[DorianSinDeep]

While its good that you're willing to compromise in a reasonable manner, I don't think it has particular relevance to the point that advertisements in any form are most likely to be about something you won't go looking for yourself. There are even some companies with no advertisement spending because their product is so essentially useful that people will seek it out themselves.

[DivisionSol]

Some advertisements are malicious attacks on your attention to build brand recognition and entice you to buy things you don't need.

However, I think advertising in itself isn't inherently evil. If a chess website served non-tracking, static (no-JS) banner ads about relevant products (maybe, specifically, chess products?) to offset costs, I don't see anything wrong with it. Of course the question is: "what is a relevant product to advertise next to chess?" Would... other board game advertisements be acceptable?

[komali2]

Sure but they wouldn't do that, as it doesn't seem to be something that would further their stated goal:

> to promote and encourage the teaching and practice of the game of chess and its variants".

[lame-robot-hoax]

I’d argue ads for chess sets actually would do exactly that.

[mpol]

And in the case of chess books, an advertorial is quite different from a good review. I very much enjoy reading a good review on a chess book, with all the good things and bad things. With an advertorial the language is quite different and it is very hard to get informed well about what you really get when you buy the book. With honest critique, I very much enjoy reading about the bad parts, and if they are not bad for me, or just a nuance, it might be a really good book for me. Only an honest review can give me that.

So no, an advertorial for a book does not do anything for me.

[tovej]

Chess books, maybe. Chess sets? I'm sure most people playing chess on lichess are aware of chess sets and could get a hold of one without an ad.

[why_Mr_Anderson]

That's exactly how Google ads worked in the very beginning. Text only, all in one place, it was great! If we could somehow return that type of ads, I'd consider disabling adblocker.

[maccard]

> There are even some companies with no advertisement spending because their product is so essentially useful that people will seek it out themselves

Really? I'd love to hear more about this.

[Scarblac]

Did you see an ad for Hacker News?

I'm writing in a paper notepad right now, found a web shop selling it by a normal Google result after describing what I was looking for, not an ad.

The pens I always buy I first bought in a stationary store, ended up liking them and now I always buy that brand.

Farmers sell their produce to supermarkets probably without having to advertize for them, and I go to the particularly supermarket I go to because it's closest to where I live.

Lots of things we use on a daily basis we never saw ads for, and yet they're sold to us by companies. Somehow.

[maccard]

> Did you see an ad for Hacker News?

hacker news is heavily affiliated with ycombinator - and I can almost guarantee that I've seen ads/puff pieces for ycombinator over the last decade.

> The pens I always buy I first bought in a stationary store, ended up liking them and now I always buy that brand.

Just because you purchased a product without seeing an ad for it doesn't mean that that company doesn't have an ad spend. How did they get to that stationery store in the first place?

> Farmers sell their produce to supermarkets probably without having to advertize for them

Farmers likely work with a coop style organisation (who _do_ advertise heavily), or maybe have some local link. That local link is generated by having a presence in local business forums, farmers markets, local stores. Back in the day, your local butcher or greengrocer would take out full page ad in your town's newspaper to show the special offers they have on this week, nowadays I get facebook ads for my butcher.

> Lots of things we use on a daily basis we never saw ads for, and yet they're sold to us by companies. Somehow.

That's a strawman; the original claim was that there are companies with no advertising, not that people buy products without seeing advertising for them.

[ZWoz]

I am not sure, what parent thought and I don't have examples without any spending to advertisement, but there is very "low profile", almost no ads categories. 1) Big business-to-business manufacturers. I haven't ever seen ads for compal or asml. I am sure they are presented in trade shows and contact directly to potential customers. 2) Small data recovery shops. I know few those, one don't advertise at all, one uses only google ads (and only few keywords, not big budget).

[shard]

No-ad-spend companies are hard to come up with, some possibilities are everyday necessities with very few competitors like salt (but I think they advertise a little), or utility monopolies (I don't think my local water company or garbage collection company advertises, but I haven't checked. Maybe they advertise to the government offices that select the companies to use?). Pre-internet days, it would be easier to be sure some businesses don't advertise (neighborhood convenience stores or laundromats, for example, that get enough foot traffic to not bother advertising), but with the ease of throwing up a website nowadays (which should count as advertising), this can no longer be assumed.

[maccard]

The parent's claim is:

> There are even some companies with no advertisement spending because their product is so essentially useful that people will seek it out themselves.

and that's in response to someone suggesting low profile/almost-no-ads. I completely agree about the low-profile/almost-no-ad approach (in the tech world having a community that evangalises for you is an advertisers wet dream, for example!), and I think that's what a lot of people in this thread are calling for. On a chess website, have ads for chess books/chess boards/novice-to-grandmaster streams, that sort of stuff, rather than shoving an ad for an Amazon mattress at the bottom of a blog post on Continuous Integration!

[blueblimp]

Tesla doesn’t run ads, as far as I know.

[maccard]

I had a look and it seems to be true! Thank you!

_That said_, their "Discover" range of videos on youtube sure look like ads (albeit not banner ads). I know that Tesla have had a presence at a bunch of EV events here in Scotland; they have a stall and cars there that you can test drive. It's definitely not banner-ad-on-google, (and the publicity from stating they don't do ads is likely an ad in itself), but it's definitely "paid marketing"

Super interesting though, thank you for giving me a rabbit hole to go down!

[aaronbrethorst]

This is a nice, albeit reductive hypothesis.

Literally the last thing I did before posting this comment was email a link to a Facebook in-app ad’s advertised product to myself because I wanted to look at it in more detail tomorrow.

I wasn’t looking for the product it was advertising, but I see how it could be extremely useful for me if it works.

[foerbert]

The post qualified that position with an exceptionally mild "most likely." A single counterexample is hardly a reason to criticize it as reductive.

Unless you do this with the majority of the ads you see, and you believe this is a common experience for most people?

[ZephyrBlu]

This is basically saying that "build it and they will come" works, but we know that's a fallacy.

[op03]

Wikipedia, Linux, Blender, Firefox are all what?

[Lvl999Noob]

This might be survivorship bias talking. I do not have any examples with me but I am quite sure, there are a lot more projects that ended up dead.

[paxys]

Most projects end up dead, ad supported or not. I don't think that's an argument one way or another.

[op03]

They are not Ad based models proving non ad based models exist and work especially in the domain of free rider/collective action problems.

[sokoloff]

I could have sworn I’ve seen ads for Firefox. I know I’ve seen ads in Firefox, some placed by Mozilla, but I could have sworn I’ve seen ads for Firefox not in Firefox. (This is nearly impossible to Google for due to all the hits for ad-blockers.)

Mozilla spends 10s of millions every year on “advertising and promotion” per their financial statements, though they have other things to advertise about than just Firefox.

[tonyedgecombe]

Didn't Linus make an announcement on Usenet when he started the project. A form of advertising.

[ZephyrBlu]

I would call them the exceptions that prove the rule.

[fnord123]

That's not what that means.

It means a sign saying "no blue cars" is the exception proving the rule that non-blue cars are allowed.

[auggierose]

Kind of like special relativity is an exception to Newtonian mechanics?

It's good to know the rules, but you shouldn't live your life by them.

[curun1r]

I could see an argument that ads for specific, chess-related products like Chessable courses would be welcome on Lichess, perhaps even as an opt-in so users can choose to support the site. I know Chessable is constantly introducing new courses and I don't always remember to check regularly. A banner that tells me of a new course I'm interested in would solve that. For me, at least, but I doubt I'm the only one.

I wish more sites would do ads without using ad networks. Communities like the chess world are small enough that all the providers know each other and could probably work together in a way that benefits everyone, including users.

[heroku]

Chessable is a poorly executed idea, with an awful user experience.