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.
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.
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).
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.
> 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!
_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!
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.