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Comment by verdverm | Hacker News Reader

I used to know one of the great ad execs from Mama Bell and he told me nothing happens in this world until a person decides to trade a dollar for something.

How do they decide such things? How do people become aware of what things are available for purchase?

Another thing he said was that they knew half of their ad spend was "wasted" on people who would never buy what you have to sell.

The feeling I get from the author is that targeted advertising is the problem, which also has a 50%+ waste factor (due in large part to fraud). I suspect it is unlikely all the complexities of contemporary marketing and advertising are worth it.

Also worth considering to what extent the author's website is a form of advertisement itself.

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> feeling I get from the author is that targeted advertising is the problem

Non-targeted advertising is also a blight. If you've never visited a place where billboards are illegal, it may be hard to imagine what a relief it is to be free of them.

yeah, and now those trucks with video on the side they drive around, all that stuff needs to end, citizens united too while we're at it (possibly a pre-req)

That ad exec certainly had a myopic point of view. Just like the old saying, "If you wear shoes, the world is covered with leather."

For sure, our economy depends on buying and selling, and buying and selling depends on advertising. Like other things that can be abused, advertising needs regulation.

But to say that "nothing" happens without money changing hands ignores a vast swath of the human experience. I pity the person who thinks that everything has a price in dollars and cents.

I believe the comment about trading a dollar is more a comment on money being the medium of exchange. Humanity had a history without money, and while some bartering still exists, by and large we live in a society where money is how we trade in situations where you have something I want, but I lack something you want.

“Nothing” can easily be understood as a rhetorical emphasis in that quote.

> half of their ad spend was "wasted"

That would be a phenomenal ROI. In almost all advertising contexts the hit rate is far, far lower. Resulting in everyone drowning in ads to hit the few targets.

To the commenters saying, "but how will people/companies know what to buy?"... 1) Through the same high-quality information channels you usually use today: customer reviews, word of mouth, point of sale, and lived experience. For B2B, you could still have industry events or demos where it is essentially a physical opt-in for advertising. 2) I could not possibly care. The offsetting benefit of living in a world where I am not surrounded by messages trying to deceive me into spending money is well worth losing whatever tiny signal might be in that noise.

Maybe it's not possible (tried and failed or just technical fantasy), but if the ad market could be inverted where I could manage what I am and am not interested in, as well as sell feedback on the ad (couldn't understand the value prop, thought it was dumb, loved it, etc) where the end user is not the product but a partner in that marketplace.

I've not thought it through deeply, but the notion intrigued me.

If I want to know what's available for purchase, I check out https://geizhals.de or visit a store and look what's there.

Hope I could give insight into a largely ad free life

Flip side of it is - I love not seeing advertisements, of any type.

Sponsorblock and uBlock Origin makes YouTube a whole different experience. Locally backed-up or on-demand TV shows are so much more bingeable than the ones on DVR. I love watching livestreams and not being pulled aside for a 30 second sponsored interruption. It makes me giddy with excitement paying for software and media that does not have any advertisement in it whatsoever.

The big picture is great and all, but watching something like the Super Bowl you get a sense of how wasteful all that marketing is. If half those companies reinvested their ad budget into their product, they'd be more likely to earn my money than if they jumped over a dolphin with a jet ski to promote H&R Block or Polymarket.

Marketing has always been one big, slippery slope of transgression that could always benefit from a reset.

I wholeheartedly agree and put effort into not seeing ads as well. At the same time, there are companies I like doing business with that I would never have known about were it not for their advertising, marketing, and/or sponsorships.

Legislating advertisement as an opt-in experience would probably satisfy both of us.

If only there were some institution full of independently minded individuals who could tell us, plainly and evenhandedly, without undue influence, about products we might be interested in.

I've almost never used YouTube with ads, and I'd argue that it's instead insane to have long ads breaking your experience so often.

Of course it's a costly service that needs to at least recover the costs, but yeah not with full-screen ads please.

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