[wpietri]

I'm not sure about the latter part, but I think the first part is pretty clearly true.

The theoretical economic value of advertising is new product discovery. If you needed a thing but didn't know there was a solution and you saw an ad, then some of the value you gain would be attributable to the ad.

Imagine a world entirely without ads. Would you really be lacking a lot? I doubt it. Especially with the internet, it's easy enough search, to receive word of mouth, to read reviews, or to ask friends for help with a problem. But let's assume it happens some. Ads might at least get you to a solution sooner, so count the value gain there as well.

Now subtract all the money spent on things where ads encouraged a purchase that was not valuable or even wasteful (e.g., didn't live up to expectations, was fine but the need wasn't urgent so it sits in a closet, was bad enough that it actively cost you extra money). Subtract further the amount of money spent on ads, hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Subtract also all the time spent watching, listening to, and reading ads. Further subtract the amount of value that would have been gained had that time been used as a person wanted. And further subtract all the value that could have been gained had those creative people creating ads been doing something beneficial.

I can't come up with any reasonable numbers that suggest advertising is a net societal positive. It exists not because its targets want it, but because businesses are in an arms race to manipulate consumers in ways favorable to the advertisers. It's like military spending: most of it happens not because anybody really wants it, but because nobody wants to lose to the other guy.

[tempestn]

Advertising can be very helpful to get a new product or service in front of people, which then allows you to start building word of mouth referrals etc. Without it, there are many things that would never see the light of day. And because it costs money, it provides somewhat of a filter; while we all feel inundated with a lot of garbage advertising, you'd have to wade through far more to find interesting new products otherwise.

This isn't to say that you can't currently find useful things in ways other than ads; obviously that happens all the time. But without ads (or other similar forms of marketing) it might not be viable for many of these things to be launched in the first place, allowing you to then discover them.

[Dylan16807]

How many products do you know where most of their ads were an initial announcement to the world, vs. how many are throwing up ads constantly just to fight back the flood of other ads?

And requiring money is often bad too. Many very good products just don't profit enough to afford mountains of marketing.

[wpietri]

Ah, right. That's a good point. We have to consider the other arm of the counterfactual. Against his companies that can't launch because they can't get an audience, we have to compare the companies that can't launch today because they can't afford to buy an audience.

[wpietri]

I think this is true in the already-ad-saturated environment. But if we imagine a world without ads, it's hard to think there wouldn't be other ways of getting a product out there.

One obvious way is through buyers. A lot of clothing and housewares brands, for example, don't advertise significantly. Instead, they shop their wares to buyers for retailers. Another is through reviewers. Electronics companies, for example, have a long tradition of sending out gear to magazines and other sources of reviews. Car magazines are another good example. In the modern age, that also can mean lending or giving gear to people influential in an area.

If ads didn't exist, I think we'd see more of that. And we'd certainly see more of other approaches. Look at ProductHunt, for example, where startups can put things in front of a crowd of early adopters for nothing. It would be pretty easy to imagine specialist versions of that for particular interests. And look at Tesla, which famously didn't run ads; plenty of people have heard of them.

So I agree you're right that some new companies today could be at a disadvantage if they don't buy ads (although definitely not all of them). But I'm not convinced that's a necessary case if we end the ad arms race.