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Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

jacek.zlydach.pl

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Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#351

Post by TeMPOraL »

megaman821 wrote: post #327
TeMPOraL wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not involved in those, I merely use them for obvious reasons almost everyone uses them - network effect. Facebook is the XXI century rolodex (also, I was very young when I got on it, and it looked differently then); LinkedIn account I maintain for the off chance it could be useful in finding a job. Also, that doesn't mean I like how these services work. I fortunately avoided being ever involved in anything direct…

It is almost like your are advertising yourself on these networks. Couldn't people just find you from word of mouth?

Using Facebook to talk to your friends is literally a form of exchanging word of mouth. It's not a dating site for me, I don't advertise myself there.

A LinkedIn profile is technically an advertisement, but it's not one I push on people. Someone needs to go and look for it to find it. It's akin to an entry in a product catalog. I consider this kind of advertising to be fine, and I said so in the article.

(Also incidentally, all the jobs I ever had I got through the word of mouth.)

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#352

Post by TeMPOraL »

cm2012 wrote: post #252
philwelch wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they’re operating in an adversarial environment where every other business engages in advertising. It’s game theory.

They're operating in an adversarial environment where other businesses exist .

Without advertising being a crucial part of that environment, they'd have to focus on making a better and cheaper product than their competition, instead of engaging in a shouting match.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#353

Post by rabidrat »

buboard wrote: post #332
rabidrat wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same is true of cocaine. Yet without advertising the people who 'need' cocaine manage to learn about it and acquire it, often at great personal cost.

Dealers advertise their stuff. Otherwise you have a chicken and egg problem

Smart dealers don't "advertise". They communicate their available goods to individuals who are already looking and who pass a basic smell test. While on vacation a few years ago, I went out at night to see if I could find some plant matter, and passed a guy on the street who looked like he might know the score. (Being present at a particular time/place to serve a market and dressing in a non-official manner is not advertising). So I said "got any green?" and he said "no...white?" and I said "ah, no thanks" and moved along. No advertising required.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#354

Post by smt88 »

criddell wrote: post #155
smt88 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be happy to pay Google for ad-free search. Even $5/mo from me would be much more than they get from me now, and it would cover costs for thousands of unpaid users.

I don't know what Google's average revenue per user is, but Facebook supposedly is around $8 / month. I would expect Google to be in the same ball park. $5/mo probably isn't enough for Google.

I use an adblocker, so the revenue from me is lower than it'd be otherwise.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#356

Post by [deleted] »

c3534l wrote: post #193

I wanted to mention that advertising kills the ecosystem for free and cheap stuff. People say things like "TV wouldn't exist without advertising," but TV would probably be better without it since networks would have to convince you to pay them, rather than just stop you from flipping through the channels. Certainly the news would be better because TV news tries to tease the viewer to watch past the commercial break w…

[deleted]

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#357

Post by cm2012 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #352
cm2012 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're operating in an adversarial environment where other businesses exist .

Without advertising being a crucial part of that environment, they'd have to focus on making a better and cheaper product than their competition, instead of engaging in a shouting match.

Without advertising, no matter how good your product is, people will never find you. People would just go with whatever product they happened to know (the market incumbent, usually), or just not have access to that category of product.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#358

Post by Zarath »

Aperocky wrote: post #84
wpietri wrote: post #23

He doesn't quite say it by name, but most advertising is a classic arms race. Especially given how the internet now makes information easily available, a great deal of advertising is about manipulating consumers to pick company A's products over those from competitors B, C, and D. This forces those other companies to spend to get and keep customers. It's pure waste. For example, everybody on the planet is now familia…

How do you define "Something useful" though? The advertisement money eventually makes it to Google, broadcasters, sites, TV-channels, sports events and people running those organization in term gets more money to spend on [Potentially useful stuff]. It's not like the money magically vanishes to never be seen again, and business to business transaction like this make the money flow faster instead of slower. Economy is…

The money itself doesn't vanish obviously, but the work does magically vanish, in the form of human consumption. The sheer amount of useful energy and resources required to feed those people, power their computers, etc. is being "burned" in the same sense that bitcoin mining "burns" something. It's millions of hours of work for simply redistribution of demand.

Bill Gates could pay 10000 people $10/hour to dig a hole and 10000 people $10/hour to fill the hole back with dirt. Obviously this money doesn't "vanish", but millions of hours are wasted (and the food and resources needed to power this work).

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#359

Post by buboard »

rabidrat wrote: post #353
buboard wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dealers advertise their stuff. Otherwise you have a chicken and egg problem

Smart dealers don't "advertise". They communicate their available goods to individuals who are already looking and who pass a basic smell test. While on vacation a few years ago, I went out at night to see if I could find some plant matter, and passed a guy on the street who looked like he might know the score. (Being present at a particular time/place to serve a market and dressing in a non-official manner is not ad…

Didnt he just advertise that white stuff to you? How else you call that?

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#360

Post by zeptomu »

anbop wrote: post #198
smt88 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What valuable things wouldn't exist without advertising?

I have a SaaS business which exists ONLY because of advertising. It’s highly niche, really the only product that does what it does, and a few dozen people a day click through from Google Ads and find that I have a product to automate something they had been spending hundreds of hours on. You should see the effusive thank you notes I get if you think advertising is pointless. This product wouldn’t exist without Google…

Do you mind sharing your SAAS?
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