Because is fucking undproductive, useless and detrimental to society. Advertising is a cancer, an immoral activity.
The problem with advertising is that a little bit done honestly is actually good and fine. What we actually have way, way too much, and it's often dishonest and manipulative.
It's a similar thing with finance. It's necessary, but way too many talented people are spending their energies on it.
Black and white thinking doesn't really capture the situation, and ends up creating a lot of noise (BAN IT ALL vs. IT'S ALL GOOD AND YOU LOVE IT, FIGHT!).
Honestly, I think it might be a good thing to put caps on the number of people that can work in sectors like that (and further limit the number of very smart people working in them), to direct talented people to more productive and socially beneficial parts of the economy.
At the end of the day, if most of company's income is from ads, it can be safely assumed that whatever else it does is somehow about ads even if it doesn't contribute directly. Well, or else Google is incredibly inept.
Especially if it's an ecommerce business.
Regardless of which side of the camp you fall on, you can’t argue that ads are “good” just because some businesses need them to survive. In fact, I’d wager if a business NEEDS ads to survive, it’s probably a net negative on society as a whole.
I won’t die on that hill, but that’s my hunch.
Advertising is nothing more than bringing attention to your product to your target customer.
And without this so called immoral behaviour I fail to see how any business works.
It’s not even debated that advertising as it exists with Google, for the sake of profit at all costs is a net-negative in society.
It’s not the same as putting a sign by the road.
The tech is fine. The toxic parts (data collection, spying, etc) aren't even in the ad tech divisions and aren't done for advertising purposes.
They collect data because it gives them bargaining power and a seat at the table with state-level actors.
Aka does advertising as a whole increase total consumption or is it a zero sum game (aka send bigger slice of the same pie to a competitor)
From what I know advertising does increase total demand aka more things/services need to be produced and sold on aggregate.
But most ads are trying to convince you to buy their brand’s version of a product that you already know of, or (even worse!) a new version of an old product. Any demand induced there is just wastefulness.
If Amazon can figure out that I’m interested in headphones, I already know more actual information about headphones than their ads will give me.
An alternative explanation is that prospective tech CEOs who are willing to overlook morals are scarcer and thus mandate higher salaries. ;)
There is good and bad advertising.
I'd want to receive ads for things that I'm really interested in.
The problem with prohibiting ads is how to prevent (or even define) payed hidden promotions. But tracking and targeted ads could be prohibited, which would already make things much more civil and less relevant as a tech profit center.
Maybe the ad is good when you arent even aware that you were influenced by it?
like Cola vs Pepsi, McDonald vs KFC, etc.
People want to buy things, especially the ones that make their life easier, but you got to get to know them somehow, right?