[grok2]

As I was reading your comment, I was thinking - "Why not? Why shouldn't advertisers figure out how to advertise in ways that comes somewhat close to what you are suggesting, but make you want to buy before you know you want something?" ;-)...

Sometimes I think we are in a difficult dichotomy -- we like Twitter and we consume it voraciously and love that it is free, but we don't want them to use advertising as a source of revenue even though that might be the source that keeps it alive for us to consume. And, for free!

[sdegutis]

For sure, we're a greedy, selfish, and short-sighted species. But that doesn't make the advertisers right for doing what people are implicitly asking them to.

[true_religion]

People say 'the advertisers', but don't most people in the world work for a company that uses ads?

It seems that there's a mentality of compartmentalization, where people believe there to be 'evil ad companies' that somehow do nothing but make ads and don't actually sell products, nor employ people in the creative industry.

[lmm]

> People say 'the advertisers', but don't most people in the world work for a company that uses ads?

I don't think so? 90% of businesses sell to businesses, not to consumers, and in that world it's more about networking than advertising. (You could argue that that's just another form of advertising, but at the very least it's easier to avoid).

[sdegutis]

Just a crazy idea, but what if instead of TV/radio commercials and billboards and internet popup ads, products advertised themselves in the places they are sold (e.g. the sign next to a restaurant, or the side of a shampoo bottle on a shelf in the store), to explain very briefly why they're better than the competition? Most of the time, people will come across it organically, and that's healthy and good. But if discoverability is needed too, they can advertise in appropriate places, like restaurant listings, etc.

[icebraining]

One of the buzzwords a few years back was the "intention economy"; the idea is that you wouldn't have ads, instead you'd have a kind of automated RFP process in which consumers would say what they want and sellers would reply with offers that matched the request.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intention_economy

[niftich]

Like a reverse auction or call for tenders?

[niftich]

There's a difference between advertising and branding, although sometimes they blur together.

In brief, advertising is trying to get you to buy a specific product, whereas branding is about mindshare. When Coca-Cola runs TV commercials, you're seeing branding, and you're associating Coca-Cola with energetic, smiling people living life to the fullest and all that good stuff.

Advertising, however, has a clearer call-to-action. In the US, car commercials seamlessly combine the two where they show people like actor Matthew McConaughey driving a Lincoln, and you think 'wow, successful people drive Lincolns' -- branding -- and at the end, they show current offers for leasing the car for 36 months -- advertising. What you propose actually happens in grocery stores today: sales. The rotating sales are a way to gauge market loyalty to a particular brand not currently on sale, vs. the other brand currently on sale.

[blahi]

People like to feel righteous and superior. Whether they deserve to feel this way is an entirely different story.