[pizzathyme]

Ads get a bad wrap, but no one wants a bad ad. The user wishes they didn't have to see it. The platform wishes they hadn't shown it to you. The advertiser/company wishes they hadn't paid to show it to you.

In contrast, a "good" ad is just a recommendation for something you haven't heard of, but you love and are glad you were told about it. There are tons of products and services out there you haven't heard of.

People might not believe this, think that if they would really love it, they would have searched for it, found it through organic means, etc. But if that were true, these companies wouldn't be bringing in $100B+ each, and generating $1T+ spend each

[Spivak]

So I think we've over-grouped ads into too broad a category to be useful. Brand sponsorships (i.e. The Doritos-Jeep-AT&T Halftime Show) and other 'brand awareness' are clearly bad ads by your own metric, they do nothing to inform. Same with "entertainment ads" which are just 30 second comedy bits attached to a brand.

But when people think of ads, radio promos, podcast interruptions, tv commercials, posters in shops, billboards online banner ads, they're almost exclusively this kind of bad ad. And when people talk about banning advertising they're talking about these and likely very little else.

[Marsymars]

> Ads get a bad wrap, but no one wants a bad ad.

This is weirdly tautological. Nobody wants an extra bad version of anything, regardless of whether it has a bad rap or not. Cigarettes get a bad rap, but smokers don't want cigarettes that got damp in transit and cigarette manufacturers and corner stores don't want to provide damp cigarettes to their customers.

> In contrast, a "good" ad is just a recommendation for something you haven't heard of, but you love and are glad you were told about it. There are tons of products and services out there you haven't heard of.

Are there? Do "good" ads actually exist? I avoid ads as much as possible, but don't find that my life is improved by the instances where I am unavoidably exposed to them, and think it's unlikely that my life would be improved if I deliberately exposed myself to more ads.

> People might not believe this, think that if they would really love it, they would have searched for it, found it through organic means, etc. But if that were true, these companies wouldn't be bringing in $100B+ each, and generating $1T+ spend each

This is an ironic response given you're responding to a comparison of the advertising industry to the gambling industry; the conclusion that a company is providing a valuable service to society doesn't follow from the premise that the company is making a lot of money.