Is Advertising Morally Justifiable? The Importance of Protecting Our Attention

But what is being passed today as advertising is nothing like that, it is more like high school psychological and emotional blackmail. "Here is this product. If you don't have it you are not in the ingroup but in the outgroup. You are not beautiful enough without this product. People will look down on you without this product. This product will make you more attractive to the opposite sex and more likely to land a high paying high profile job".

It is very hard to legislate this are because of freedom of speech concerns but the British have a very good set of regulations concerning to advertisement [1] and an independent regulator responsible for this area [2].

[1] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2008/9780110811475/conte...

[2] https://www.asa.org.uk/About-ASA/Our-history.aspx

Modern advertising is not merely informing people about products and what they do. It's brain-hacking, where advertisers have figured out over decades of experience, and research into human cognitive biases and failure modes, ways of presenting the same product, the same information, but getting a desired response out of the target.

We accept this as a society because we tell ourselves that, as rational human beings, we have the choice to listen to or reject these messages. But modern understandings of cognitive biases show how advertising works on deeper levels, and even works despite us knowing about the tricks that are being used on us.

The problem is that there's a severe imbalance. Advertisers are getting better and better at attacking -- at figuring out precisely what makes us tick, down to the level of pixels on an A/B-tested website.

Are people getting any better at defending themselves? Are people being trained in dealing with their cognitive biases to make themselves resistant? Overall, I don't think so. There's no law of nature that says that attackers and defenders must be equal in strength; the situation we're in right now with advertising is like medieval warfare with the advent of the crossbow -- a great imbalance in favor of the attacker that disrupted the nature of combat for centuries.

I've sat down with my kids while they watch TV and it's disgusting just how much they POUND children with ads to buy toys. The advertising industry is insidious. Just absolutely hound them! I've seen taken the TV out of their room and taught them how to use Popcorn Time to watch whatever they want. No more ads in this house.

http://zenpencils.com/comic/155-banksy-taking-the-piss-expli...

Adv manipulates your agency, your ability to make independent decisions. Tracker-based targeted advertising exploits all human vulnerabilities that are used in "the long con."

Firms that make their money on more sophisticated advertising techniques understand this. It reminds me of the classic picture of 7 Big-Tobacco executives swearing to Congress that "tobacco is not addictive" despite evidence that they internally held reams of documentation from 1960s indicating the opposite [1].

[1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/settlement/tim...

I remember hearing on NPR about a study some marketers conducted. They surveyed college classes in the U.S. They asked students in person to raise their hands if they felt their purchasing decisions were influenced by advertising. Almost nobody raised their hands. They also observed that many of those who didn't raise their hands were wearing branded clothes and hats at the time (and not the clothing's brand, completely unrelated brands like Monster energy drink). This means that even when advertisers have successfully converted one of their targets into a walking human advertisement, their target remains convinced that the advertiser has had no influence over them whatsoever.

So if your goal is to diminish advertising, that's what you're up against. The victimized not only don't realize that they're being victimized, but will also defend the rights of the victimizer to continue victimizing them as a matter of free speech.

But... I would not make it illegal, but very heavily taxed. Tax billboards for 95% out of this world because they are disgusting (that 5% might give us 50% of the current tax income), tax companies into only having small logo's on their buildings and into sponsoring events/art/archtecture/etc.

Focus, awareness, peace of mind, not selling out, "outside and inside come in pairs".

On such grounds many clinics forbid manufacturers' reps to have access to staff, else they would be tainted. Of course they'd be, a dozen years of training and 20 years on the front lines mean nothing, really, prescribers are clearly unable to know a sales pitch when they hear it, incapable of applying their own judgement concerning a product's merit.

Sure, there are instances where pharma firms have been unethical, but in my dealings with them, reps have mostly stayed within the lines. In case they don't, I'm not that delicate and can deal with overzealousness when necessary. Generally, it's a two-way interaction, I listen to what reps have to say, and the better ones listen to my feedback about clinical realities.

One thing that gets lost in the noisy public discourse is the role of marketing. In our economic system marketing is fundamental to distribution of goods and services. A pharma company could develop a break-through product, but if providers don't know of its existence it won't be used where it would make a difference.

Inadequate marketing has impeded uptake of a number of useful medications, and fewer treatment options is not a good thing. I'm not advocating a free-for-all in this sphere, rules are necessary. But we can have too many rules too, better to maintain an intelligent balance.

Sometimes I think about an interesting experiment: what if all advertising had to follow the same rules as pharmaceutical companies? Imagine a car commercial on TV, and the announcer having to murmur a list of all the defects reported for the car's vehicle class. You know, real truth in advertising would be very refreshing.

In other ways, wouldnt it be great to have the right to not be subject to advertising? Adblock has been great at providing such experience on the web to me..how about billboards? TV? Eliminate product integration? Etc.

I dont like using the word "moral" to describe a problem, because it makes it very subjective. The amount of money that goes into advertising is ridiculous and in aggregate it has to be doing lots of damage by opportunity cost and mis-information.

I am not sure regulations will help much. For one thing, is is hard to specify where the limits lie, and to objectively detect when an ad cross the limits. Another thing is that all regulations bend depending on how much money you have to throw at those. And in this case it is a lot.

So along with regulations, I think it is also necessary to educate kids to defend against manipulations like this. I don't think schools will ever do something like this. So it should come from parents, from home. Teach them how such manipulations work, teach them how to recognize and avoid them. In the process, you will also teach them very useful critical thinking.

But there may be social aspects that work against these. For example, if you never watch ads in your home, your kid may get ridiculed in the school because he/she does not know about Ad xyz. The same way you will be ridiculed today for not using Facebook or whatsapp.

So, in short, I think we should talk about this, A LOT. Both online and offline.

Build a public awareness.

Make it cool, to NOT watch ads.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9690432

Mostly, I don't think that's true. When I turn on the TV to watch a show, I think I am consenting to some advertising being present, and naturally the TV station has sold that advertising time to some other company. Similar situation with websites, search engines, radio, newspapers, etc.

The only situation where I think the assertion might be true is when it comes to advertising in public areas, outdoors, etc. I don't think it's reasonable to argue that consent has been given in those circumstances.

It's at the heart of the time suck economy we live in today (and which gets worse everyday): http://www.geekwire.com/2013/time-suck-economy-starting-buil...

This makes companies and advertisers feel good, because it's a demonstration of power, and of status.

Contrary to what this article claims...people do value their attention and are very particular and careful with how they allocate it. Good marketers also know how valuable peoples attention is and are careful to respect it...hence the rise of content marketing and value add advertising.

The argument that consumers dont give media permission to sell their attention is false. You can always change the channel, click away, drive a different route, and stop using an app. You make choices about how you allocate your attention and you accept the costs associated with it by allocating your attention to that media.

"advertising imposes costs on individuals without permission or compensation. It extracts our precious attention and emits toxic by-products, such as the sale of our personal information to dodgy third parties."

I wish my life was that important that my attention not only could be "precious" but that it was so precious that that I'm worried about the demands ads make on my attention instead of other things (like staying up too late making comments on web sites...).

If you are employed in an industry other than agriculture, textiles, or residential construction, there would be no work for you or any of your coworkers without advertising. If people's basic urges do not require them to give you money, then there is no money with which to write your paycheck.

Obviously it can be taken too far, but eliminating advertising from the world in all forms is probably not what you want.

I would posit that the advertising market is actually quite efficient as opposed to being a market failure. Let's examine a paragraph from the market failure section:

> Movie theatres, cable channels, phone apps, bill-board operators, and so on price the sale of your attention at what it takes to extract it from you - namely, how easy it is for you to escape their predations. This is often much lower than the value to you, or to others, of directing your attention to something else.

The author makes the implicit assumption that advertisements automatically garner 100% of our attention. They don't. When was the last time you went to a movie theater before the previews started, sat silently, and stared at the advert loop? You probably have never done that! Instead, you give your attention to your loved ones or your phone. And maybe you'll watch the previews, but if you're even somewhat into watching newly released movies, those add value to you.

Some advertisements do capture our attention, and those are priced appropriately. Super Bowl commercials cost more on a CPM basis than a commercial to be aired during the Walking Dead, which in turn costs more than an Instagram sponsored story. This is the sign of an efficient market, not a market failure.

Moreover, people do avoid advertisements when they deem it necessary. Some people buy the premium versions of iPhone applications, some people only watch new TV shows on Netflix, and some people pay extra to watch live sports events on an ad-free Internet stream. Again, this is the sign of an efficient market, not a market failure.

You could, instead, possibly make the argument that advertising is a prisoner's dilemma. Perhaps the world would be better off without advertising. (I'm not even sure that this is true, given that advertising does benefit people.) But if there are no advertisements and a single company ran a TV spot, it would be at a huge competitive advantage. So everyone runs marketing campaigns. I really think this benefits the consumer more than the author gives credit for, however. Marketing is the field of creating value for a specific segment of the population, who in turn will enter into a long-term relationship with your firm and give you economic value in return. Advertising is an important part of this.

Also, to be clear, I don't advocate for marketing strategies that themselves are disingenuous. Moreover, there are perfectly valid arguments to make that inference-based advertising are immoral, or that Internet tracking is immoral. But the author is painting with absolutely massive brush strokes against the entire field of "advertising," and I feel the need to strongly qualify his argument.

There's a lot I want to say about this piece, because it seems that the author fundamentally misunderstands marketing. The entire bit about advertisers charging consumers directly is a terrible business idea, for example, for the same reason that we have grocery stores and shopping malls. However, I don't really want to spend all afternoon on a point-by-point response.

Services we use daily are funded by advertising. Virtually all news and media companies. Sure, it is a bit nefarious to do some of the things that get done on the internet like trackers and info siloing and such, but seriously? Is not seeing an advert a moral imperative?

> I want to keep using this free email, social network, enhanced and personalized search capability, free cloud storage, document collaboration, real time news updates, weather, be entertained by television, be entertained by blogs, participate in an online community, etc

ok awesome, pay us money then, $1 a month per website/service you use?

> no

Or even the more infuriating, of course I would do that. Would you? Would you pay for google, facebook, twitter, reddit, HN, new york times, bloomberg? Maybe, but how much would you pay to that website your friend linked in an email? How many of you have apps or work at companies that get paid by advert revenue?

In a world where is is insanely easy to block ads, or to just ignore them, surely this isn't a question of morality. More of triviality and annoyance. I have 3 adblock extensions + uBlock as well as a DNS killer. I HATE ads. The reason ads are so annoying is because I have all of these things. So now companies search exploits to get my data to sell it and load tons of JS libraries to break through all of the blocking software I have. The situation sucks, but it isn't morality.

tl;dr If you think Axe body spray will get you laid, you are weak minded. Advertising pays for everything you use on the internet, and entrenched protocols are hard to disrupt. Get adblock, ublock and don't buy things you don't need.

[0]http://www.businessinsider.com/the-35-companies-that-spent-1... [1]I still think comcast is a shitty company

edit: As pointed out NBC is owned by comcast, ABC is owned by Disney corporation and I have edited to reflect that.

Since there is no objective standard of morality, and since "morality" is just a fancy word for "things that people consider good or bad," we probably just have to look out into the world and see whether advertising is against the morals of most. Given that we see little great outrage over the use of advertising, even among those who are aware of its risks, I have to conclude that advertising is morally justifiable.