[oasfboasbfos]

The only good ad is a dead one.

With very few exceptions, especially in the consumer space, you won't need advertising if you actually need something. You'll search it out or your friends will tell you what to buy.

Advertising serves as a way for the capitalist class to exert veto power over other aspects of society by yanking funding at opportune moments (see the current Google snafu or Bill O'Reilly's departure from FOX (which was an example of this power being used for good indirectly via public pressure)). It also allows for shows of dominance, strength, and to move fucking product by creating an awareness moat vs your competitors. This means that people often already know they want to buy something, but they'll pick you instead of the other one which is fundamentally different from advertising performing a public service.

[cft]

An anecdote from 2010: my company had racks of Rackable Systems servers. Every month a server went dead- power supply, board or some such. Rackable Systems were unreliable. Then on Slashdot I saw a square ad for IBM System X servers (unfortunately they have been sold to Lenovo a couple of years ago). That somehow made me do research- although I was aware of IBM System X before. Between 2010 and 1013 we bought perhaps 20 IBM System X servers (rock solid and beautifully engineered). Cost per that ad impression was perhaps $75,000.

[oiboabfljasbfo]

I won't deny this has occasionally happened to me, but look at your example: it's B2B when my claim is primarily for B2C. B2B ads tend to be more targeted, aimed at corporations, and purchases are for higher dollar amounts. The product being sold was also competing based on build quality, a material improvement.

Businesses often make more rational decisions because they can assign someone to do research (like you did of your own volition) who will make comparisons and think about it.

Imagine the same process happening for shampoo. I'm sure there are some people that want "the best" shampoo, but most of the products are going to be nearly interchangeable and the marketing will try focus on various kinds of manipulation to dig that moat. These manipulations aren't what most people think of, like a sex symbol hypnotizing you. Instead they work to increase brand familiarity, social proof, and provide a life style narrative you can tell yourself and show off to other people with.

The capital hiding behind these campaigns funds newspapers, television, radio, and civic centers. It acts as a filter on the public discourse. If you're interested, look up Manufacturing Consent for more information.

Here's a clip from a documentary based on the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTBWfkE7BXU

[unkown-unknowns]

You and I might dislike ads but don't you think there's a pretty big chance that a lot of the products you are hearing about from your friends were only brought to their attention thanks to ads? So without ads your friends would not have known about the products that they do now.

[mozumder]

Yah your argument against adverting is bullshit.

Even consumers love ads.

Did you know that they even pay money because they want ads? Those 900 pages of Vogue that they buy every September, do you think they're filled with articles? Because they're about 870 pages of fashion ads. People specifically buy them because of the advertising.

And did you know Sunday papers are a thing, filled with coupons, that are basically ads?

Sorry, but advertising serves a purpose that consumers actually pay money for.

[jiggunjer]

I'd categorize: 1) making ads available in a browsable index isn't the same as 2) throwing them into people's consciousness without their explicit consent/interest.

[crummy]

I think people buy Vogue (and all other advertising-sodden media) despite the ads, not because of it.

[Kiro]

You definitely want to see the ads. It's like a catalogue.

[zimpenfish]

It would be an interesting experiment to put out a non-ad-subsidised version of Vogue and see how many people bought it. I would guess at "not that many".

[LeoNatan25]

If it’s “900” pages of pure content, rather than ads, hell, even I’d buy it.

[elkos]

It is my understanding that a similar publication nowadays, Cosmopolitan, used to be mostly a literary publication in it's early days. I wonder how the contents vs advertising ratio was balanced at the time.

[belorn]

Most things are completely different if they are voluntarily or involuntarily. Trend magazines, price comparison sites, and coupons are all examples which people want to be exposed to advertise-like content.

Scam-like advertisement that use browser exploits to track you is not one of them. None would pay for that service, which is a good indication about which from of advertisement is wanted and which isn't.

[hsod]

This whole subthread started with the claim "the only good ad is a dead ad"

[petra]

Electronic engineers face a similar problem, everyday:finding the optimal components to build stuff with. And at least in the case of standard components, they do that via parametric search tools(poring over many details), combined with vendors exposing a lot of details about products. And it works very well.

I wish we had that in more fields. Would provide huge value, but it's a hard problem. But i suppose if with the right incentives(banning advertising ?), we could do it.

The other source of info for EE's is education and PR, some of it probably pretty unbiased(at distributors sites), due to incentives.

As for ads ? they exist, but they seem to play a relatively small role, and probably nothing major will change if they stopped existing.

[LeifCarrotson]

Parametric search tools are great for Digikey, but they're very hard to implement elsewhere. They're much less useful when you only have a small number of options. They're bad at quantifying qualitative properties like fit and finish or ease-of-use. And you can only compare closely related parts, because until you drill down to the level of, say, a parametric search for exclusively PMIC-Voltage Regulators-DC-DC-Switching controllers, it doesn't make sense to ask what the topology or output configuration is.

Plus, it's extremely tedious to collate and filter all of the properties needed to make them work. Ebay and Amazon barely do it at all. Newegg and McMaster Carr do OK. Only EE components seem to be demonstrate the ideal parametric filter systems that negate the need for advertising.

But I'm still a sucker for buying Linear Tech or TI components before, say, Maxim or Toshiba because even if the parametric search say that both options fit my requirements, the former seem to be better documented and more user-friendly than the latter. That's the kind of advertising you only get through years of writing expensive and high-quality technical papers and producing high-quality parts, and I suppose there will always be value in advertising that fact (or suggesting that fact, regardless of whether it's true for other advertisers) to less experienced engineers.

[photojosh]

> But I'm still a sucker for buying Linear Tech or TI components before, say, Maxim or Toshiba.

Hah, reducing your BOM cost isn't a major factor in your decision making? ;)

[nradov]

Edmunds has a fairly good parametric search tool for new cars.

https://www.edmunds.com/finder/car-finder-results.html

[beagle3]

Can you point at such a search engine for EEs?

[petra]

Digikey.com

for example, for microcontrollers:

https://www.digikey.com/products/en/integrated-circuits-ics/...

[Cthulhu_]

Those ads were relevant though, and (I hope) not doing thousands of requests in the background; it was an IT-related ad, on an IT-related website, targeted at a person working in IT that was interested in new servers - what really is what the better ad providers are looking for. The rest is just idk, shotgunning and hoping something sticks.

[tonyedgecombe]

I dislike relevant ads the most because they are most likely to influence my behaviour.

[strken]

There must be a point between "advertisement for useless junk" and "useful advice + an affiliate link" where the two cross over, and as far as I can tell the only differences are relevance and directness.

One example of advertising that I think is acceptable are the ads on the slatestarcodex.com sidebar, which are manually placed there by the author and targeted directly at the niche he writes in. If a computer could achieve the same precision when choosing what ads to run, and based its choices on the publication rather than the user, I think it would also be acceptable to me.

Would you find such ads equally unpalatable?

[builditand]

Ads are bad. I'm not shopping not stop. I just want to read my article or whatever I am doing at that moment.

When I want to buy something I go to a shop and being there I still don't want ads. I want accurate specs, relevant statistics, maybe pictures and honest reviews. Sometimes I could use a guide, when it's not my domain.

I never stopped in the middle of something to say "I'd so watch an ad right now".

[jalk]

So perhaps you need to find paywalled news/review outlets without ads. Someone has to pay for the articles being written, servers, bandwidth etc

[utexaspunk]

It is, however, really obnoxious when you click on an ad once and then are subjected to ads for that same product everywhere you go for months. I clicked on an ad for a Purple mattress a while back and now that's what I see on half the sites I go to. FFS, people, I don't want the mattress, okay!?!?

[C4stor]

But most persons actually want to be influenced in their behaviours, it's the whole point of researching any subject in the first place.

Any decision we make is the result of a lot of stuff influencing our behaviours, and the border between researching information on a product and being targeted by an ad for this product is not really black and white.

If I had to chose, I'd rather be influenced by logical arguments than by a nude person taking a shower. Which only says so much about my personal values and is not really a good thing per se ^^

[Sir_Substance]

>But most persons actually want to be influenced in their behaviours, it's the whole point of researching any subject in the first place.

No, people research to make informed decisions.

[C4stor]

I genuinely fail to see the difference, since our behaviours are the way our (informed or not) decisions are observable ?

[briandear]

How can you make informed decisions if you aren’t even aware of all the available choices?

[pbhjpbhj]

I think the point is: "informed decisions [about their behaviour]".

[kuschku]

That’s why we need independent testing, and you should always check the independent tests before buying something.

For example, whenever I need a new product, be it anything from a spoon to a car seat for a child, I’ll check Stiftung Warentest for full tests of that category.

I’ll take the top 2 or 3, enter them on idealo or preispiraten or günstiger.de or hardwareschotte, and then I’ll take the cheapest of those.

At no point in this purchasing process come ads into play, and I get the best results.

[icebraining]

Maybe I'm being uncharitable, but what I read from that story is that advertising saved your company from its own incompetence, since it should have someone responsible for managing those servers and subsequently for doing research upon noticing the problems.

For me, that example actually serves as an extra argument against ads.

[mattmanser]

Crikey, guy shares an anecdote of how an ad helped him and all you can do is be really nasty about it, it's completely unnecessary.

I bought a piano course from Udemy because of advertising on FB (and then spent an additional £150 on a keyboard). I'm really enjoying it. Please tell me what a horrible human being I am.

[icebraining]

Honestly, in the context of the thread, I see the comment as downplaying and trivializing the serious concerns raised by oasfboasbfos. Besides, I didn't insult anyone, but the company as a whole; it seems absurd to me to take personal offense. Every company has its fair share of incompetence.

[tempestn]

Your post implicitly suggested the poster was incompetent though, not just the company in general, since procuring the servers was apparently his responsibility. Seems a bit insulting to me.

[icebraining]

Just because someone did that activity doesn't mean it was their responsibility. As an employee hired to write software, I've done everything from fixing laptops to cleaning the office fridge.

In fact, in my post I explicitly assumed that nobody was made responsible for the task, exactly because I assume the poster is not incompetent.

[beefield]

My gut feeling is that for every advertisement induced purchase you actually want and enjoy, there are several orders of magnitude more marketing/advertisement (directly or indirectly) induced purchases that are unnecessary or harmful.

[pbhjpbhj]

And everything you buy costs more because of advertising. A few years ago a paper I read said the pharma industry was spending as much on advertising as on R&D.

The idea we couldn't find good products without advertising seems pretty moot with internet search available. The greater problem is seeing through the advertising to assess the product - there's a lot of things like market segmentation based only on different packaging (more wasteful, 'oppulent'). The Capitalist notion of value optimisation might work with false representation and coercion removed from the equation.

[bryanrasmussen]

I think you're being uncharitable, advertising led the company to have a higher degree of competence and understanding.

[icebraining]

Fine, but it seems like a terrible tradeoff for the drawbacks mentioned by oasfboasbfos.

[TorKlingberg]

I don't necessarily disagree with you, but your comment is not relevant to the one you are replying to. You are just hijacking the top comment to rant (albeit a popular rant).

[megous]

It hints at the blacklist vs whitelist approach to security. I'd rather whitelist good content, then try to detect and blacklist bad content, as that is a game of whac-a-mole.

[recursive]

Everyone thinks advertising doesn't work on them. And everyone is wrong.

[oiboabfljasbfo]

My claim is that it does work. Astoundingly well. My further claim is that it is not in the public interest.

[fauigerzigerk]

I think people will always try to influence others, and I don't think advertising is the worst form of doing it. If you say that it's not in the public interest you'd have to compare it to alternatives that are.

That said, I think there should be restrictions put on the methods that advertisers are allowed to use. What currently happens in online advertising hurts everybody, including those who rely on ad funded business models.

Another issue is aonymity. In a world without advertising, you'd have to pay for everything directly. Making anonymous payments is extremely difficult and easily outlawed entirely.

[thecrazyone]

I'm a libertarian. And putting/enforcing rules on someone who's not aggressing you because you don't like it seems like needing coercion.

You're voluntarily consuming ad-based content, no one's forcing you. If you don't like their ad-supported content, shouldn't you use only content which paid for in different ways? Why should anyone be restricted in their actions because of your opinions?

[fauigerzigerk]

>Why should anyone be restricted in their actions because of your opinions?

Because the rights and protections under the law that advertisers rely on only exist because of my opinion and the opinion of other citizens.

Without the law, the concept of private property would be largely undefined. Corporations would not exist. There would be no limited liability, no chapter 11, no enforceable contracts, no trademarks, no patents, no copyrights, no courts, no police, nothing of the sort.

If we want to enjoy the protection that the rule of law affords us, we will have to accept that there needs to be some sort of social process that determines what our laws should be. It's a negotiation.

And no, using ad-supported services is not voluntary in any realistic sense of the word. There are many essential necessities of modern life that are ad-supported and have no real alternatives.

Also, voluntary is a rather ill defined term when it comes to things that most people cannot even know or understand.

[ancap]

> If we want to enjoy the protection that the rule of law affords us, we will have to accept that there needs to be some sort of social process that determines what our laws should be. It's a negotiation.

I have seen this sentiment a lot on HN as a counter to libertarian arguments, but really it's a straw man. The argument you are making is essentially: as a society we make rules, therefore we can enact rule x. Whereas the libertarian argument is (phrased in the vernacular of your counter-argument): society should only have rules which protect private property and prevent aggression.

> And no, using ad-supported services is not voluntary in any realistic sense of the word. There are many essential necessities of modern life that are ad-supported and have no real alternatives.

So? Just because person A depends upon the services of person B doesn't mean that person A can make outlandish demands on the way person B provides said services. Let A and B negotiate and determine the most agreeable terms for their cooperative exchange, sure. Alternatively, A can choose to deal with person C instead.

[pbhjpbhj]

Ads are embroigled in to modern Western culture. Do you expect us to lock ourselves away in the woods?

Why should we be restricted in our actions in order to allow product placement in every cultural artefact, advertising on your museum ticket, carefully placed concession stands in "free" public spaces, etc., etc.?

[Ntrails]

Eh, I think I've never clicked on an ad on the internet and bought a thing. The only times I've clicked on an ad that I can think of is mobile where I was trying to close something and got fucked.

So, advertising models based on clickthroughs definitely haven't worked on me. (Admittedly uBlock has reduced my exposure somewhat)

But the magazine style "increase awareness of product and hope that leads to eventual interest and purchase" probably works as well on me as anyone else.

[pbhjpbhj]

Lifestyle advertising is far stronger and more insidious as it doesn't appear to us as if it's advertising. When I was growing up all movies and USA television seemed to have Apple computers only, all the stars drank Coke with every meal, all the footballers wore Adidas boots.

We almost always instinctively are attracted to the familiar, so just seeing a product before makes us value it higher, even if it's intrinsic value is less. That hard-wired instinct is hard to control.

[posterboy]

you might be surprised how many "articles" are "sponsored", hard to tell really.

[ionised]

Some clearly doesn't work as intended though.

If I see an advert for Coca Cola, it doesn't make me want a Coke. I hate Coke and I understand that it is not at all good for me.

No amount of advertising is going to make me buy one. Simply being aware of the brand in this case seems pointless, because I'm doing nothing with it.

In other cases advertisements will merely lead me to avoid that brand or company out of spite, because I hated their advert (as I do most adverts).

[manigandham]

That's not the intention. They know it won't work on every single person, but as long as there is ROI then it works.

[DanBC]

It's a shame you got downvoted because you're making a reasonable point.

I loathe Pepsi Max ads. I like Coke Zero add. But I never buy Coke, I only ever buy Pepsi Max.

[bryanrasmussen]

Everyone thinks some specific types of advertising don't work on them, and dependent on their self-knowledge they can be right.

[stale2002]

Of course advertising works. And this is a very bad thing, not a good thing.

[fourneau]

Can you explain why it's a bad thing?

From my perspective, I've found various things via advertising that I would have never come across by other means.

A lot of people argue that "you'll just search for what you want" except I'm tired of searching for "shirt" and then scrolling for days looking for something that may work. Every once in a while I'm hit with a really good ad, and I'll click it, and maybe even buy.

[vanderZwan]

> From my perspective, I've found various things via advertising that I would have never come across by other means.

If you want to make a fair comparison, that should be compared to all the things you didn't find because useless ads took up your time and mental space.

Also, whether or not you found something through an ad is not the point; one isn't not going to convince a smoker to quit smoking by trying to convince them that nicotine doesn't make them feel good - it's the other shit about it that is bad.

In the case of advertising, there's a lot of cynical manipulation going on. The nagging factor in children's advertising comes to mind as one really evil example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi63rXnuWbw

I've been TV- and ad-free since 2001 (yes, yes, I know: the "how do you know someone doesn't watch TV? They'll tell you"-smugness curse strikes again). In my case it was accidental however: I was living in a student appartment with no access to TV and Internet for over a year, having only books to read and rented movies to watch. Even when forced upon you you start noticing the difference pretty quickly, and wondering how you ever was capable of considering this normal. Nowadays ads just feel invasive, like strangers shouting at me on the street claiming they want to have a conversation while really they just want to get into my pockets.

[fourneau]

> If you want to make a fair comparison, that should be compared to all the things you didn't find because useless ads took up your time and mental space.

> Nowadays ads just feel invasive, like strangers shouting at me on the street claiming they want to have a conversation while really they just want to get into my pockets.

I understand your point here. But to clarify, if I were to add up the seconds/minutes of time I lose to ads over the course of a month (for example), I don't think I'd spend that regained time on product hunting. My point was less "I save so much time via ads" but more "I don't want to shop." I view it as a time saver (at the expense of perhaps finding "the perfect item") rather than as purely a nuisance. That said, I definitely prefer content without ads.

[thecrazyone]

Advertising is not a public service. You don't need to weight benefits of it for it to exist.

This might seem harsh, but no one is weighing the benefits of your existence to decide whether you live or die. You own yourself and you can sustain yourself hence you exist. Similarly, advertisers exist because they can sustain themselves, they are not coercing you into viewing / using content laden with ads. You're voluntarily consuming content which has ads. If you don't like it don't use ad-laden products

[vanderZwan]

> Advertising is not a public service. You don't need to weight benefits of it for it to exist.

This is a complete non-sequitur. Plenty of things that are not public services are regulated or even forbidden. In fact, most of the things that are regulated or forbidden are, and the decision to do so is always based on "weighing benefits/downsides of it."

> This might seem harsh, but no one is weighing the benefits of your existence to decide whether you live or die.

Actually, yes we do, it's called criminal law. It is used to lock up (or in some barbaric nations, end the lives of) people whose "benefits of existing" within society have been found wanting. For humans we just happen default to assuming innocents until proven otherwise.

And whether or not something can exist on its own has no connection to whether or not it should, except in regards to how hard it is to get rid of.

> You're voluntarily consuming content which has ads. If you don't like it don't use ad-laden products

No, I'm not. The society that exists around me as a whole is not my choice, at best I can poke and prod at it and hope if enough people push into the same direction something changes. Until alternate payment systems like Patreon came along there simply was no way of being both a full member of said society without being confronted (or actively blocking) ads.

[kuschku]

Advertising is something that could easily be banned. You do need to weight benefits to decide if that’s a good decision or not.

Many places have made that decision.

[mozumder]

> If you want to make a fair comparison, that should be compared to all the things you didn't find because useless ads took up your time and mental space.

Why would you save mental space for non-adverised products? Are you supposed to be a product researcher? Is that your job? Is time not valuable for you? Because efficient people buy the first thing they recall, for crap that doesn't matter.

> I've been TV- and ad-free since 2001 (yes, yes, I know: the "how do you know someone doesn't watch TV? They'll tell you"-smugness curse strikes again)

How many newspapers and magazines have you bought that contained ads?

Because your complaint is about user-experience, not advertising.

And yes, the anti-advertising smugness is the worst. Everybody advertises, always have, always will. I mean, you had Roman gladiators in ancient times that were sponsored by brands.

[vanderZwan]

> Why would you save mental space for non-adverised products? Are you supposed to be a product researcher? Is that your job? Is time not valuable for you? Because efficient people buy the first thing they recall, for crap that doesn't matter.

So many implicit assumptions and premises I hardly know where to begin...

You're equating "spends a big budget on branding" with "quality", which is a ridiculous fallacy.

Yes, my time is valuable. So buying something that is sub-par for the job is a terrible investment of time and money. The idea that I need an advertisement to help decide which product to buy when I can compare products in the store (both physically or on-line) is also ridiculous.

Plus, the most efficient thing is to not buy crap that doesn't matter in the first place. And I'm a lot better at deciding what matters to me since invasive ads are out of my life.

> How many newspapers and magazines have you bought that contained ads? Because your complaint is about user-experience, not advertising.

First: no it's not. Ads are not equal across media. The amount of manipulation possible through moving pictures and sound is vastly worse than it is through paper advertisement. And for the record: almost none, I barely read the news, and when I do it's on-line, and the few magazines I read are imported so they target people from another country.

> And yes, the anti-advertising smugness is the worst. Everybody advertises, always have, always will. I mean, you had Roman gladiators in ancient times that were sponsored by brands.

This is starting to sound like That One Guy At The Party who gets uncomfortable because one other guest is a vegetarian, and then tries to prove the vegetarian friend is a hypocrite.

[builditand]

People do awful things to each others from the beginning of time, yes. Should we embrace it? No, we should learn to behave better.

[icebraining]

Fine, then you won't mind installing an extension or enabling an option that opts you in into being served ads while you browse. I'm sure most of us anti-ads advocates have no problem with that.

[fourneau]

I /technically/ opt-in by not running ad-block on my laptop, so I guess that's true.

[Cthulhu_]

Depends. How many products are you using which you first heard from via HN? That's a form of advertising too, albeit a lot less sleazy.

[stale2002]

Aggregation sites, that use crowd sourcing to bubble up interesting content and products is a fundamentally different beast than paid advertising.

[icelancer]

Is it? Can you easily differentiate fake "bubbled up" content? That is what the best advertising agencies have their hands around and have for some time.

[Nition]

It is until advertisers conspire to bubble their own content up.

[marssaxman]

Of course advertising works - that's why I resent it so much and go to great lengths to protect myself from it.

[enraged_camel]

Advertising definitely works on me: it helps me decide what not to buy.

[edpichler]

I have a different opinion. Yesterday I was cycling and passed by a very good restaurant close to my house, the local was empty, and I was wondering why it's empty if they are very good, they have very good food and relative cheaper prices. I just realised they don't do ads! They are very bad in marketing despite the fact of being an exceptional restaurant, nobody remember them, they waits they customers remember them. I talked to myself many times "I need to go back there", but they passes and I always forget it.

I did a parallel with my software business. You can have an exceptional software, but you can't stay frozen waiting your customers to find out you. Be very good is not enough on a world too much information.

But, I think the traditional ad industry is not sustainable. Nobody wants to see intrusive ads, I believe content marketing and organically ads (I don't know if this term really exists), like in sports, are the best for the long run.

[pbhjpbhj]

There seems a good possibility that other less 'good' companies are stealing the clientele away with advertising.

That, without the lies and coercion from other companies this place would be doing well, based on its relevant outputs rather than on its [lack of] glossy advertising.

[edpichler]

Yes, I am sure lower quality restaurants are stealing the clientele because they do ads and are remembered.

[Kiro]

> You'll search it out or your friends will tell you what to buy.

That's a very simplified description of consumption. You make it sound like we only buy stuff we're in immediate need of and therefore actively search for.

[Super_Jambo]

The solution is to nationalize the advertising industry and force everything possible into a genuinely competitive market.

Have a government run product listing. Think Amazon reviews, Yelp & Companies house. But with government ID to verify reviewers and harsh police enforcement against fake reviews or miss-leading product descriptions. Make it clear there will be prison time for systematic abuse.

We're at a point where this is technologically trivial & the first country to do it properly will get a big advantage over any that doesn't follow suit quickly.

Any person or company offering a product or service can create an account & list their product (with a price & links to where to buy it). Anyone who's bought the product / service can create a review. Throw in some sensible rules about major product changes requiring listings to be updated.

But what about the advertising industry? Fund a massive nudge campaign to improve citizen behaviour. Tail the funding off over a few years, this is really just welfare for all the anti-workers to give them time to switch into doing something economically productive.

[dkersten]

> With very few exceptions, especially in the consumer space, you won't need advertising if you actually need something. You'll search it out or your friends will tell you what to buy.

I typically use adverts to help me decide what to buy, but the adverts count as negative points towards the product, because I feel that if a product needs to rely on persuasion techniques, or to bombard my eyeballs all the time (especially if they're preroll-type adverts rather than passive banners) or if they're beside spammy adverts, then the product is likely crap anyway or the company are.

Blame all the spam for this attitude, and all the obtrusive crap that is shown to me against my will each day (it seems that almost no matter where I look, online or physical world, I'm bombarded with someones shitty adverts)

[grkvlt]

> adverts count as negative points towards the product > i use adverts to tell me what not to buy

These sorts of attitudes seem odd. What products do thses people buy, since pretty much everything being sold in the west is advertised in some way? It seems like the sort of think someone would say as a sort of virtue signalling, but I can't believe its a policy anyone could stick to.

[dkersten]

I didn't say anywhere in my post that if I see an advert, the product is instantly blacklisted -- only that it counts as a negative. So, if I had to choose between two otherwise equal products, I would choose the one with the least (or least annoying/intrusive) advertisement.

I also perhaps should have said web adverts. I don't much pay attention to TV/radio/magazine/newspaper/billboard adverts, so I imagine I buy many products advertised there.

I'm also not saying I don't buy any products that are advertised or that adverts don't work on me, but rather that:

1) If I'm looking for a product, I'll search and read reviews and such, but if I see advertisements, it counts as a negative point. I may still buy the item if it doesn't have enough other negative points.

2) If I see the same irritating advert multiple times, I'll make a mental note to never buy it. A number of youtube preroll adverts have had this effect.

[grkvlt]

OK, I understand your point, if it's restricted to web adverts. But even then, I don't think the mere presence of an advert would ever be enough to stop me buying a product I otherwise wanted. I guess it's all just part of your own personal code of conduct/behaviour, everyone is different...

[dkersten]

Absolutely. I'm not suggesting anybody else follow this, I was merely adding my own little anecdote.

Its just a signal though and probably a weaker one than I like to think, but in general, the spammy scummy misleading or annoying adverts are the ones that stick in my mind and then I make a mental note not to buy those things.

Most of my online shopping is "I want X, so I'll check the usual online stores that sell X". If I see adverts for these things, I always feel a bit like they're trying to influence me (because they are!) or mislead me (because _some_ are) and I feel like its not in my interest to buy what the adverts tell me. Of course, that doesn't mean I won't buy it, if I determine its really the best X, but I'll consider other stuff first.

Similarly, I consciously don't click on sponsored links and other such things, if I notice that this is what they are, because I feel like they're trying to trick me into visiting them because they make money from it, not because its a benefit to me.

(my offline shopping is mostly groceries, most clothes and other household things. For these I just browse my local shops and buy what I like -- no outside-of-store advertising plays a part here and in-store advertisement I typically ignore).

But.. yeah, to each their own :)

[grkvlt]

> no outside-of-store advertising plays a part here and in-store advertisement I typically ignore

Having read about the psychology of these things, I suspect you are more influenced than you would like. Even simple stuff like putting a more expensive product at the right height, and arranged in pleasing rows of identical objects, while the cheaper products are lower or higher (so difficult to get to) and in smaller quantities (so less of the pleasing identical objects effect) etc.

There are books on supermarket psychology, and I recall a good BBC documentary also, but can't think of any names right now, sorry.

[briandear]

This is total nonsense. Without advertising, how does a new competitor compete with the entrenched incumbents? How does anyone find out about your product? News media? Because media converage is often the result of having a paid PR firm pitching your story to reporters. Reporters then become the gatekeeper for what becomes successful or not. As far as word of mouth, that is very difficult to rely upon as a repeatable business model.

For example, if a smaller local bakery competing with a larger and more popular local bakery starts to make birthday cakes but they didn’t before — how does anyone in the community find out about it since people that buy birthday cakes typically go to the incumbent because they have no idea that the smaller bakery is starting to make great birthday cakes as well? It’s going to take a lot of time before that smaller bakery starts selling some cakes because nobody will know to go there for that purpose.

Advertising is precisely the tool that allows new market entrants to compete with the status quo. As another example how does anyone learn that they can run Windows on their Mac without Apple having advertised that fact? Tech writers? How do they find out? PR? PR is advertising too you know, a different kind, but it is still a paid effort to create market awareness of some product or service.

As far as “searching it out” — let’s take searching on Google or Bing as an example — the top organic results are the result of years of SEO; a new incumbent would be buried on page 20 for perhaps years which means that company will die waiting for word of mouth to start to happen. Meanwhile some big competitor with the budget for the extensive content marketing maintains their market leading position because there is literally no way for the new company to ever be discovered.

Advertising is critical if we are to have competition. If we want nothing but Soviet style companies, then sure, eliminate advertising. Good luck ever launching a new product or trying to disrupt anything especially in spaces where virility isn’t possible. A new, more effective adult diaper for instance — who’s going to run out and tell all their friends about that? How much does word of mouth influence a decision as to what car to buy? There’s some influence certainly, but my family of five has different needs than my single neighbor. So word of mouth isn’t so effective when discussing the finer points of 7 seat vehicles. So I search blogs? Ok, so what providers a blogger to review vehicles? Page views? For what? Bloggers will charge for subscriptions to read their content? Good luck with that. Micro payments could be a solution, but a company would still need to let the blogger know there is even a new car to review right? Or are the bloggers camped outside of dealerships waiting for unannounced new models to arrive?

PR is advertising, albeit a more indirect form and PR is very expensive.

My point; eliminating ads is bad for innovation and bad for companies who want to enter new markets.

[thecrazyone]

you're on point.

Also, we don't need to weigh the pros and cons of advertising as long as all actions are voluntary.

Why is it somebody else's business to make the world suit your tastes, you need to put effort for it, either by paying or creating such a product in the world, not by imposing it on others with regulations

[spb]

This is what the Cluetrain Manifesto was saying... in 1999.

http://www.cluetrain.com/

[rabbitonrails]

Have you ever heard of multi-level marketing? Let's all buy what our friends tell us to buy.

[Simon_says]

Come'on. When your friends don't have any vested interest, it works quite well.

[Jedd]

Agreed. Friends or colleagues who I know aren't materially invested but still have strong opinions are extremely compelling. My usual line of questioning when I have the luxury is to ask what features of $thing they don't like - usually more insightful than pros.

[Simon_says]

That's interesting. I do something similar with online reviews on Trip Advisor and Amazon: I filter to look at only 1-3 star reviews (or sometimes only 2 and 3 star reviews if there are enough). In my experience, positive reviews are all the same, but negative reviews will give really good specifics. Then you judge just the relative proportion of reviews that are positive vs. negative.

[Jedd]

I'm extra wary of TripAdvisor, Amazon, etc -- as I don't know the people making the reviews, and I tend to assume a fair amount of astroturfing. I'm not convinced that they haven't worked out how to game the reviews such that even the lower-rated reviews aren't positives in disguise, in a similar way to those interview questions along the lines of 'What's your biggest weakness?' -- "I am a perfectionist // I work too hard // I care too much // I need to make every project a success", etc.

Typically anyone that bothers to select a thing for purchase will examine all the features and attributes that they consider important, but often overlook the negated aspects that only come from familiarity with the product.