4 ms·

Frankly, I hate advertising -- ALL advertising, not just web advertising -- and want the advertising industry to die in a fire. I recognize this is a bit contro

by cstross 13y ago

Frankly, I hate advertising -- ALL advertising, not just web advertising -- and want the advertising industry to die in a fire. I recognize this is a bit controversial, especially with Americans (who seem unable to conceive of content industries that can exist in the absence of advertising: the BBC and the entire book publishing industry apparently exist in a cognitive blind spot), but advertising is mostly oriented around selling us stuff we don't want or need, and as such it shares many characteristics with spam; it's insidious, intrusive, tries to steal your attention, and works by instilling uncertainty and self-doubt. Yes, 90% of the web would die without advertising -- but I think we'd be better off with just the 10% left over, because it'd be the best 10% (the stuff that has a viable business model that works without advertising).

iambateman 13y ago
I don't think you really hate advertising as much as you say. You get to use tons and tons of great sites without paying money, because the good people of ADVERT_CO paid for your attention. Advertising gives you something you want, so you pay attention to something you don't want. But unless you want to pay a subscription fee to every site you use, it's not a bad deal at all.
- lazyjones 13y ago
  > But unless you want to pay a subscription fee to every site you use, it's not a bad deal at all. There are websites out there that do not rely on ads and do not require a paid subscription to be used (I built one, a CSE).
  - cstross 13y ago
    Yup. Me too. That's the principle I run on.
  - stingraycharles 13y ago
    How do you make money from your site?
    - lazyjones 13y ago
      CPC and CPO agreements with the merchants... I.e. the user visits the merchant from the site (sometimes buys something) and we get paid for that.
  - dhimes 13y ago
    How do they stay in business? And, what is a CSE?
    - lazyjones 13y ago
      > How do they stay in business? Make users happy, provide useful content, help them save time and make informed choices when purchasing. Has worked for 14 years so far. > what is a CSE? Comparison Shopping Engine.
      - dhimes 13y ago
        So, they get a get money for sales? A percentage or something? Genuinely curious. EDIT: I see you've answered this question above. When I'm doing serious comparison shopping, I use a subscription site. I feel better about the reduced incentive to inflate recommendations. Although the subscription site does make mistakes, it's usually in the durability side of things (they can't test a new product for three years and have the results by April). The comparison shopping sites are quite nice once I know what I'm looking for, however.
- pacala 13y ago
  The people of ADVERT_CO work hard to distract and confuse my attention such that I overpay for the products they push. For every ad-supported site out there, I'd be better off by directly paying them money for their service. This is basic economics, if it weren't true then ADVERT_CO would be out of business.
  - gabemart 13y ago
    The concept of advertising does not require that the ad viewer "overpay" for the product of the advertiser. It only requires that in the long run, the average additional revenue for the company is greater than the average cost of the ad. If Alice spends $1 to show an ad to Bob, who then spends $2 on $product (which has 0 marginal cost to Alice), which is so wonderful that Bob obtains $3 of value from it, everyone is a winner. Lots of ads try to convince the viewer to spend money on something not in their best interest, but it is not inherent to the vehicle of advertising that this be so.
    - pacala 13y ago
      You assume that Alice is the sole provider of the product, which is by and large false. In practice Alice shows an ad to Bob at the $2 price point, while Claire and Darcy have the same product for $0.5. Furthermore, Alice creates an entire marketing literature designed to obfuscate the fact that Claire and Darcy products are the exact same product, at times produced by the exact same manufacturing plant. Bob doesn't have enough time to cut through the bullshit, so never learns about Claire or Darcy, and ends up overpaying $1.50, which is then split $.50 to the marketing department of Alice, $.50 to ADVERT_CO and $.50 to Alice's shareholders. PS. The "value" that B derives from the product is not quantifiable within the orthodox economic framework, as "value" is an arbitrary number that can only be determined by a buyer meeting a seller's price in a competitive market.
      - gabemart 13y ago
        Alice may well be the sole provider of the product. This is especially true in the realm of products with zero marginal costs. Even if we assume she is not, and that a fungible product is available from other vendors, the fact that Bob has not yet purchased it, even though it offers more value to him than it is reasonable to assume that Bob may go on not knowing about it indefinitely. (If not, why hasn't he purchased it yet?) If Alice pays for an ad, Bob buys her product and then derives more value from it than it costs, he is still better off than he was before, even if he could have bought a substitute for a lower price. The value (or utility) Bob derives from the product may not be quantifiable precisely, but it is certainly possible to quantify in approximate terms, and this practice is very common in Economics literature. Price paid in a competitive market is not the only way to quantify utility. Indeed, some of my undergraduate economics courses were concerned very largely with how to estimate the value (or, if you like, the aggregate provided utility) of resources for which no markets exist.
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  > But unless you want to pay a subscription fee to every site you use, it's not a bad deal at all. Considering how little money sites get per advert view, (not even whole pennies IME,) I'd happily just pay them double the money not to advertise to me. Remove all the ads, all the associated tracking shit - keep the prices per view at double advertising sort of prices. Yeah, I'd pay. Happily. What we really need is a way to do secure efficient micro-transactions - I don't want to be having to enter my card number every time I view a page. Or have some sort of trusted intermediary so we can tally up the pageviews and pay everyone appropriately at the end of the month. But the no-advertising model needn't be a bad thing.
lucaspiller 13y ago
I think your point is interesting, but I'm not sure I agree about all advertising. I think it can be useful in some cases, say IKEA open a new store near you (and you were already planning to renovate your home), you would find out a lot quicker if they had advertising on billboards around town or in newspapers, than if you slowly found out by word of mouth.
- tomp 13y ago
  There is a difference between pure advertising and informative advertising. While I'm completely against the former, I support the latter, but in a severely limited format (i.e. such ads can appear only on special billboards, e.g. one for concerts, one for art exhibitions, one for new restaurant openings; that people can only see on purpose (not just by driving by), and without any extra information (i.e. without semi-naked women enticing you to "need" the product)).
betterunix 13y ago
"Yes, 90% of the web would die without advertising" I doubt that very much. I think it would be more accurate to say that 90% of the web would change without advertising revenue. People will still want social networks; they will still get social networks, and it is likely that those social networks will be more distributed as the money for big, centralized services will be gone. News will still be distributed, some behind paywalls, much not behind paywalls. Search engines will still exist, some charging a fee, some run by their users (imagine a distributed web search system i.e. a P2P network of people who index the web and respond to searches made by other users).
jfb 13y ago
Yes, but. Having a non-offensive business model guarantees nothing about the quality of the services provided -- they are orthogonal concerns. I would be very happy to pay for what I like, rather than be subjected to the grotesqueries of advertisers (still less to be packaged up and sold on like a shitty mortgage), but a lot of good would be lost in that 90%.
DanBC 13y ago
> and the entire book publishing industry apparently exist in a cognitive blind spot Books have tried it, and ebooks may well have ads at some point. Luckily, the experiment for print books failed. I wonder how you'd react if someone approached you with a deal to mention a product X times in a book? (I imagine it would be a colourful and robust response!) I ask because Fay Wheldon did this for Bvlgari. http://www.kottke.org/03/04/advertising-in-books http://www.kottke.org/03/04/advertising-in-books > In September 2001 the novelist Fay Weldon wrote what was, certainly at the time, the world's first sponsored novel. Entitled The Bulgari Connection, it was, you guessed it, sponsored by the jewel house, Bulgari. According to this article in the Guardian, Weldon was required to mention the name of Bulgari at least 12 times. It was originally intended as a private venture, but was then released for commercial publication. Nevertheless, fairly scary stuff though it is, the fact that this was a year and a half ago and doesn't seem to have spawned hundreds of similarly-sponsored books gives at least some hope that this won't be a trend throughout the publishing industry... Salon has a nice piece about it. (http://www.salon.com/2001/09/05/bulgari/ http://www.salon.com/2001/09/05/bulgari/) War time penguins had ads, at the end of the book. http://www.nevillehobson.com/2010/08/22/are-ads-in-books-such-a-bad-idea/ http://www.nevillehobson.com/2010/08/22/are-ads-in-books-suc... Here's an article about tobacco advertising that shows glossy inserts in Kurt Vonnegut books. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/books/review/Collins-t.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/books/review/Collins-t.htm...
mratzloff 13y ago
No one seems to agree with you. Everyone wants online and mobile content for free, and very few care how it happens. So either someone else pays for it (advertisers) or those people become the product (selling their data to marketers). I don't see that attitude ever changing, but I do anticipate traditional approaches to paying for content getting more intrusive or slowly disappearing in favor of other models.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  I don't recall a vote.
  - mratzloff 13y ago
    Please read more carefully before down voting. My point is that the general public does not agree with the idea that all advertising should disappear. They just want something for free and don't care how they get it. Apparently this idea was a little too controversial.

by cstross 13y ago

iambateman 13y ago

I don't think you really hate advertising as much as you say. You get to use tons and tons of great sites without paying money, because the good people of ADVERT_CO paid for your attention. Advertising gives you something you want, so you pay attention to something you don't want. But unless you want to pay a subscription fee to every site you use, it's not a bad deal at all.

lazyjones 13y ago
> But unless you want to pay a subscription fee to every site you use, it's not a bad deal at all. There are websites out there that do not rely on ads and do not require a paid subscription to be used (I built one, a CSE).
- cstross 13y ago
  Yup. Me too. That's the principle I run on.
- stingraycharles 13y ago
  How do you make money from your site?
  - lazyjones 13y ago
    CPC and CPO agreements with the merchants... I.e. the user visits the merchant from the site (sometimes buys something) and we get paid for that.
- dhimes 13y ago
  How do they stay in business? And, what is a CSE?
  - lazyjones 13y ago
    > How do they stay in business? Make users happy, provide useful content, help them save time and make informed choices when purchasing. Has worked for 14 years so far. > what is a CSE? Comparison Shopping Engine.
    - dhimes 13y ago
      So, they get a get money for sales? A percentage or something? Genuinely curious. EDIT: I see you've answered this question above. When I'm doing serious comparison shopping, I use a subscription site. I feel better about the reduced incentive to inflate recommendations. Although the subscription site does make mistakes, it's usually in the durability side of things (they can't test a new product for three years and have the results by April). The comparison shopping sites are quite nice once I know what I'm looking for, however.
pacala 13y ago
The people of ADVERT_CO work hard to distract and confuse my attention such that I overpay for the products they push. For every ad-supported site out there, I'd be better off by directly paying them money for their service. This is basic economics, if it weren't true then ADVERT_CO would be out of business.
- gabemart 13y ago
  The concept of advertising does not require that the ad viewer "overpay" for the product of the advertiser. It only requires that in the long run, the average additional revenue for the company is greater than the average cost of the ad. If Alice spends $1 to show an ad to Bob, who then spends $2 on $product (which has 0 marginal cost to Alice), which is so wonderful that Bob obtains $3 of value from it, everyone is a winner. Lots of ads try to convince the viewer to spend money on something not in their best interest, but it is not inherent to the vehicle of advertising that this be so.
  - pacala 13y ago
    You assume that Alice is the sole provider of the product, which is by and large false. In practice Alice shows an ad to Bob at the $2 price point, while Claire and Darcy have the same product for $0.5. Furthermore, Alice creates an entire marketing literature designed to obfuscate the fact that Claire and Darcy products are the exact same product, at times produced by the exact same manufacturing plant. Bob doesn't have enough time to cut through the bullshit, so never learns about Claire or Darcy, and ends up overpaying $1.50, which is then split $.50 to the marketing department of Alice, $.50 to ADVERT_CO and $.50 to Alice's shareholders. PS. The "value" that B derives from the product is not quantifiable within the orthodox economic framework, as "value" is an arbitrary number that can only be determined by a buyer meeting a seller's price in a competitive market.
    - gabemart 13y ago
      Alice may well be the sole provider of the product. This is especially true in the realm of products with zero marginal costs. Even if we assume she is not, and that a fungible product is available from other vendors, the fact that Bob has not yet purchased it, even though it offers more value to him than it is reasonable to assume that Bob may go on not knowing about it indefinitely. (If not, why hasn't he purchased it yet?) If Alice pays for an ad, Bob buys her product and then derives more value from it than it costs, he is still better off than he was before, even if he could have bought a substitute for a lower price. The value (or utility) Bob derives from the product may not be quantifiable precisely, but it is certainly possible to quantify in approximate terms, and this practice is very common in Economics literature. Price paid in a competitive market is not the only way to quantify utility. Indeed, some of my undergraduate economics courses were concerned very largely with how to estimate the value (or, if you like, the aggregate provided utility) of resources for which no markets exist.
6d0debc071 13y ago
> But unless you want to pay a subscription fee to every site you use, it's not a bad deal at all. Considering how little money sites get per advert view, (not even whole pennies IME,) I'd happily just pay them double the money not to advertise to me. Remove all the ads, all the associated tracking shit - keep the prices per view at double advertising sort of prices. Yeah, I'd pay. Happily. What we really need is a way to do secure efficient micro-transactions - I don't want to be having to enter my card number every time I view a page. Or have some sort of trusted intermediary so we can tally up the pageviews and pay everyone appropriately at the end of the month. But the no-advertising model needn't be a bad thing.

lucaspiller 13y ago

I think your point is interesting, but I'm not sure I agree about all advertising. I think it can be useful in some cases, say IKEA open a new store near you (and you were already planning to renovate your home), you would find out a lot quicker if they had advertising on billboards around town or in newspapers, than if you slowly found out by word of mouth.

tomp 13y ago
There is a difference between pure advertising and informative advertising. While I'm completely against the former, I support the latter, but in a severely limited format (i.e. such ads can appear only on special billboards, e.g. one for concerts, one for art exhibitions, one for new restaurant openings; that people can only see on purpose (not just by driving by), and without any extra information (i.e. without semi-naked women enticing you to "need" the product)).

betterunix 13y ago

"Yes, 90% of the web would die without advertising" I doubt that very much. I think it would be more accurate to say that 90% of the web would change without advertising revenue. People will still want social networks; they will still get social networks, and it is likely that those social networks will be more distributed as the money for big, centralized services will be gone. News will still be distributed, some behind paywalls, much not behind paywalls. Search engines will still exist, some charging a fee, some run by their users (imagine a distributed web search system i.e. a P2P network of people who index the web and respond to searches made by other users).

jfb 13y ago

Yes, but. Having a non-offensive business model guarantees nothing about the quality of the services provided -- they are orthogonal concerns. I would be very happy to pay for what I like, rather than be subjected to the grotesqueries of advertisers (still less to be packaged up and sold on like a shitty mortgage), but a lot of good would be lost in that 90%.

DanBC 13y ago

> and the entire book publishing industry apparently exist in a cognitive blind spot Books have tried it, and ebooks may well have ads at some point. Luckily, the experiment for print books failed. I wonder how you'd react if someone approached you with a deal to mention a product X times in a book? (I imagine it would be a colourful and robust response!) I ask because Fay Wheldon did this for Bvlgari. http://www.kottke.org/03/04/advertising-in-books http://www.kottke.org/03/04/advertising-in-books > In September 2001 the novelist Fay Weldon wrote what was, certainly at the time, the world's first sponsored novel. Entitled The Bulgari Connection, it was, you guessed it, sponsored by the jewel house, Bulgari. According to this article in the Guardian, Weldon was required to mention the name of Bulgari at least 12 times. It was originally intended as a private venture, but was then released for commercial publication. Nevertheless, fairly scary stuff though it is, the fact that this was a year and a half ago and doesn't seem to have spawned hundreds of similarly-sponsored books gives at least some hope that this won't be a trend throughout the publishing industry... Salon has a nice piece about it. (http://www.salon.com/2001/09/05/bulgari/ http://www.salon.com/2001/09/05/bulgari/) War time penguins had ads, at the end of the book. http://www.nevillehobson.com/2010/08/22/are-ads-in-books-such-a-bad-idea/ http://www.nevillehobson.com/2010/08/22/are-ads-in-books-suc... Here's an article about tobacco advertising that shows glossy inserts in Kurt Vonnegut books. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/books/review/Collins-t.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/books/review/Collins-t.htm...

mratzloff 13y ago

No one seems to agree with you. Everyone wants online and mobile content for free, and very few care how it happens. So either someone else pays for it (advertisers) or those people become the product (selling their data to marketers). I don't see that attitude ever changing, but I do anticipate traditional approaches to paying for content getting more intrusive or slowly disappearing in favor of other models.

pessimizer 13y ago
I don't recall a vote.
- mratzloff 13y ago
  Please read more carefully before down voting. My point is that the general public does not agree with the idea that all advertising should disappear. They just want something for free and don't care how they get it. Apparently this idea was a little too controversial.