> 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.
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.
Though, I still haven't ordered one. Waiting on some reliable peer review first. So I might be agreeing with you...
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
People that think this are delusional. Just because you've convinced yourself you are impervious to it doesnt mean you are.
Almost like religious fanaticism, forcing people to acknowledge gods and demons and boogeymen.
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.
Where we lack independant, reliable regulation, advertising is more valuable because it provides brand trust.
In the context of advertising and marketing it is interesting to consider why we use shampoo at all.
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...
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?
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.
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."
Marketing does not create demand.