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Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

There are two kinds of advertising. I will call them "scarcity advertising" and "abundance advertising".

Scarcity advertising is, for example, "Joe's grocery now has cantaloupes" (back in the day when cantaloupes were not available all year). It's information - something is now available that wasn't available before.

Abundance advertising is, for example, "The Chevrolet SomeHotCar will give you an exciting life like the people in this ad. Don't you want that?" As someone put it (wish I remember who, I would give credit): "[This kind of] advertising attempts to make the person you are envy the person you could be with their product. In other words, it attempts to steal your satisfaction and then offers to sell it back to you."

The first kind of advertising is useful. The second is abusive.

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Is the first kind of advertising useful? It seems like there are better ways to obtain that information, like, for example a search. The benefit being that I only am presented with that information if I actually need/want cantaloups

I do appreciate the first kind. I want to know what Lidl has on offer this week, but I don't care about searching their website about specific products.

> You have cantaloupes? Oh, okay, I forgot it was the season.

> I'd be happier and more actualised if I owned your car? No, to hell with your manipulation of who I should aspire to be.

I don't feel like I'm particularly harmed by forgetting cantaloup season. I don't generally forget that products exist if my life is actually improved by them in any meaningful way.

You know what I do forget? What I was doing before you decided to "remind" me of your shit product in the middle of me trying to complete a task.

I have run hundreds of millions in advertising dollars for dozens of companies. The vast majority of ad spend is the former category.

I think you need to explain some more, because that's not what I see around me.

Usually the second type is called “brand advertising”. The idea is to create a positive association with a brand and not expect you to take any immediate action. The first type maybe “action advertising” (I’ve heard other terms).

Most advertising is actually the first type.

Assuming you mean "conversion advertising" vs "brand advertising", what I remember looking at industry-wide numbers when I worked on Google Ads was that they're actually pretty close, with brand advertising being slightly bigger. Something like 60/40 industrywide.

Now, it varies widely depending on the medium, search ads lean way more on conversion advertising, with display and especially video ads leaning more on the brand side.

Brands are bullshit. I'd actually be on board with the conventional capitalism view of producer-consumer information levels if brands went away. They distort quality, they distort product perception, they don't have anything to do with the actual reality of most people. “Consumption styles as part of personality” (aka brands) are a cancer.

> The first kind of advertising is useful.

What utility does the first sort of advertising have? At best it seems non-abusive, but it still clogs up our brains with crap we don't need and didn't ask for.

Unless you like cantaloupes.

If advertising was for my benefit it would be optional.

I miss brochures ...

What a great way to put it. I went looking and it’s from John Berger’s Ways of Seeing.

> The spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself as she will become if she buys the product. She is meant to imagine herself transformed by the product into an object of envy for others, an envy which will then justify her loving herself. One could put this another way: the publicity image steals her love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the product.

https://www.ways-of-seeing.com/ch7

There are two kinds of advertising. One kind slaps you in the face at the least expected moment. The other kind is like the yellow pages which you open whenever you need something.

We could always allow opt-in advertising (“send me your monthly/weekly/whatever catalog”) and ban the unsolicited kind. This could extend to asking for things like trade magazines or email newsletters or what have you.

Useful kind preserved, evil kind squashed.

How about an ad (assuming an honest product, since this thread is clearly about ads as such) in a remote village saying "get a work visa to Europe/US, you could live like these people with higher living standards!"

People who were quite happy being subsistence farmers are now aware, or much more aware, of the possibility of higher living standards. Doesn't seem immoral to me. Why would a car ad be immoral then? Perhaps it will improve the average purchasers life? I say it someone who is quite happy with a 15yo Honda Fit :)

But now I want a cantaloupe and beforehand I didn't, and I'm slightly less happy and satisfied with this lack of cantaloupe that I now viscerally feel.

Whilst I'm at the grocery store is the appropriate time to work out that cantaloupe is an option.

Not in the middle of watching a cricket match.

Is this satire? Does merely seeing a picture of a cantaloup on a shelf harm your psyche? Sure, if it's a model holding them up to her chest saying "come get my melons" i can understand that might qualify. But i don't see how "joe's has cantaloup again" would make you feel literally anything unless you already wanted cantaloupe, in which case the notification was beneficial in _allieving_ a negative emotion and not creating one.

I admit that the line gets very fuzzy at a certain point but i think we can agree that the extremes are different things.

Semi-satire. Three quarters.

It kinda depends on how much of a craving item it is. Fruits and veg, no worries ;)

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