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Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

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Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#31

Post by GauntletWizard »

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…

If you were to take away all of the coke tomorrow, the first thing I'd spend all that extra money (and more!) on would be to try to invent a new cola.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#32

Post by magashna »

t34543 wrote: post #22

If you stop watching ads for awhile and go back to it you’ll see how mind numbing it all really is. I aggressively block ads - no exceptions.

I went and visited my parents who still have cable. I sat and watched for a little while and was dumbstruck by the ads every few minutes. It was unbearable. I don't know how anyone can deal with it unless you don't know better

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#33

Post by hinkley »

Long, long ago, someone suggested their extremely simple fix for advertising: stop letting companies declare it as a business expense.

The Law of Unintended Consequences always gets you in weird ways, and I'm not a lobbyist or a public policy person, nor do I know anyone highly placed in those fields.

But one of the ways companies slowly fail is by choosing to sell harder instead of making their product better. If we lower the rate of return on advertising dollars by 15%, won't that shift some more money into R&D, logistics and other divisions that provide something approximating value (although one unintended consequence I can see is an increased focus on strip-mining the Third World, literally and figuratively).

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#35

Post by erentz »

starpilot wrote: post #2

We get rid of it, Google/Facebook/etc. shut down. While social media is of arguable benefits, Google has provided incalculable value to the world. Ads are the magic money fountain that give them the power to organize all of human knowledge, a phenomenal resource anyone can tap.

If people value it then at a certain point they’ll pay for it. What we might find out however is that a lot of these free services aren’t valued and no one will pay for it. And I think that just reinforces the point of the article: those services are cancers, literally no one values them, they’re just manipulated into using them.

Things like search engines will be able to survive because they’re necessary. They may look different (e.g. wrapped up in a subscription package with gmail and gdocs). We are used to paying $X per month for an internet connection, it’s absurd to believe people won’t add on $Y per month for the over the top services that make that internet connection useful.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#37

Post by wpietri »

starpilot wrote: post #2

We get rid of it, Google/Facebook/etc. shut down. While social media is of arguable benefits, Google has provided incalculable value to the world. Ads are the magic money fountain that give them the power to organize all of human knowledge, a phenomenal resource anyone can tap.

Your hypothetical is poorly considered. We'd find another way to fund it. Things that are of incalculable value generally get paid for.

And I'll note that Google, etc, only take a fraction of the money flowing through the ad system. So if we got rid of ads, we could not only afford Google, but a number of other valuable things of Google's size.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#38

Post by OrgNet »

nrb wrote: post #10
OrgNet wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reducing consumption would be a benefit if you think about it from a climate change angle... For restaurants, I usually search for them in a directory and not in ads...

That directory is almost invariably funded with money from advertisements

well, I guess they can be considered ads, but at least I don't get bombarded with them on every site I visit (like google ads)... I have to voluntarily go search for them on a specific site...

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#39

Post by jniedrauer »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #31
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…

If you were to take away all of the coke tomorrow, the first thing I'd spend all that extra money (and more!) on would be to try to invent a new cola.

Why? They're a net negative to society (soft drinks themselves, that is)

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#40

Post by wpietri »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #31
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…

If you were to take away all of the coke tomorrow, the first thing I'd spend all that extra money (and more!) on would be to try to invent a new cola.

Nobody's talking about taking away soda. People would still buy soda if there weren't ads for it.
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