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Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

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Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#151

Post by GuB-42 »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #94
GuB-42 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Informing potential customers of products that might be useful to them. Let's say you are the inventor of the chainsaw, you need to tell lumberjacks that chainsaws exist, that's advertising. Otherwise you won't sell any and your invention will be lost, while lumberjacks will continue struggling with inefficient tools.

> Informing potential customers of products that might be useful to them. Isn't there an insurmountable conflict of interest when the person doing the informing is also the person who directly benefits from the product being 'useful' to as many people as possible?

Yes there is, but you have to tell someone you have something to sell at some point. Even if it goes through independent reviewers, the reviewer has to be reached somehow, that's still advertising.

You are probably not going to find a job if you don't tell anyone you need a job, job hunting is also advertising.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#152

Post by barrkel »

EncomLab wrote: post #85

Most of the arguments made are not about "advertising" per se, but the methods that SOME forms of advertising take and other methods (data mining, phishing, scams) that are either not advertising or are things that are already regulated/illegal but which enforcement actions against are low/non-existent. In the book "Fire in the Valley" about the development and early days of the internet there is a great deal of disc…

The underlying point is game theoretical: ads are driven to these methods because within their niches, they're zero sum games (and negative sum for society at large due to externalities).

> Honestly it's hard to see how we get to this level of speed and content online without it having been funded by advertising.

I don't understand what this means. Most content online that isn't user generated (forums, blogs, wikipedia, YT, short form video etc) is junk. Most of it is made for free. The distribution has costs - but it's extremely unclear the costs couldn't be solved in different ways. Serving text is ultra cheap. Torrents distribute way more video than industry is happy with. We didn't need to take this path.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#153

Post by Const-me »

neom wrote: post #92

I teach people how to advertise for a living. This is how I teach it: an advert is simply the ability to buy a knock on someones front door. That is literally all you are doing when you buy an advert. All business activity you experience today is an abstraction of business we have already done, I'm sure back in the day people thought door to door sales people were annoying, and I'm sure sometimes they were not. From…

> competition drives improvement

Are you saying ads helping competition? How?

> customer choice is central to a functioning market, leading to innovation.

Ads suppress customer choice, along with innovations. Can you recall any recent innovative carbonated drink? Marketing budgets of pepsi/coca cola make competition and innovation impossible.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#154

Post by somenameforme »

turblety wrote: post #55

> This is why my kid isn't going to watch YouTube. If and when we decide to show her any children's show, it'll be from a manually curated set of videos downloaded and streamed from a NAS. In my opinion, it's irresponsible to expose children to modern advertising. I think we need to be careful with this approach. It's also irresponsible to not expose them to modern advertising. Unfortunately, modern advertising does…

The problem is that advertising is insidiously effective. Most people don't think ads work on them, yet the results of ad campaigns demonstrate that's plainly false. And this is even more true for children who have extremely poor reasoning and logic abilities, and are going to be being targeted by ads specifically designed to exploit their instinctive impulses. This is unlikely to be a battle that parents can win.

I think this is vaguely akin to exposing your child to gambling and explaining the impulses/desires it creates so they don't get addicted to it. But that's just not how it works.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#155

Post by fumeux_fume »

neom wrote: post #92

I teach people how to advertise for a living. This is how I teach it: an advert is simply the ability to buy a knock on someones front door. That is literally all you are doing when you buy an advert. All business activity you experience today is an abstraction of business we have already done, I'm sure back in the day people thought door to door sales people were annoying, and I'm sure sometimes they were not. From…

You have a very naive conception of advertising if you think it's simply "buying knocks on doors." For online advertising, which is where most ads are display now, you buy access to people's personal information (including minors) to target them with little oversight on what you're allowed to say. And now that ads are embedded in nearly every electronic device, it's not only hundreds of knocks on your door each day, but many of those knocks you are forced to answer. We had functioning markets and innovation well before this kind of marketing apparatus was deployed. If anything, the enshitification of many products a sign that advertising gives us less choice and worse outcomes.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#156

Post by AnimalMuppet »

don_esteban wrote: post #150
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…

No, even 'good' advertisement is mostly zero-sum game bad for the consumer. However, Overton window has shifted so much that people just accept them (at best as a free entertainment) without questioning. Example with airlines: airlines stealing each other's customers just raises the price for the tickets (by the amount paid for advertisement) without net benefit for the consumer. The only advertisement I can consider…

Here's an airline advertisement: "We're starting direct service from $YOUR_CITY to Cancun."

Here's another airline advertisement: "Look how much fun the people are having flying on our airline."

One gives actual information about something that is now available that wasn't before. The other is a zero-sum game with the other airlines.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#157

Post by pavel_lishin »

EncomLab wrote: post #85

Most of the arguments made are not about "advertising" per se, but the methods that SOME forms of advertising take and other methods (data mining, phishing, scams) that are either not advertising or are things that are already regulated/illegal but which enforcement actions against are low/non-existent. In the book "Fire in the Valley" about the development and early days of the internet there is a great deal of disc…

No True Adsman would do this form of advertising!

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#158

Post by [deleted] »

fumeux_fume wrote: post #155
neom wrote: post #92

I teach people how to advertise for a living. This is how I teach it: an advert is simply the ability to buy a knock on someones front door. That is literally all you are doing when you buy an advert. All business activity you experience today is an abstraction of business we have already done, I'm sure back in the day people thought door to door sales people were annoying, and I'm sure sometimes they were not. From…

You have a very naive conception of advertising if you think it's simply "buying knocks on doors." For online advertising, which is where most ads are display now, you buy access to people's personal information (including minors) to target them with little oversight on what you're allowed to say. And now that ads are embedded in nearly every electronic device, it's not only hundreds of knocks on your door each day,…

[deleted]

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#159

Post by barrkel »

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…

Brand awareness is zero sum. Spending escalates within permissible bounds, with ad inventory sellers acting like landlords, extracting rent. This mechanic is as true for benign as it is for malignant ads.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society (2019)

#160

Post by andrewinardeer »

Indeed. On my last LSD adventure where I suffered ego death it became apparent that advertising is an unavoidable and indidious artifact of capitalism.

Advertisers have the audacity to attempt to steal people's attention when they really need it elsewhere. This may include billboards in such times as when their victim is controlling a 1.5MT machine at a velocity of 100km/h on the freeway. The advertisers, in this case don't even bother to ask for permission.

Or when a media outlet colludes with advertisers to pretend an article is "news".

The Super Bowl is basically an advert interrupted by football.

God knows how problem gamblers or drinkers manage to consume media without being triggered with all the gambling or alcohol ads. It's a disgrace.

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