that. 2) might I suggest 'site:.edu' 3) it's not a fear, a critical mass of users won't pay for content.
    • webvet 13y ago
      > 3) it's not a fear, a critical mass of users won't pay for content. Spot on!!
    • marssaxman 13y ago
      We didn't have to pay for content before the ads came along. Why should we have to pay for content now?
      • dragonwriter 13y ago
        The content that is advertising supported largely didn't exist before the ads came along, or was provided by entities that were burning through initial capital while seeking a revenue model. Much of the kind of content that was sustainable before all the ads came along is largely still available without ads after the ads came along to support other kinds of content.
• unimpressive 13y ago
  1. I can name exactly one time that an ad was actually something I might be interested in. 2. Conflict of interest. An advertiser's job is to get me to buy/view/etc something, often with misleading statements. Whether me doing that is actually in my best interest isn't factored into the equation. 3. Annoying. 'Shady' ad practices do and will continue to exist. In any case they take up screen real estate. 4. Advertisers are compiling huge databases that they intend to fill with all sorts of intimate information about me. What I like to read (what I read), who I talk with, what I talk about, etc. These databases are ripe for all sorts of abuse, both outside and within the domain they're being compiled for. (Great example: http://blog.echonest.com/post/27047918145/musical-taste-politics http://blog.echonest.com/post/27047918145/musical-taste-poli...) 5. Another conflict of interest is between me and the service itself. When the service is mainly powered by ad revenue it means that anything that's good for ads is in the interests of the service, even if it's bad for me. (Eg. Taking up more and more screen real estate, sandwiching ads in between the 'legitimate' content.) For a start.
  • nfailor 13y ago
    1. we do the best we can to target. you get blanketed by irrelevant ads for a myriad of reasons not limited to: -lazy clients who don't understand their userbase -ads for things you might be interested in being choked out by higher paying spots. 2. that's actually not an advertiser's job--although some of those elements may be part of a campaign. we live in an era where clients demand an ROI, they want a conversion stat, and that's what they base an ad buy on--we agree this is detrimental in the industry. we'd much rather present you with a product over a span of time. we'd much rather show a product to likely consumers. I'd give you a treatise on the industry, but ogilvy did that: http://www.commissionedwriting.com/CONFESSIONS%20OF%20AN%20ADVERTISING%20MAN%20-%20OGILVY.pdf http://www.commissionedwriting.com/CONFESSIONS%20OF%20AN%20A... 3. that's also a client generated evil. 4. we've been making that sort of connection our entire history. content producers check too, they call it 'knowing your audience.' we're actually in the midst of a massive democratization. instead of five or six market research companies (or one TV research company, or one radio company) we're opening up. you can actually opt-out--that's never happened before. 5. so pay for the service. not enough users are interested in baring the true cost of a service--hence the dependence on ad revenue.
• lutusp 13y ago
  > Why do you hate advertising as a business so much? Because advertisers are in the business of lying. The measure of success in advertising is the persuasiveness of one's lies. > I think mass media and shady ad practices have painted a terrible image of the advertising business model. Advertisements that prey on human weakness, pop ups, auto-play etc... but that doesn't mean that the advertising model is completely broken. This reminds me of the child molester's defense: "So? Who's perfect?" > Anyway, I'm THANKFUL to this new age of advertising which allows my business to run and introduces me to apps, services and products I want to use. It's always nice to see someone ask an question on HN who doesn't already have his mind made up, and who doesn't post simply to express a slanted editorial view of the topic.
  • bediger4000 13y ago
    Because advertisers are in the business of lying. The measure of success in advertising is the persuasiveness of one's lies. Those two sentences sum it up for me. I've taught my children to be wary of all ads because advertising is all lies, or at the very best, as close to lying as someone can get and still not tell an untruth. As far as the cabbie and the ad executive above, how does the ad executive know that the cabbie was either (a) telling the truth or (b) influenced by ads? Perhaps the cabbie tried a lot of toothpastes before settling on Crest. Secondarily, advertising seems to influence content overly much, no matter how much the content people protest. Stories get spiked because advertisers squawk, reporters get fired or hog-tied because advertisers squawk, products of advertisers get better reviews. And don't tell me that doesn't happen, it does.
    • nfailor 13y ago
      again, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of advertising. http://www.commissionedwriting.com/CONFESSIONS%20OF%20AN%20ADVERTISING%20MAN%20-%20OGILVY.pdf http://www.commissionedwriting.com/CONFESSIONS%20OF%20AN%20A...
      • lutusp 13y ago
        > again, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of advertising. Nice article, but it confuses advertising's role with advertising's practice. You know the old saying "the first casualty of battle is the battle plan"? It works the same in advertising -- the most well-intentioned people become mesmerized by the bottom line, and principles go out the window.
• logjam 13y ago
  Oh for gods sake. We must live in alternate universes. I have never clicked an online ad. Ever. I have never met someone who said that they were grateful for ads on a web page, or found them helpful. Ever. The "advertising business model" is to just push vapid, gratuitous shit. The fact that it is gratuitous shit is what requires it to be advertised. And for most of us there is the dawning revelation that a life of consumption is...a life of gratuitous shit.
  • ig1 13y ago
    You say that as if no-one clicks on ads. There's vastly overwhelming evidence that ads work, there's no dispute about it whatsoever. You might dislike ads personally but there's billions of statistical data points which demonstrate their validity. Furthermore not only do other people click on ads, but you've probably done it as well. But in the same way that people who are dieting forget about the condiments they used when they write their food diary, people who are philosophically opposed to ads will forget that they clicked an ad within minutes of having clicked on it. Go to your web browsing log and search for the ad click trackers for the sites you use (google, facebook, etc.) - you might be surprised at the results.
  • rfergie 13y ago
    I disagree that only gratuitous shit needs to be advertised. I guess you think this because you believe that if a product is good then word of mouth or whatever will mean that it sells without advertising. This is true to a certain extent if the product is unique in a niche or two or three times better than the alternatives. In the case where the product is best (so it is not gratuitous shit) but not much better. Then in this case word of mouth is not going to provide sales fast enough to prevent cash flow problems and advertising is necessary.
  • mansigandhi 13y ago
    I click on Facebook ads all the time. So obviously we do live in alternative universes. And I don't mind them because sometimes it turns out to be a good way to find stuff.
    • 13y ago
• venomsnake 13y ago
  Because the service provider loyalty lies with the advertiser and not me.
• lazyant 13y ago
  While I agree with the general sentiment posted here, here's an anecdote from a famous publicist. He got in a taxi cab and in the conversation he told the driver what his profession was. "oh well, that advertising thing never works for me" the driver said. "what brand of cereal do you buy" - "Kellogs" "what toothpaste do you use" - "Colgate" "what's your favorite drink" - "Coca-Cola"
  • unimpressive 13y ago
    The effectiveness of advertising isn't to make you buy a specific product at a specific time. It's to increase the mind share of a specific product so that when you're in the market for it that's what you'll buy. (Or at the very least you'll see it as a viable option.) This is of course, unmeasurable.
    • jfoster 13y ago
      Isn't it possible that there might be different types of advertising each with its own goals? Billboards are probably about mindshare, but what about when I search Google for a model of TV and there's all these retailers trying to sell me that model?
      • unimpressive 13y ago
        You're correct. I was actually going to add an edit to this effect but it was too late by the time I thought of doing it.
      • nfailor 13y ago
        that's actually still about mindshare though--that's why radio ads still exist. they catch you on the way to the store.
        • jfoster 13y ago
          For some of them (say, Best Buy) it definitely would be, but others (say, Bob's Local TV Shop) don't seem to advertise on the scale that would give them any chance of gaining mindshare. I acknowledge that the advertisers are trying to gain mindshare are at a significant advantage when advertising, since they can afford to bid up to the lifetime value of the customer rather than bidding up to the margin of a one-off sale.
• fredsanford 13y ago
  Smells like a shill
• shawnreilly 13y ago
  When it comes down to it, I don't hate Ad's. But I can openly admit that I despise the Ad Experience. You are basically forced to view/hear the Ad. The consumer has no choice. I find it to be a flawed User Experience. I fault the Advertising Industry for failing to innovate the Advertising Experience. Technology has evolved, providing the potential for an increased User Experience. But the Advertising Industry remains the same, and the User Experience sucks. I find that Today's Advertising Experience essentially utilizes the same approach / method (or what I call the model) that was developed decades ago (born out of Radio, Print, and TV). Take the Banner Ad; Same approach used in print, just modified and served over the Web/Mobile. Consumer attempts to consume content, interrupted by the Ad. Take the Video Ad; Same approach used in Television, just modified and served over the Web/Mobile. Consumer attempts to consume content, interrupted by the Ad. It's the same thing over and over, just repackaged and delivered in a new format. And the underlying User Experience is the same. I think that the Advertising Industry is ripe for innovation. I'm no fan of Buzzwords, but the new concept of 'Native Advertising' represents (IMO) the biggest innovation in the Advertising Industry in the last 3-4 decades. I think it's time for the Industry to realize that they don't have to interrupt people and force things upon people to successfully Advertise something. I see a correct implementation of Native Advertising creating a much more positive User Experience that actually helps people and gives them the information they want, when they want it. I'm working on a Project in this space, and I'm excited to test and hopefully validate my hypothesis.
• Casseres 13y ago
  I hate ads because they usually involve tracking. I hate Facebook ads because a lot of them are for games, scams, BS products, or companies/politicians where the ad says "click like if you think/agree..." and the statement has almost nothing to do with that company/politician and are just using it to gain likes for the company/politician's Facebook page. Before I started blocking ads and JavaScript, I've clicked on exactly four ads: 1 Google text ad in their search results - no sale 2 Facebook ads - I bought the products of both ads 1 ad on a blog (not using a third party ad service) - no sale
  • timmm 13y ago
    Right, it blows my mind to think how many Google Adsense ads I've been exposed to over the life of my Google use. And subsequently to think how many I've clicked on... exactly zero.
• timmm 13y ago
  Because now content providers know consumers hate ads, so they offer "Ad Free" options (for a price) which is effectively legal extortion. Ads basically convert 3% of those exposed at the expense of annoying the other 97%, at the very least it's wildly inefficient.