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.
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.
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.
It's basically the prisoner's dilemma at scale.
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
"something unpleasant that must be accepted in order to achieve a particular result"
> 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:
https://truthinitiative.org/research-resources/tobacco-indus...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It doesn't actually work like that. A/B tests learn the highest-yielding ad. Psychology isn't robust enough to actually predict these things.
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.
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.
I think we would be fine without ads.
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.
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.
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?
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.
And regarding word of mouth: Is word of mouth for great products really random?
I hate ads but there would be no search engines without ads unless they were backed by governments
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.
1. Every one would see it, because they have eyes and leave the house.
2. Every one would be talking about it.
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.
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.
That's the American spirit! As a European, it terrifies me that anyone would want to give advice to a doctor.
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.
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?