I'd say the biggest problem with advertising is it increases perceived value and utility where none exists, and overtime makes people think certain products are cheaper, environmentally friendly or just benefitial
Lived abroad for a while in a country I didn’t speak the language in at first. Felt so much better when I didn’t get the normal “Ad” dose day to day just from casually watching TV. (Very anecdotal)
Also at first e.g. people having loud conversations in public or on the train and not having a clue what they are saying meant they were much less distracting.
I feel the same way but then when I'm promoting my own products I also feel like "my ads are useful to the audience I target". So I realize I'm a hypocrite when it comes to advertising. Maybe they aren't so bad?
Modern, post-XVI century, politics were born out of advertising. That's basically the advertiser's line, and they're right.
Gutenberg opened a huge can of worms. Day 1 bibles, day 2 pamphlets, and sooner than you know it, there's a whole internet popping cookies all over.
No, I don't like it much either, and maybe we should charge advertisers high fees for the privilege of messing with the collective mind, which is in none too good shape from all their ministrations. Perhaps that would dial it down.
The thing about sports that require advertising is that they don't need to exist in the way they do now. If I could ban advertising, and the consequence is that the highest level of sports is now a less-funded, more localized set of players, I think that would actually be a net improvement on society.
Obviously some people would disagree, but therein lies the problem; if one group of people wants to have professional sports and saturate society with ads, and the other group doesn't want to be saturated with ads, then society is saturated with ads. It's the same as the noisy neighbor problem; if one neighbor is noisy, and the other is quiet, life is perfect for the noisy neighbor and hell for the quiet neighbor.
I find it so odd that people can be intensely vocally supportive of a particular professional team from their home area, when it's just a bunch of sportsmen from all around mixed up to come below a salary cap, and has nothing to do with their geographic location at all.
I guess it's the same as brand worship, something else that doesn't resonate with me. I've bought good products from particular brands, but the brand doesn't in itself matter to me at all, only the particular product I'm interested in.
In this case, it's relatively easy to avoid the ads in question by not watching sports. You're not losing anything that you would otherwise get without ads: US sports wouldn't exist on the scale that they do without advertising.
I don't agree with that perspective. A lot of stuff on the internet wouldn't exist without advertising, just not using the internet is a poor solution. How about advocating for, or working on, solutions where the users are not the product. There are lots or successful examples, and they are growing.
I agree in general but am doubtful that it is a working model for the kinds of expensive elite sports that we're talking about here. If you want sports without ads it's possible, go to the park and watch a bunch of people play pickup basketball, it's just not going to be the same kind of production value.