Advertising has consequences, and I’m not a big fan of it, but it’s also a necessary evil.
It’s easy to dismiss advertising as just a profit engine for ad platforms, but that’s only part of the picture. At its best, advertising plays a meaningful role in solution and product discovery, especially for new or niche offerings that users wouldn’t encounter otherwise. It also promotes fairer market competition by giving smaller players a shot at visibility, and by making alternatives accessible to customers, without relying solely on monopolistic platforms or the randomness of word-of-mouth.
That said, today’s ad ecosystem is far from ideal - often opaque, invasive, and manipulative. Still, the underlying idea of advertising has real value. Fair advertising is a hard problem, and while reform is overdue, banning it outright would likely create even bigger ones.
I disagree. Advertising is a zero-sum game. If nobody advertised, every solution would be equally discoverable via search and word-of-mouth.
It's only when some actors start advertising that the others must as well, so they don't fall behind. And so billions of dollars are spent that could have gone to making better products.
>If nobody advertised, every solution would be equally discoverable via search and word-of-mouth.
Most consumers don't do extensive research before making a purchasing decision, or any research at all - they buy whatever catches their eye on a store shelf or the front page of Amazon search results, they buy what they're already familiar with, they buy what they see everyone else buying. Consumer behaviour is deeply habitual and it takes enormous effort to convince most consumers to change their habits. Advertising is arguably the best tool we have for changing consumer behaviour, which is precisely why so much money is spent on it.
Banning advertising only further concentrates the power of incumbents - the major retailers who decide which products get prime shelf position or the first page of search results, and the established brands with name recognition and ubiquitous distribution. Consumers go on buying the things they've always bought and are never presented with a reason to try something different.
A market without advertising isn't a level playing field, but a near-unbreakable oligopoly.
> A market without advertising isn't a level playing field, but a near-unbreakable oligopoly.
Why would it be an oligopoly any more than it is now? You go to a shop (in your city, or online), trust their curation, and buy something. If it's garbage, next time you will pick another shop or curator, or discuss with your friends / colleagues. Repeat until you find a place with satisfactory curation.
Why would this dynamic be bad? Why would I as a customer be better served by banners shoved in my face by the producers with the highest pockets?
I think a market without advertising is sufficiently "alternative reality" that it's difficult to say what it would look like. The giant incumbents are only giant incumbents because of ads to start with.
In a world without advertising, our entire cultural approach to consumption would necessarily be different. Maybe it would be as you say. But, maybe we'd be more thoughtful and value-driven. Maybe objects would be created to last longer, and less driven by a constant sales cycle. Maybe craftsmanship would still be a valued aspect of everyday goods.
Why would it be difficult to say what it would look like? Humans and markets exist for many thousands of years. Advertising in its current form for a couple of hundred. Just look back in time, there were markets then too :)
> If nobody advertised, every solution would be equally discoverable via search and word-of-mouth.
This is unbelievably untrue. Consider clothing brands, large and older labels have an immense advantage over newcomers. Newcomer word of mouth will never come close to some brand that has a store in every mall across the US.
With (say) Instagram ads alone, tiny labels can spend and target very effectively to create a niche, and begin word of mouth.
Gap and Lululemon would love it if all advertising was shut off today. It would basically guarantee their position forever because of the real estate and present day distribution Schelling point.
I disagree, one component of advertising is discovering things you didn’t even know existed. Having to actively look stuff like that up would be much harder.
That component doesn’t matter because advertising also makes it harder to find what you need, since everyone is doing it. If you didn’t know it previously existed, how do you even know if it will solve your problem like it says it does?
I see an ad for the steam deck and think “wow, a portable gaming console allowing me to play computer games while on trips. Very cool!”, but I am not actively googling for gaming consoles every month to see what’s released.
Or movies, basically all movies I went to a cinema for were because the trailers were played as ads somewhere. I’m not actively monitoring movie releases.
Nobody is saying there wouldn't be catalogs and "new release" feeds... they would just have to be dedicated and voluntary and not polluting everything else I'm trying to do.
If the ad was misleading, no. But I don’t just go to a movie after seeing an ad, I then look up reviews and other information about it. The ad is just useful to know that the movie exists and is roughly something I would be interested in.
I'd happily exchange that discoverability for control of my own informational environment.
Even if you're right, think about the positive effect that'd have on society. The people with cool, interesting products would be the ones who put a little intentionality and effort into it, incentivizing everyone to be a little more thoughtful.
i haven't come across a single ad that would have helped me to discover things i didn't know existed. and i don't think i missed out on anything because of that.
Really? I definitely learned about Send Cut Send and PCBWay from advertising. I had no idea that kind of custom manufacturing was even possible let alone affordable.
And why would you want to discover commercial products (NOT "things") that you didn't knew existed? That's some form of brainwashing that I don't accept and would gladly get rid of.
Let me give you an example: I don't mind raking leaves, but I hate the step where you have to use the rake in one hand and your hand in the other to pick them up, spilling leaves on the trail to the bin.
My wife saw an ad for "rake hands" -- I had never thought that a solution to my gripe would exist, but for twenty bucks a significant source of friction in my yard work is gone, and I would have never even thought to look for such a solution.
Because they could improve your life. To come up with good examples, one would have to know more about your preferences.
But imagine there's an event (party, fair, game jam) and the only way to know it's happening is to specifically search for it, there are no posters or advertisements online. Don't you think that some people that would have wanted to go would miss it because they never even noticed that there was an event?
> one would have to know more about your preferences
And creepy/stalking advertisers grab all they can learn about my preferences. That's the state of ads on the internet for the past 20 years and I have never seen it "advertised" (haha) as a good thing.
I think the answer is obvious, no? Because there may be products that can make your life better but you don't know about them. It's a bit like asking "why would you ever want a medical treatment you didn't know existed?" Because I, not being a doctor, don't know of the existence of most medical treatments but some may be able to cure diseases or other ailments I have.
Realistically: no, you can’t stop big companies from advertising. Just having multiple shops bearing your logo gives you a level of brand recognition that’s hard to beat. Even if no one advertised, they’d still find ways to dominate the conversation and outshine competitors through sheer presence. You’re right that it becomes a kind of arms race, but in practice, trying to "opt out" often means falling behind.
So, if no one competed to get ahead of competitors, by making better or cheaper products and to grab the available marketshare, we would just have better and cheaper products without it? Sounds flawed to me.
Not sure what you mean. People would definitely still compete on quality and price in a world without advertising: much moreso, because they couldn't just spend money for sales without improving their product. If they wanted to improve sales, they'd have to either get better or cheaper.
>If nobody advertised, every solution would be equally discoverable via search and word-of-mouth.
No it wouldn't. If someone opens up a new restaurant a block away there's not going to be much word of mouth when it just opened, and even if they make a website, web search will prioritise the websites of existing restaurants because their domains have been around longer and have more inbound links.
I don't think it's a zero sum game. Some degree of advertising will make a product more discoverable regardless of whether competitors advertise or not.
If nobody advertised then first mover advantage would be everything. How would a new product come to market and compete with no way of getting new users except word of mouth?
Without advertising you won't have search, because that's how search engines are funded. And you'll also lose pretty much all of the online options for word-of-mouth, too.
The idea of product discovery has value. Advertising funds product discovery by taking some of the funds that you pay for goods, and funneling that money to platforms and creators that are willing to help others discover that product.
There is an alternative model where we simply pay professional product discoverers. Think influencers, but whose customer is the fan not the sponsor. It would be a massive cultural shift, but doesn’t seem so crazy to me.
Businesses will then send the discoverers free samples, provide literature, and send “advisers” to talk with the discoverers, and you’ll be right back where you started.
Is it a consideration with monetary value? Then it’s advertising, much like how bribing public official is still (theoretically) illegal even if you don’t do it in cash. If it’s not, then the discoverer has no incentive to act according to the business’s demand.
I’m not understanding why this is a good standard: right now, anyone who sees a billboard or a TV ad has no incentive to act according to the business’s demand, yet you want to ban those. So you think it would be OK to advertise to discoverers, but not to final purchasers.
For the record, I’m not saying this is the perfect model and we should move to it immediately. My only claim is that it isn’t crazy.
I think the fundamental difference between advertising to discoverers vs advertising to consumers is that currently “discoverers” (platforms, content creators, billboard owners, etc.) make money directly from advertisers. Success as a “discoverer” is at least somewhat correlated to income (with more money, platforms can be more successful; content creators can create more compelling content; landowners can buy more billboards). If that money is coming from advertisers, you are biasing the market to prefer discoverers that can secure the most advertiser funding, which in turn preferences advertisers that can spend the most on advertising. This isn’t fundamentally bad, since a compelling product can make a lot of money that can then be spend on advertising, but it also creates anti-consumer incentives (like marketing something that is just good enough not to return as the next best thing). On the other hand, if discoverers are paid directly by consumers, that biases the market to prefer discoverers who identify products that bring the most value to consumers for their money.
> It also promotes fairer market competition by giving smaller players a shot at visibility,
That's what they said about patents, and so far it just means players with more money buy up more patents. Do they not buy up more advertising too? Coca-Cola and Google spend huge amounts on advertising just to make people feel okay with the amount of control they have over everything
> That's what they said about patents, and so far it just means players with more money buy up more patents.
That's a bit of a strawman argument.
> ...Coca-Cola and Google spend huge amounts on advertising just to make people feel okay with the amount of control they have over everything.
I agree - some reform is necessary. The current system often exacerbates the imbalance, but completely dismissing advertising ignores its potential role in leveling the playing field for smaller players when done responsibly.
> Advertising has consequences, and I’m not a big fan of it—but it’s also a necessary evil.
At one time, definitely. Now though? We all carry around all of humanity's collective knowledge in our pockets. If you need a solution to a problem you have, if you need a plumber, if you need a new car... you an get unlimited information for the asking.
I don't remember the last time I responded to an advertisement. If I need things, I search Amazon/Etsy/local retailer apps or just go to a store. If I need contractors, I check local review pages to find good ones or just call ones I've used before. And some of that I guess you could call ads, but I mean in the traditional sense, where someone has paid to have someone put a product in front of me that I wasn't already looking for? Nah. Never happens.
Review pages are often ad based. Unless you paid for it. But I still think having to pay for reviews is a better option. That way the reviews are the product not me.
Well some of this is a gray area right? If you have a listing website for example that lists all the electricians in a given geographic area, that's technically an ad, but you'd assume someone wouldn't be looking at the page unless they were looking for an electrician. I wouldn't call that intrusive or unpleasant or worthy of a ban and I don't think anyone would.
1. Discovery
For known problems, sure! we probably don’t need ads anymore.
But for unknown problems, we still do. When you're not even aware that a solution exists, or that your current approach could be improved, advertising can spark that initial awareness. At that stage, you don’t even know what to search for.
2. Competition
If you know better alternatives might exist, yes, you can search for them.
But how do you search for better deals, services, or products for every little thing in your life? You don’t. Nobody has the time (or cognitive bandwidth) to proactively research every option. When done right, advertising helps level the playing field by putting alternatives in front of customers. And in doing so, it also pushes businesses to keep their offerings competitive.
#1 was true, but I find that this is one area where LLMs shine: even when you can't trust the answers directly, they can give inspiration to find the right questions.
I'm not convinced #2 is true — all ads imply the thing advertised is the best deal (where "best" is somewhere on cheap-quality spectrum), and the same limits to cognitive bandwidth mean we can't easily guess whatever points were missing from, at best, a 30-second highlights reel.
Wikipedia isn't funded by ad revenue. Kagi isn't funded by ad revenue. Anna's Archive isn't funded by ad revenue. The Internet Archive isn't funded by ad revenue. You can torrent all the knowledge you'll ever need and all you need is an internet connection.
I don't think it should be referred to as a 'necessary evil' (by the following definition of that term):
"something unpleasant that must be accepted in order to achieve a particular result"
For one thing the term 'advertising' is broad same as many words (ie 'Doctor' or 'Computer guy' or 'Educator'). Second it's not unpleasant although like with anything some of it could be. (Some of it is funny and entertaining).
> Advertising has consequences
Everything has consequences. That is actually a problem with many laws and rules which look only at upside and not downside.
Unfortunately and for many reasons you can't get rid of 'advertising' the only thing you can do is potentially and possibly restrict certain types of advertising and statements.
As an example Cigarette advertising was banned in 1971 on FCC regulated airwaves:
Ad business stopped to be necessary and started to be almost exclusively evil years ago. If you pay sociologists and psychologists to design „most effective ad” for you, something is clearly wrong. 100 years ago ads were indeed ways of discovering products and services. But now ads are almost exclusively battlefields for more and more money paid for by consumers’ anxiety, wellbeing and health when ads are more and more dishonest and hostile.
It’s easy to dismiss advertising as just a profit engine for ad platforms, but that’s only part of the picture. At its best, advertising plays a meaningful role in solution and product discovery, especially for new or niche offerings that users wouldn’t encounter otherwise. It also promotes fairer market competition by giving smaller players a shot at visibility, and by making alternatives accessible to customers, without relying solely on monopolistic platforms or the randomness of word-of-mouth.
That said, today’s ad ecosystem is far from ideal - often opaque, invasive, and manipulative. Still, the underlying idea of advertising has real value. Fair advertising is a hard problem, and while reform is overdue, banning it outright would likely create even bigger ones.