As much as we like to imagine our minds to be impenetrable bastions of rationality, they are not. We can easily be enticed and manipulated to do things we wouldn't otherwise do, to see things differently than we otherwise would, to consider things we wouldn't consider, and all of that is exactly what the advertisers are paying for.
I don't think advertising does work well on everybody nor does it have to. Maybe not even half of us need to be susceptible for it to be as profitable as it is.
I have noticed some people are much more susceptible to suggestion than others. These people are probably responsible for a disproportionate amount of commercial profits and probably more likely to be taken in by paid political campaigning.
Furthermore, I reckon if we could hold a mirror up to many of these people they might reconsider their behavior (it probably would work better than shouting at them at thanksgiving or over Facebook).
And maybe abolishing democracy
Political manipulation ads, helping an authoritarian rise to power.
But ads for buying what I just searched for: "buy new running shoes", aren't like that -- they can be helpful instead :-). It's mainly social network ads like on Facebook that are dangerous for society?
From the article:
> I think advertising is positive
It's both? Ads are different from ads, just like different things one can eat are different, like potatoes (running shoe ads) versus poisonous mushrooms (nation states abolishing democracy in the US via political manipulation on Facebook)
I looked at my competitors and saw that most of them were obviously shilling for the company that was paying them the most, which was never the best. I figured by being the most honest I could be the most trusted and win out.
The trouble is, the best companies would rely upon word of mouth. Promoting them wouldn't get me paid a dime. Honesty would benefit them, but not me.
Getting traffic, meanwhile, I realized would cost me money.
That's when I realized that the only way to get a non negative margin in that industry was to sacrifice your objectivity (which is what everyone did).
Theoretically you could charge users for this I guess, like Which? magazine does but I couldn't see a straightforward route to that point that wouldn't involve burning a lot of capital I didn't have. The chicken/egg problem rose its ugly head again.
I gave up soon after.
The competing sites would tend to either pretend that these companies don't exist, or if that wasn't possible coz the brand was strong would subtly try to indicate that they weren't all that hot compared to [site that pays a LOT for new customers].
I don't mean to suggest that the challenge was insurmountable, but I couldn't figure out a way to make honesty pay, particularly given the high cost of acquiring traffic.
Moreover, if you acquired some sort of trust (which many parties did) or a high spot in google through an aged domain or something, the incentive to exploit it for profit would inevitably take over.
It was clearly something users cared about coz they complained about it, but there was something akin to a tragedy of the commons going on.
These market dynamics are fairly common across many industries. I don't think the one I chose was particularly special.
Consulting or something might have been possible but at that point it's basically giving up and joining an entirely different industry - which is what I ultimately did.
I really really tried to make honesty pay but I couldn't.
Besides, how could he prove his honesty either way?
I guess he could arrange commission with all companies, hope that his favourite brand isn't also the one paying the most, and then disclose all the commissions.
I think so too
> hope that his favourite brand isn't also the one paying the most, and then disclose all the commissions.
I'm thinking that if the site visitors have a way to see that usually the site promotes other brands than the highest paying, then that'd be good enough. At the same time, why would they trust the disclosure info :-)
Another thought: if his/her favorite brand didn't pay enough, s/he could just disclose the commissions, but not write any review. (To encourage that brand to pay more)
Those sneaker ads probably aren't destroying our democracy[1], they're just costing the society things that are hard to quantify. They induce me to buy what's most profitable to the sellers, not what's best for me. They take away business from actually helpful resources, and from those who don't advertise on Google.
[1] They are enabling the existence of a search monopoly (along with other factors), so you know, "probably" is the strongest word I'd go with here.
The whole system incentivises ads that match the intent of the user, any deviation from this is extremely difficult and not profitable for the advertiser in most cases.
But if the user buys from the ad, that doesn't say anything about whether the ad was useful (or counter-productive) to the user, it only means that this transaction was profitable to Google and the advertiser.
Ads not matching the search query are not the issue. They are neither profitable nor helpful, so you can't use that criterion to distinguish the two goals.
I’m pretty sure there are better criteria for those results than the amount of money paid to end up in that list.
But alas, that’s not what modern search engines use, because they are advertisers first and foremost. Not reputable search providers anymore.