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Comment by myrmidon | Hacker News Reader

I do not disagree with you entirely, but I feel this almost borders on self-delusion.

The sole purpose of ads is to (probabilistically) shift the targets spending behavior in favor of the one buying the ads, nothing more, nothing less.

While ads can have utility from the victims point of view (contain relevant information), this is entirely incidental.

If you want product updates or information, getting that from dedicated, independent 3rd parties is preferable in literally every situation I can think of.

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I disagree that this is the sole purpose of ads. I can see how people arrive at that opinion, but I feel it is narrow and incomplete. With a little restrospection and introspection, anyone can see examples in their own life where marketing had another purpose.

Marketing can take many forms. Many people narrowly define it as "spam emails" or "unsolicited phone calls." Those are also marketing, but there is so much more. Marketing first and foremost informs. It can inform you that the problem that you have has even has a ready solution. It can inform you about the name of the product that solves your problem. It can inform you about alternative products that also solve your problem. Or it can reinforce and expand your existing opinions and believes. What you call the sole purpose is only one of these broad purposes of advertising.

Remember the time you learned of a particular programming library that does the thing that you wanted to do? Without marketing, you would not have learned about it.

Have you ever gone on a trip to a new place? How did you decide how you will spend your time? It was either because you researched things online and found websites that told you about those things. Or you saw a brochure at your hotel. Or an ad at the airport.

Think about how you learned about your favorite web framework. It was likely through word-of-mouth advertising.

Why do you drink (coke / pepsi / fav. brand of tea / fav. brand of coffee)? What formed your opinion was some kind of marketing, either directly, or indirectly.

Many things we do and believes we hold are because of one form of marketing or another.

I feel your own examples undermine your positions:

Drinks specifically are one of the most clearcut negative examples to me, where there is zero product discovery/information/customer upside involved; the sole purpose of that CocaCola banner is to marginally shift the ad-targets consumption behavior (fully to his or her detriment, either from overconsuming and/or overpaying).

If I seek product information, ads are the absolute last place to look because they have all the incentive to hide everything negative about the product and to obfuscate any comparison with potentially superior competitors.

I'm not saying that all marketing is a wasteful detriment to humanity as a whole, but a lot of advertising has a zero-sum "benefit" to society, while binding a lot of ressources (but every rational company is somewhat "forced" to play anyway).

The original comment, and your initial response, talked about advertising. The examples you give, and this response in general, are marketing. They are very different, and marketing is much broader.

It's true that they are different, but I would not say that they're very different. There is a considerable group of people here on HN who have a narrow definition of what an ad is.

Advertising and marketing are indeed two different things, but the distinction is blurry and the overlap considerable. I've read through the comment thread and it seems that advertising and marketing seem interchangeable in the way they are being talked about.

That’s jesuitical hair-splitting.

> first and foremost informs

I'd claim any extent to which ads inform the viewer is downstream of the ultimate goal of having people spend money on the product. The company behind the ad does not inherently care about you being informed, just that informing people (in very selective ways) sometimes happens to be an effective way to increase sales. Where it better serves their purpose to misinform, that's what they do (which legislation can help curb).

> Remember the time you learned of a particular programming library that does the thing that you wanted to do?

Typically by searching a package index, opposed to someone being paid to shove a product in my face unsolicited while I'm trying to look at something else.

I don't think it really helps defend meaningfulness of the job in question ("techy, working on serving ads") to expand the scope to considering other things (writing package documentation, reviewing tourist destinations, ...) and then point to the fact that some of those other things, which the employee in question doesn't do, are useful.

> Why do you drink (coke / pepsi / fav. brand of tea / fav. brand of coffee)? What formed your opinion was some kind of marketing, either directly, or indirectly.

Being persauded to buy one sugary drink over another (or over water) doesn't really seem to be a constructive outcome, especially for all the time and resources wasted. Actual information incidentally gained from Coke ads is little to none - you'd be far better with an independent review/comparison.

Companies exist to make money. They use marketing as part of that process. However, we can not forget that consumers derive value from the things that companies sell. If we only focus on the big bad companies, then it is not possible to see how marketing could also serve the consumer.

Believe it or not, some people do enjoy a sugary drink from time to time. While I don't drink soft drinks regularly, I recently discovered skyr protein yogurts through advertising. That's a product that caters to a desire that I have. Never heard of skyr before!

> I don't think it really helps defend meaningfulness of the job in question ("techy, working on serving ads") to expand the scope to considering other things (writing package documentation, reviewing tourist destinations, ...)

There was a blanket statement that all ads are negative and people making them are useless -- exaggeration and gross simplification is mine. I offered some counterpoints for more balanced thinking. There is plenty of advertising that delivers positive value, hence some advertising jobs are useful.

One problem is that people sometimes think of ads as only web display ads. They are not aware that there are many other kinds of ads. Independent review sites, travel blogs, and posts on HN about an interesting software package are also ads. When truly independent, it's called word-of-mouth advertising.

> Believe it or not, some people do enjoy a sugary drink from time to time

But does that mean spending billions in resources on getting people to consume more sugary drinks is a net positive?

I don't think so. I think the goal of having more people consume sugary drinks is a net negative even if it were achieved for free, and that the direction our decision-making needs to be pushed (if at all) is towards consuming fewer sugary drinks (to counteract our evolutionary bias towards consuming more than is healthy for us), and probably spending less of our time hearing/thinking about them too.

> One problem is that people sometimes think of ads as only web display ads. They are not aware that there are many other kinds of ads. Independent review sites, travel blogs, [...]

Still seems to come back to the same issue - sure you can hold a broad definition of "ads" that includes independent travel blogs if you want, but that isn't what the "fellow techy, working on serving ads" in question is working on, or what people are talking about when they complain about someone being paid to shove a product in their face unsolicited when they're trying to look at something else.

My point is that all ads are bad and marketing can provide value for consumers.

Pointing out an egregious case of advertising that does not deliver a net positive does not disprove that point. There are plenty of examples of bad advertising. It does not take a lot of effort to find them. But from that extrapolating that all advertising is bad and calling all jobs related to it as useless is excessive.

> Pointing out an egregious case of advertising that does not deliver a net positive does not disprove that point.

Coke/Pepsi were your own examples. I don't believe there are just a limited number of bad cases in an otherwise good system, but rather that at it's core is a huge zero-sum game of burning resources to take market share back and forth, with even the non-zero-sum impacts (people hearing more about sugary drinks instead of other things, and consuming more sugary drinks than they otherwise would) being of questionable value in most cases (in some cases potentially good, but still disproportionately small benefit compared to resource wastage).

I think it's similar to Bitcoin mining as an example of what happens when competition is not directed towards a useful end like improving the product.

> But from that extrapolating that all advertising is bad and calling all jobs related to it as useless is excessive.

A job working on serving web ads is almost guarenteed to be a net negative to society in my eyes.

I wouldn't really consider someone writing a travel blog to be working in advertising (unless they get paid to push certain destinations) and I don't think anyone here's claiming that to be useless.

Show HN is advertising.

Sure; but people are not typically getting paid to post Show HNs, and that content is not shown to victims unsolicitedly, so I don't have any problem with it either.

If you are a "fellow techy, working on serving ads", it is a pretty safe assumption that producing "Show HNs" is neither the main purpose of your job nor very representative.

When I read ads in the old, old National geographic magazines at my grandparents what startles me is the entire paragraphs of text laying out the case for their product. I miss that even if it was BS.

Even TV ads used to be a bit closer to that.

Likely false but always felt likely there was a bit of respect being paid toward the reader/viewer in terms of recognizing them as an intelligent individual.

Nowadays advertisements aimed at adults are too different than ones for kids stuff. All vulgar (not sexual) fluff and eye candy.

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