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Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

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Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#111

Post by thomasahle »

iammrpayments wrote: post #59

“any effort you spent on advertising serves primarily to counteract the combined advertising efforts of your competitors. The same results could be achieved if every market player limited themselves to just informing customers about their goods and services“ This is a really shallow view of advertising, most of the time you don’t know who is your competitor and you don’t know all the possible ways that you can inform…

> most of the time you don’t know who is your competitor and you don’t know all the possible ways that you can inform your audience about product

If we look at the top 10 commercial for this super bowl[1], which is arguable the most money spent on advertising, it's Booking.com, Ram Trucks, Made by Google, Yahoo.com, Marvel Studios, Bud Light, NerdWallet, DoorDash, Doritos, Squarespace.

I'm sure all of those companies know who their competitors are, and the audience already knows about their products. The ads are just trying to jump to our forefront of attention.

[1] https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/most-watched-super-bowl-ads...

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#112

Post by hasbot »

iammjm wrote: post #15

Here I was perfectly happy with how things are. Alas, thanks to the advertisement now I've realized all the imperfections of my life that can only be remediated by the advertised products

Mick Jagger told us back in '65: https://genius.com/The-rolling-stones-i-cant-get-no-satisfac...

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#113

Post by silvestrov »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #63

Like cancer, I think it's possible to split ads into two categories: Benign and malignant. Benign ads are like ads for toothpaste, Febreeze, or airlines. Malignant ads are, to give but two examples, for things like gambling and pharmaceuticals. The pharmaceutical business, in particular, was much more widely trusted and had far higher public favorability ratings in the old days when their advertising to the public wa…

I think a better wording is to say that "advertising is like bateria". Using cancer is way too one-sided as all cancers are bad.

Some bacterias are bad, some are good.

Most of the time we talk about bacteria it is the bad ones we think of, mostly because study of the good ones are so underpriotized and we don't understand them well.

Humans could absolutely not survive without the good bacteria in the stomach. They produce some of the vitamins we need (plus other roles).

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#114

Post by yapyap »

lanthissa wrote: post #70

Maybe its just a function of growing up during the transition of physical software to advert/subscription software, but i love the advertising model. What google has done for the web; youtube, maps, gmail/gsuite, chromium/v8 are fantastic products that cost huge sums to develop, and the world gets to use them for free. Thats amazing. Its a huge gift to society that the a fantastic knowledge and productivity suite is…

1. Advertising inadvertently drives the want for an infinite scroll and a better algorithm for content delivery to keep you scrolling for longer. You being on the app for longer due to infini-scroll and ‘the algorithm’ = seeing more advertisements = more money for the platforms. If you paid a monthly fee to use the app(1) the platform wouldn’t be incentivized to keep you on an infinite scroll cause they already got the money, all they would be incentivized to do is makw sure you are as satisfied with the experience as possible so you keep paying them.

2. “What google has done for the web; youtube, maps, gmail/gsuite, chromium/v8 are fantastic products that cost huge sums to develop, and the world gets to use them for free”

That is a financially “free”, sure. But the world doesn’t get to use it for free at all really, we pay by giving google our statistics and my god, first of all the amount of statistics collected would surprise most people, yeah you hear about “big businesses are collecting your data” but to see what data they can collect through like a webrequest can actually make it feel real. The world does not get any Google product for free, not in the whole sense of the word at least. To sum it up best I’d say Google and businesses like it have you get used to a (financially) free product, to such an extent that you integrate it as one of the base pillars of your online existence and then they enshittify that ‘free’ version to such an extent that they kind of threaten to pull that pillar away unless you pay.

(1.) which I also don’t love, cause subscription models also feel like you don’t own anything but in the case of a YouTube it’s more sensible than buying individual videos if ads weren’t a thing.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#116

Post by dtquad »

In Denmark it is not uncommon for people to cherish TV ads from the 1990s and 2000s as our common cultural heritage. But we have always had laws against misleading or overly distracting TV ads (down to rules about the sound levels not being higher than the regular programming). But now half of our TV channels are broadcast from West Drayton, UK so they don't have to comply with advertising regulations. On those TV channels most ads are sports betting, online casinos, mortgage companies etc.

I believe advertising has a useful role enhancing market efficiency and providing information to consumers. But it has to be regulated. Misleading advertising should be as punishable as misleading information on the back of the product.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#117

Post by jounker »

diego_moita wrote: post #19

Every form of manipulation of people through information is a "cancer": advertising, political ideologies, religion, escapist entertainment, etc. The problem is that truth is very hard to establish for those that don't want and don't understand logic. They're "cancers" that people want because they're comfortable with it. Also, if we try to control these cancers by restricting what information is allowed we will crea…

That is a false dichotomy. We can certainly place restrictions without resulting in an authoritarian society. We can ban billboards. (Some states do this). We can ban gambling and drug ads. We can place ownership limits on media markets. There are all things we have had in the us at various times and in various places.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#118

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

canadaduane wrote: post #103
lanthissa wrote: post #70

Maybe its just a function of growing up during the transition of physical software to advert/subscription software, but i love the advertising model. What google has done for the web; youtube, maps, gmail/gsuite, chromium/v8 are fantastic products that cost huge sums to develop, and the world gets to use them for free. Thats amazing. Its a huge gift to society that the a fantastic knowledge and productivity suite is…

These are good. But I think there is a tipping point where the asymmetry of power (millions invested in databases, information gathering, algorithm development, etc.) pushes against the tiny power an individual has. There is no agent on the individual's side that has power (time, money, smarts) enough to counter the onslaught. It's a problem of degrees.

What’s wrong with that? Certainly advertisers can do bad or irresponsible things with personal data, but the mere fact that they’re shaping preferences doesn’t seem like a huge problem. It’s not like our pre-advertising preferences are an edenic blank slate.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#119

Post by jtbayly »

silvestrov wrote: post #113
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #63

Like cancer, I think it's possible to split ads into two categories: Benign and malignant. Benign ads are like ads for toothpaste, Febreeze, or airlines. Malignant ads are, to give but two examples, for things like gambling and pharmaceuticals. The pharmaceutical business, in particular, was much more widely trusted and had far higher public favorability ratings in the old days when their advertising to the public wa…

I think a better wording is to say that "advertising is like bateria". Using cancer is way too one-sided as all cancers are bad. Some bacterias are bad, some are good. Most of the time we talk about bacteria it is the bad ones we think of, mostly because study of the good ones are so underpriotized and we don't understand them well. Humans could absolutely not survive without the good bacteria in the stomach. They pr…

Could humans survive without the “good advertising”?

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#120

Post by t0bia_s »

Advertising of product is proof that product itself is not good enough to be sold.

Good thing is, that you can block it at home. Bad thing is, that if you avoid commercial advertising, you are struggle with income as freelance audiovisual producer.

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