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Comment by shkkmo | Hacker News Reader

> The study used ad spend as a proxy for ads viewed

Yes, clearly that was the intent. That doesn't mean you can generalize from your proxy to the thing you have a hard time measuring.

> So ad spend is going up at the same time that the number of ads per spend is increasing, at a rate substantially faster than during their study period.

It seems like you are just making up facts.

The fact is that global spending on advertising is a fairly steady percentage of the GPD. It does occilate a little up and down, but the "exponential" growth you are talking about is merely the exponential growth of GDP.

Thus your argument that internet has increased ad spend and thus decreased happiness is false.

Addionaly, while this is also hard to quantify, the trends for cost per ad view does seem to be moving in the opposite direction. The cost of an impression seems to be moving upwards, not downwards.

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The study started in 1980 and carried on to 2013. So they started in an era where you had a mixture of extremely expensive (television) or extremely low reach (local newspaper classifieds) ads. In the internet era you have high reach low cost options such that for less than $100, like $30 adjusted to 1980 dollars, you can hit tens of thousands of people. And there are vastly more people advertising precisely because of that.

Your GDP thing is a complete red herring. GDP has no relevance on the meaning of increases in advertising. Finally here [1] is a graph of global advertising spend over the years. Yes it is increasing exponentially, and obviously so are the number of ads people are seeing.

[1] - https://www.visualcapitalist.com/evolution-global-advertisin...

> In the internet era you have high reach low cost options such that for less than $100, like $30 adjusted to 1980 dollars, you can hit tens of thousands of people.

You could buy a classified with the same or better reach and same price in 1980.

> Your GDP thing is a complete red herring. GDP has no relevance on the meaning of increases in advertising.

You've claimed that internet cause ad spending to grow. Ad spending only grew because the GDP grew so you can't blame the internet for it.

> Yes it is increasing exponentially

Again, because GDP is increasing exponentially.

Also your graph doesn't show total spend, only the breakdown by sector.

Obviously GDP growth does not magically make spending on something increase.

And similarly obviously classifieds didn't have even remotely near the same reach. Classifieds were an opt-in categorized system that was delivered to a small subset of classified viewers that was, itself, a small subset of all newspaper subscribers in society. And you're paying for small lines of text delivered to this opt-in audience as opposed to as opposed to graphical images, or even videos, imposed on people against their will.

> Obviously GDP growth does not magically make spending on something increase.

Its not magic, but spending on certain types of things do increase with GDP. Insisting that they don't, despite the evidence that they do historically because it is inconvenient for your argument isn't convincing.

> And similarly obviously classifieds didn't have even remotely near the same reach.

You are claiming that a classified in 1970 would not routinely reach tens of thousands of people?

> as opposed to graphical images, or even videos, imposed on people against their will

The nature of advertising has changes and I don't really doubt it has been made more harmful. What I don't see is a line between that and your fantastical claim that the internet is somehow a net negative.

Once again GDP has nothing to do with anything here. Whether it was higher, lesser, or whatever else does not matter. Advertising spending increased exponentially only because exponentially more money was being spent on advertising. How exactly that relates to GDP has no relevance, whatsoever.

In 1980 (this study didn't even cover 1970), there were something like 1750 newspapers for something like 60 million readers. So the subscribers per paper was already (relatively) very low. And with classifieds you get a very tiny subset of that that opt-in to reading the classifieds, and further opt-in to the section you are listed in. It should be beyond obvious that this has basically no relationship whatsoever to modern advertising.

> How exactly that relates to GDP has no relevance, whatsoever.

You are claiming that the increased spending on advertising is due to the internet. The relationship between GDP and ad spending pretty clearly indicates that the internet was not the cause of increased ad spend, except in as much as it increased GDP.

If the internet has any effect on ad spend growth, you would have seen the growth rates of GDP and ad spend diverge with the birth of the internet.

To see how clearly wrong you are consider this, part of GDP growth is population growth. You are claiming that population growth is irrelevant to ad spend growth?

> It should be beyond obvious that this has basically no relationship whatsoever to modern advertising.

Even your own numbers pretty clearly indicate that the pricing can be equivalent, which was my point.

GDP is an abstract measurement of other things that, itself, has no causal effect on anything. Yes, population can increase while GDP decreases. And spending on things also does not just naturally increase. It increases if, and only if, there is more spending on it. And no, classifieds are not like modern advertising and you clinging onto this reflects that you are not arguing in good faith.

[flagged]

No, you. As already clarified, they didn't compare in any way whatsoever, including reach.

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