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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Oh, that's a hardline position. It's a good argument for taxing advertising. In a society that's spent out, with a low savings rate, advertising just moves demand around. It doesn't generate it.

(One could write an article about the Web titled "The obsolescence of information in the advertising age." Cover the decline of actual info provided on web sites, vs. the giant sucking sound of the onboarding funnel. You know, the sites which have nothing but stock photos and a form for entering in your email address.)

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> advertising just moves demand around. It doesn't generate it

I’ve seen ads for products I would have never bought, because I never knew they existed, and wound up better for it.

> I’ve seen ads for products I would have never bought, because I never knew they existed, and wound up better for it.

Such as?

I can't recall myself purchasing anything [just] because of an ad, or knowing anyone else who did, or even seeing an ad for something I was interested in.

Everything that I've spent money on, has been discovered through manual search, word of mouth (on online forums), voluntarily subscribed newsletters/feeds (like a favorite developer announcing a new game or app) or random recommendations algorithms (like these clips of Mortal Engines and Ultimate Chicken Horse that I just saw on YouTube, or featured spots on the App Store, Steam, iTunes etc.) which I guess may count as a form of advertisement but they show me what a product is actually like.

I can think of a few things that I bought specifically because I saw them in an ad, and they solved a problem I had. The 12-port usb charging hub that I'm using right now is one. Did I 'know' they existed? I mean, I wasn't surprised, but I'd not used or seen one in the wild, and then it popped up in an Amazon recommendation.

Going a few years back, those lithium-ion-based car jump-starters were a genuine surprise for me. I'd only had experience with the much larger, bulkier lead-acid ones. An ad showed me an impossibly tiny & light combo jumpstarter and powerpack, and now there's one in my glovebox. It's been used, too, and I'm glad I had it.

I would not have known that the Remarkable tablet existed if it wasn't for the FB ads. I want the thing that I hope this is. I have been looking for this, on and off, for years. I've tried tablet computers to do the same thing before, without much success.

Though, I still haven't ordered one. Waiting on some reliable peer review first. So I might be agreeing with you...

Their advertisement was the main reason, that I've bought an Onyx Note

how is it? <seeking peer review information>

Word of mouth is a second order effect of advertising. Subscribed newsletters are advertising. Random recommendation algorithms on steam are advertising.

Then every mention of anything is advertising, differing only in degree of intrusion.

But no, word of mouth being like if I found something on my own and mention it on Reddit or HN etc., then it's not advertisement in the commonly agreed-upon sense of the word.

What does "finding something on your own" look like? Does it look like a product web page? Because that's advertising. Does it look like it was on the endcap of an aisle at a retailer? Because they paid for that placement.

Let's just take a regular product like a smartphone. Assuming you have a smartphone. Let's imagine you ignored all branding or something and purchased the cheapest smartphone on Amazon... but how did you even know that smartphones existed in the world? How did you come to know that Amazon sells these smartphone things?

> * Does it look like a product web page? Because that's advertising.*

Oh boy.

I guess your comments are advertisement about advertising too, then.

This forceful insistence that someone is influenced by advertising even when they repeatedly say they aren't, just affirms the possibility that the ad industry is a sham and a con.

Most people are numb to advertising, not influenced by it.

Oh really? How much of your time has been spent on what brand of salt is in your pantry right now? What informs your type of shampoo in your bathroom? How much weight would you say your friends or colleagues experience with a car brand has influenced the decision you made to purchase one auto manufacturer's model over another? Advertising works and if it didn't it wouldn't exist. While I do understand and am with you on your philosophy of making an informed decision, so much of our impulses as we purchase the things required to live daily are influenced by ads whether we're aware of them or not.

>salt

cheapest one available from nearby stores

> shampoo

tested many brands, found one that works well for me.

>car brand

Absolutely none, unless they are car maniac.

> While I do understand and am with you on your philosophy of making an informed decision, so much of our impulses as we purchase the things required to live daily are influenced by ads whether we're aware of them or not.

I do not dispute that, but isn't this paper arguing that ads aren't fulfilling their informative purpose(the only reason they were allowed to get so prevalent)?

to quote the paper

>In the information age, the only remaining nonredundant use of most forms of advertising is persuasion. To the extent that enforcers wish to return to the mid-twentieth-century view that persuasive advertising is fundamentally manipulative, they may now do so without concern that prohibiting advertising might deprive consumers of the information they need to make purchase decisions

Absolutely none, unless they are car maniac.

That simply isn’t true. Other than those extremely cash-constrained choice of car is a very personal thing, as much as style of clothing.

the only remaining nonredundant use of most forms of advertising is persuasion

Ads are obsolete where brands are obsolete in a world where everything is made in the same factory in China and merely gets a different sticker on the case. Basically any electronics now for example.

About car buying: I think you missed his point. (Or else I'm missing your point.) He's not saying that his choice of car as not personal, he's saying (as would I) that the kind of car your "friends or colleagues" buy has nothing to do with the kind of car he (or I) buys.

Speaking for myself, I bought cars based on what I valued, which was often different from what friends and colleagues valued--which is exactly the meaning of "personal."

the kind of car your "friends or colleagues" buy has nothing to do with the kind of car he (or I) buys.

I get what you’re saying but lots of people do do that. Certain demographics flock to BMWs for example. Within a pretty narrow range you could guess a BMW driver’s occupation, and you would almost certainly be correct about their personality. Another demographic loves their Subarus. Or Porsche, classic choice of the male midlife crisis.

But pretty much everyone who can afford to, buys a car that they feel reflects their lifestyle or the lifestyle they aspire to.

> How much of your time has been spent on what brand of salt is in your pantry right now? What informs your type of shampoo in your bathroom?

I pick these up from store aisles more or less at random.

> How much weight would you say your friends or colleagues experience with a car brand has influenced the decision you made to purchase one auto manufacturer's model over another?

None, I don't own a car, but I can see the point you're trying to make with that one.

> Advertising works and if it didn't it wouldn't exist.

There is a possibility that it actually doesn't and is a case of the emperor with no clothes, an unnecessary industry perpetuated by those in the industry.

This is an argument you can't win in my experience. I don't know why some people are so adamant I bought something because of advertising... And I mean the "shotgun" ads - on TV, radio, online, in papers, etc

All of these untargeted ads are meaningless to me. Even before the Internet, if I needed something I went and looked for it when I needed it. An ad on TV for a product I need? Yeah, I'd just take note and look for something cheaper/better, which I always found.

On that note, avertising does work for many products if it's at least somewhat decently targeted, otherwise it's brand awareness, so not a total waste of money.

Because most people have this dumb idea that they are smarter than all the other plebs and marketing doesnt work on them.

People that think this are delusional. Just because you've convinced yourself you are impervious to it doesnt mean you are.

Yes, and speaking for others insisting that something works on them even if they say it doesn’t, is a smart idea and not delusional at all.

Almost like religious fanaticism, forcing people to acknowledge gods and demons and boogeymen.

Case in point

Salt: cheapest own-brand. Shampoo: read the labels for something without too many nasties. Car: check lots of reviews, test drive some candidate models.

More broadly, the question isn’t whether advertising works, but whether it has positive or negative social value. If it largely just reallocates spending, then everyone (including the firms currently engaged advertising arms races with other firms) would be better off if it were abolished.

This is a good point - that choosing the cheapest own brand salt implies a very strong omnipresent food regulatory system (which most countries have).

Where we lack independant, reliable regulation, advertising is more valuable because it provides brand trust.

I stopped using shampoo just over a year ago and even though I've known many people say shampooing is pointless I was still amazed at how little effect the change had on my hair. The current lockdown is an ideal time to try it.

In the context of advertising and marketing it is interesting to consider why we use shampoo at all.

Do you still scrub your hair, just with water, when you're in the shower?

Yes

>Advertising works and if it didn't it wouldn't exist.

The obvious comeback is [1]. All the existence of advertising indicates is that either the producer or the consumer is not an ideal perfect-information homo economicus. It doesn't say which of them it is.

Every large company with economies of scale has a waste budget: the amount of inefficiency it can tolerate before competitors without its scale advantage will eat its lunch. As long as irrational behavior doesn't go beyond the waste budget, it may well persist, as the article shows of online advertising.

[1] https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-h...

Re: the shampoo thing, I've been purchasing the same brand for more than 15 years now. The same goes for the vast majority of personal hygiene and cleaning products, if not necessarily the same brand then similar looking products from the same company.

Nothing ""informs"" the type of shampoo for most normal people. Almost nobody spends time on what "brand of salt" is in their pantry.

When people need things like those they just pick whatever they've always been using, or whatever's available and they don't associate any previous bad experiences with.

What kind of bizarre disconnect from reality do advertisers have? Is it like they're watching some kind of Matrix rain of numbers and choosing to see what they want to see?

That is a tiny fragment of advertising we see though. Of all the ads I see in a month, I feel like maybe one or two informs me of a new product, and usually not one I'll buy (and usually those ads are in non-traditional media, like YouTube sponsors). All the rest are big brands everybody already knows.

In theory, isn’t that what digital marketing is supposed to promise? It seems as though the marketing bandwidth is optimized for economies of scale purchasing in both analog and digital domains.

The direction of online advertising was super precise targeting, but that was abandoned long before privacy became important, for some reason. Even related ads on Amazon by Amazon are 99% trash, which is incredible.

This is the promise of the Facebook API...and this is perhaps why I find Instagram to be incredibly potent (and reasonably expensive) - it has sufficiently advanced targeting as well as a “catalog” feel, ie engaged purchasing.

Still, I thought we’d be much further along by now with finding things I didn’t know I needed. Maybe it’s the ROMI which doesn’t work with small firms? Maybe marketing requires a minimum buy for efficacy?

Likewise incredible is the fact I have to see spanx ads on YouTube.

recently when I want to buy something, I will find some pages on FB that sell the products, then refresh my newsfeed a few times to see FB ads suggestions :)

In my entire life I can't recall a single instance of buying something because an advertisement introduced me to something or convinced me to.

And I bet you also bought products to solve problems that, without advertising, you may have thought had no solution. There are certainly evils surrounding medical advertising, but many people suffer very embarrassing or painful conditions until they learn, via an ad, that there is a product that can help. If an ad for a new drug means that someone suffering with disease reaches out and finds help, that isn't evil.

Right, but it redistributes demand around. Ever been to a busy boardwalk with people hired to call out and give samples out to get people to come in? It's an arms race like that, it redistributes the demand of eating on the boardwalk, and those that don't pay for the advertising don't survive, so everyone does it, but ultimately the boardwalk would be more or less the same without it

That assumes all products are of equal value to all people. Which is clearly not true.

What makes this situation hard is that there are two problems:

1) Even if you make a good product, it is not reasonable to demand the world to just inform everyone about it on your behalf. Getting the word out takes effort. Money is the potential energy of human effort.

2) There is so much money to be made from various products that trillions of dollars are being spent getting the word out about various products. That makes it hard to rise above the baseline noise if you don't happen to start with large amounts of money.

As a result, I've seen many investment deals based entirely around "You have a good product. We have money. We'll put money into advertising your product in return for owning part of it."

The point they are trying to make is that if you have very little money to spend, advertising product A to you so you buy it instead of product B is moving demand around. It’s only generating demand if you have money to spend on both A and B.

To me this makes an excellent argument for taxation rather than banning. People do occasionally find advertising useful. The problem is not the existence of advertising, it is the amount of it. In medicine, it is the dose that makes the difference between a useful medicine and a poison. If we had about 95% less advertising volume in our lives, people wouldn't be so upset about it. And the remaining 5% of ads would need to be better (more useful, more entertaining, more pertinent) to compete in a reduced ecological niche.

I generally search for the things I need, and find them if they exist. And I actively boycott advertised companies because I hate the state of our ad industry.

I'm confused. You wound up better for discovering they existed and not buying them, or for discovering they existed and buying them?

your demand for that product was already there, otherwise the advertisement would have had no effect on you.

Marketing does not create demand.

Far be it from me to defend advertising, but that assumes a zero-sum economy with fixed productivity and fixed wealth. It also assumes a number of other things, including no economies of scale, no innovation to meet increased demand, etc. Consumer goods are in some ways about as inexpensive as they've ever been. Turnover can create a landscape conducive to innovation.

And all that aside, ads for fractional lending, for example, would theoretically generate capital, and not merely move it around.

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