[HN Gopher] Advertising as a major source of human dissatisfacti...
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Advertising as a major source of human dissatisfaction (2019) [pdf]
Author : anigbrowl
Score : 164 points
Date : 2025-12-05 20:18 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.andrewoswald.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.andrewoswald.com)
| mrdevlar wrote:
| Whenever I read anything like this, I am reminded that everyone
| should see Adam Curtis' "The Century of Self"
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoMi95tfgP4) which is about how
| Sigmund Freud's nephew created the cancerous style of marketing
| that is ubiquitous in our society.
| sharkweek wrote:
| Yes, this should be required viewing in high school imo.
|
| As someone who used to think I was generally "immune" to
| advertising, I have come to realize the influence goes so much
| deeper than "see ad on TV, go buy product" and is instead a
| much, much darker sense of "the only way to get rid of this
| anxiety is to Buy More Stuff."
|
| His more recent Can't Get You Out of My Head is also fantastic
| about how we got from There to Here from WWII to present day.
| kridsdale3 wrote:
| I watched this more than 10 years ago and it remains the
| singular top recommendation I have to anyone who wants to
| understand modern society.
|
| IT IS THAT GOOD.
| stuxnet79 wrote:
| I watched this documentary almost 10 years ago now and it
| changed my life.
| api wrote:
| I'd be in favor of significantly taxing advertising for the same
| reason that we levy "vice taxes" on booze, cigarettes, gambling,
| etc.
|
| It would at the very least reduce the amount of it and select for
| advertising of a higher quality, cutting the noise a little.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Well, we have to balance that with advertising funding a ton of
| things that we otherwise value but would rather not pay for.
| Transit, free wifi, little leagues, etc.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| No, we don't. Transit is primarily funded by taxes, then
| fares and only then ads. Ad-free municipal wifi exists in a
| lot of places. Etc.
| crote wrote:
| How about we just tax companies, and give those things
| government subsidies? Same outcome, but without the ugly ads.
| ben_w wrote:
| Advertising either does or doesn't cause an increase in
| spending on whatever is advertised.
|
| If it does increase spending on things being advertised, the
| absence leaves us with more money for all those other things
| that are currently ad-supported.
|
| If it doesn't, it's a scam.
|
| If those things supported by ads would be literally
| unaffordable by the consumers if not for those ads, because
| the consumers are so poor they have no money to spend, the
| fork is still true; it's just that if those ads work then
| they push those already-poor consumers into debt for things
| they'd otherwise not buy because they couldn't afford, making
| them even poorer.
| morleytj wrote:
| The reason it pays for that is through redistribution though,
| right? If they weren't receiving a monetary benefit from
| advertising, they wouldn't run them, and the monetary benefit
| needs to be larger than the cost to fund those things,
| otherwise it wouldn't be cost-efficient to run it.
|
| By definition it shows an issue where we have a process that
| tricks human minds into thinking they aren't paying for
| something, when as a collective, we pay more for a worse
| service than we would have if it existed in a alternate
| framework.
| venturecruelty wrote:
| How did we have nice things that mutually benefit each other
| and society before advertising?
| kerkeslager wrote:
| The best transit systems don't have ads.
|
| I've never even used free wifi that was ad supported, and I'm
| not aware of a situation where this is common.
|
| Ad revenue is nowhere near enough to build the facilities
| necessary to play baseball, so little leagues are getting
| funding in a lot of other ways which could fill in the gaps
| if ad revenue were removed.
|
| The simple fact is that we have lots of examples of ads being
| removed and economies puttering along just fine.
| _factor wrote:
| Taxation shouldn't be used to curb habits, that's what laws are
| for.
| kimbernator wrote:
| I worry that such a tax would create a self-reinforcing
| monopolistic effect by making it harder for smaller companies
| to do it, thus enriching those that can afford to do it. Even
| if there's a threshold under which it's not taxed, it still
| benefits big corporations.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| That's the benefit of just such a "Microsoft model": one
| throat to choke, as a manager once told me. A tightly
| regulated and taxed ad monopoly system would be a lot tamer,
| at least until it captures the regulators.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Does anyone tax ad spend?
| genericacct wrote:
| It is actually incentivized in some cases
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Ad spend is usually tax deductible
| nickff wrote:
| The UK has a 'Digital Services Tax', which is effectively an
| internet ad tax:
| https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/introduction-of-t...
| You could also argue that corporate taxes do tax ads, as
| they're applied to advertising-based companies, though these
| taxes usually don't 'target' ad companies. Corporate taxes are
| passed on to customers, employees, suppliers, or investors;
| usually one of the first three (and most often the first one),
| as that list is in increasing order of 'captivity'.
| arjie wrote:
| I assume you mean some percent of ad spend as a tax? Well, the
| cheapest ads to run are usually the most obnoxious ones. Taxing
| ad spend is a bit like taxing you more the nicer the building
| you build on a piece of land. You're directing the incentive in
| the wrong direction. A minimum fee per ad run perhaps would
| have an effect more in line with what you're thinking, I think,
| though I haven't thought about it much.
| amelius wrote:
| This doesn't even address the disastrous effects of
| overconsumption that inevitability follow from advertising.
| Advertising is destroying the climate and our planet.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| I maintain a healthy depression without ads, the old fashioned
| way.
| karlgkk wrote:
| Between adblock, piracy, and generally avoiding services, and
| things that make me see ads...
|
| it's always really jarring when I visit my parents and I'm forced
| to watch cable TV. It's like being assaulted.
| kachapopopow wrote:
| I got assulted with a youtube ad recently I couldn't believe
| how bad it made me feel and I don't really know why. At least
| the ads on twitter are generally amusing in a way where it's
| some ai furries that look like kids or some outright scam, but
| having an ad pretend to be my friend / relate to me felt so
| offputting that it doesn't even make sense.
| ben_w wrote:
| > At least the ads on twitter are generally amusing in a way
| where it's some ai furries that look like kids or some
| outright scam
|
| Ironic, as most of the furries I know hate GenAI with a
| passion.
| nilamo wrote:
| They're very annoying all around on YouTube. Hit skip, wait
| five seconds, hit skip again... and if you don't, there's a
| several minute ad??!
| WD-42 wrote:
| The parent's cable is so bad. First of all, the ratio is way
| off. Like 60% content to 40% advertisements, and I'm being
| generous. Then it's SO LOUD. Maybe the decibels aren't actually
| higher (I think that was outlawed?) but these ad firms employ
| some top notch sound designers that make their ads almost
| impossible to tune out.
|
| I have no idea how this is still a viable product. Coasting off
| Boomer's 50+ year old habits I guess?
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Coming from Europe, US TV is really something dystopian.
| There's this constant stream of interruption to put as much
| ads as possible in your face, it's disgusting.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| Unfortunately it is very easy to get around dB rules with
| aggressive loudness mixing
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Meanwhile plenty of the rest of the world still has strict
| limits on the amount of commercials per hour of content, and
| gets to enjoy more of the show they actually pay for rather
| than being sold a drug for a condition they do not have.
|
| Reagan lifted some of those limits because "free market",
| because apparently a free market requires you to not get the
| content you pay for? Also so we could directly advertise to
| children more. Reagan literally removed restrictions to
| selling your child plastic shit and America loved it.
|
| American consumers are so much more willing to put up with
| atrocious crap it seems.
|
| It's a viable product because Americans work very hard to not
| look around and see the way other people have it in other
| countries, because they can't copy that, because america is
| "special"
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| IIRC the wide use of adblockers in the US constitutes the
| largest consumer boycott in the world. Obviously there are some
| caveats that come with that statement, such as how you can
| simply download a specific browser and you're technically
| participating, but still interesting to me nonetheless.
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| This. Even watching cable TV in a hotel room feels like a
| different life.
|
| OTOH, my (teen) kids get a kick out of watching commercials
| sometimes, because it's something novel to them and they say it
| actually helps bring their attention to stuff they had no idea
| existed..
| allears wrote:
| Capitalism (at least our form of it) requires consumerism.
| Consumerism requires advertising. You may think it's just an
| annoyance, but it's the foundation of our economy. A dissatisfied
| consumer wants more; a satisfied consumer doesn't.
|
| Making as much money as possible off consumers is considered the
| highest business goal. Of course that leads to developing
| expertise in manipulating them.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| So you saying that capitalism's current form is incompatible
| with an ad-free world? What's the downside?
| allears wrote:
| We're living in the "downside," if you want to call it that.
| I was just trying to point out that advertising is pervasive
| for a very good reason, because our society has created
| strong incentives and few barriers for it. And it's required
| to support our economy, otherwise all that stuff wouldn't get
| consumed.
| venturecruelty wrote:
| Is it good or bad that so many (often disposable) things
| are getting consumed?
| FrankWilhoit wrote:
| Advertising is, quite simply, a form of abuse. It is psychic
| violence that leaves no outward mark but diminishes its target by
| attempting to replace their perceptions, judgments, intentions
| with its own. A society with a pragmatic regard for its own
| survival would ban it outright.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| By what other means would people with a product or service to
| provide reach other people who are interested in obtaining that
| product or service?
| fruitworks wrote:
| classifieds, directories, that sort of thing
| SoftTalker wrote:
| That's advertising.
| LadyCailin wrote:
| Organic searches and word of mouth.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| They wouldn't. That's the beauty of the plan; it's a feature
| not a bug.
| mzajc wrote:
| Certainly not through conventional advertising. There's heaps
| of billboards where I live, and I'd have a very hard time
| finding one for a shop/service/political party/business that
| hasn't been around for years.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Meanwhile Maine banned them decades ago and it turns out
| the world doesn't end and you can still find ambulance
| chasing lawyers and weird cults just fine.
|
| Hell, one of our best known lawyers in the entire state is
| a freaking injury liability one.
|
| But hey, direct evidence of lack of harm never seems to
| stop all the cockroaches coming out of the woodwork
| insisting that the world fails if we can't have our
| eyeballs sold to the highest bidder at every second, and
| that a different world is just _impossible_. Gee, I wonder
| if those people are just ignorant, or maybe have some
| motivated reasoning, like if most of them were paid
| entirely by advertising revenue.
| venturecruelty wrote:
| Something something hard to get a man to understand
| something...
| pennomi wrote:
| Search. If they are interested, they will look for your
| thing.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Search what? Anything they find, is likely to be considered
| advertising.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| We can argue back and forth about the specifics but there is
| no denying we are _way_ too far in the wrong direction
| currently. Buy a car? The dealership slaps their name on it.
| Every screen at every stage bombards you. Radio, music
| streaming, ads everywhere. Billboards, benches, bus stops, it
| never stops. I still occasionally see those tacky trucks with
| bright ads displayed on them just driving around.
|
| A cursory search shows that the average person is exposed to
| ~5000 ads _a day_ in the US. Everyone is screaming for your
| attention. It 's not healthy.
| harrigan wrote:
| We replace push advertising (unsolicited messages) with pull
| systems (discoverability on demand).
| nickff wrote:
| Discoverability is a very difficult challenge, especially
| for small niches. Many customers contact my employer,
| saying that they didn't know our products existed (and many
| products have existed in some form for >10 years). If you
| can find a way to improve discoverability, you would be a
| hero to many niche businesses.
| scubbo wrote:
| I truly don't care. I would much rather miss out on
| hearing about a few genuinely-desirable products due to
| poor discoverability, if the payoff is that I don't have
| to suffer the deluge of imposed advertizing I never asked
| for.
| nickff wrote:
| Do you have any non-feeling based thoughts to contribute?
| I see your comment as being non-constructive, as you have
| not presented any new information or thinking.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| On the contrary, you haven't explained why
| discoverability matters, or why any of us should care.
| You just take it as a given that it justifies the means.
| I believe that is what the poster above is pointing out.
| 000ooo000 wrote:
| They just gave you a potential customer's perspective.
| The fact you wrote this off as uninteresting is telling.
| titzer wrote:
| Obviously specifics make a huge difference here so it's
| hard to generalize, but generally, finding the market is
| not a new problem. In the current business environment,
| the entire ecosystem is rigged against you, forcing you
| to advertise. Consumers are so inundated with advertising
| that almost have no energy leftover, or any expectation
| that they need to go out and search. Worse, search is
| distorted in all the wrong ways because of the exact same
| incentives. Your competitors (or even poorly-fitting
| tangentially-related products) are stealing discovery
| from you by capturing searches through advertising. They
| can't even get to you because a wall of SEO stands
| between them and you.
| nickff wrote:
| I think I (mostly) agree with you, but it seems like SEO
| and search in general would be even more distorted if
| outright advertising were disallowed or penalized.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| In the 90s I would spend my money buying a magazine
| called computer shopper when to wanted to shop for
| computer parts.
|
| That's opt in advertising.
|
| But you as the advertiser is not happy with that
| tweakimp wrote:
| They can put their information where it can be found easily
| by people who are interested-
| SoftTalker wrote:
| That's advertising.
| tweakimp wrote:
| No, advertising is putting information in peoples faces
| as much as possible even if they are not interested at
| all.
| cogman10 wrote:
| It's solicited advertising. Something I don't think
| almost anyone has a problem with.
|
| Unsolicited advertising is what everyone hates.
|
| If I go onto my grocery store website and see "we have a
| sale on xyz" I'm not bothered because I went to that
| website to see what they have. I'm also not bothered by
| sales displays in the store. All forms of acceptable
| advertising.
|
| But what I absolutely hate is navigating a webpage
| unrelated to my store and seeing "Did you know you can
| buy widgets at your local store!" or watching youtube and
| seeing an unskippable 30 second ad for my store. Or
| getting a newspaper that is actually just 90%
| advertisement with 2 paragraphs of actual news.
| NickM wrote:
| Have you really never bought a product or service for some
| other reason than that you saw an ad for it?
|
| People have plenty of other ways of finding out about useful
| products and services. You can talk to your friends and
| family, or go to a store and talk to a salesperson, or look
| up product reviews online, or even pay for something like a
| Consumer Reports subscription.
| venturecruelty wrote:
| Friends and family can be influenced, although I'd still
| trust them above anyone else. But salespeople are
| incentivized to lie to you (sorry, it's true). Product
| reviews are astroturfed by bots now. Consumer Reports, too,
| has been captured by industry, and is largely useless now.
|
| When the metric is "make sales and make as much money as
| possible", it will be incredibly difficult to avoid bias
| from people with a vested interest in selling you
| something. This is why advertising (admittedly, mixed with
| our current society) is so insidious: it's very hard to
| find a third party that isn't trying to profit off of you
| buying something.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > Consumer Reports, too, has been captured by industry,
| and is largely useless now.
|
| Any evidence of this?
| morleytj wrote:
| Currently I think it is difficult to argue that advertising
| in its most visible forms have any serious benefit to people
| looking to obtain a service.
|
| How often does an actual random advertisement shown on a
| billboard or a preroll youtube ad actually lead to a quality
| product? I think it is fairly common for people who are
| acquiring the best versions of things to do so primarily
| through research in forums or reviews, which is coming from
| the user looking from the product, rather than the product
| forcing itself into the mind of a given user to convince them
| to consume it.
| jgeada wrote:
| Word of mouth. If you make happy customers, they'll readily
| tell others.
|
| But the truth is most modern products aren't good enough to
| earn word of mouth.
|
| A good example of how to work it right is Steam: while it is
| not perfect, most discussions give them benefit of doubt
| because most of the time they do work for the best interest
| of their customers, not just themselves.
| venturecruelty wrote:
| Eeyup. Costco does zero advertising, and yet everyone knows
| about Costco. Why? Because they're good. In reality, the
| prices don't always work out, but they have so many other
| nice things: opticians, tires, a food court (with loss
| leaders!), rotisserie chicken (also a loss leader), solid
| products, etc. Costco exists to make money, sure, but it
| doesn't feel like they're trying to screw you. I can't say
| that about 99.9% of companies now.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _By what other means would people with a product or service
| to provide reach other people who are interested in obtaining
| that product or service?_
|
| In my opinion, it would take quite a lack of imagination to
| ask such a question.
|
| There's many many ways to reach people who _want_ your
| product. Industry-relevant news publishers and conferences,
| professional /personal anecdotes (eg, blogs and
| recommendations), demonstrations and training offers, etc.
|
| A different question would be: by what other means would
| businesses force their products on people who don't want
| them? Hopefully the answer is: none.
| vkou wrote:
| Maybe these means should be employed in more moderation?
|
| Certainly we wouldn't be better off if advertising were
| beamed 24/7 at full blast into your ears and eyes the second
| you step out into any public space.
|
| About 5% of its current proliferation would be a nice target
| to aim for - maybe a maximum of 200 ads a day[1] - but if
| that still proves to be an issue, we could always go lower.
|
| ---
|
| [1] With maybe five rising to the level of notice.
| eitau_1 wrote:
| Catalogues
| nilamo wrote:
| Free samples or in-store demonstrations like we used to.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| That's advertising.
| chistev wrote:
| Why is this getting down voted?
| Refreeze5224 wrote:
| Because it's low-effort and borderline bad faith.
| scubbo wrote:
| Because it assumes (in bad faith) that intrusive
| advertizing is the only way for motivated consumers to
| acquire information.
| cess11 wrote:
| Personal recommendations. Why would you trust someone with a
| pecuniary interest in selling you something?
| BigTTYGothGF wrote:
| Sounds like someone else's problem, mine is "I don't want to
| see your ads".
| kgwxd wrote:
| Acceptable ad: "I write code. If you need code, consider me
| because [short list of objective attributes about myself,
| related only to coding]." _posted somewhere people looking
| for people to code go to find people to code. Consciously put
| there by someone that can be held accountable for choosing to
| post it. Doesn 't evoke strong emotions, especially fear or
| hate, through barely related stories and imaginary. Doesn't
| contain any trackers._
|
| Unacceptable ad: Everything seen everywhere.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| I have never, even once, bought a product or chosen a brand
| based on advertising (of course you can point to subconscious
| conditioning, but that would not support the point you're
| making).
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| I've bought hundreds of products from ads. Most of them I
| wouldn't have known about if not for the ads. And I'm
| pretty happy with all those purchases.
| WD-42 wrote:
| Look everyone, we found one!
| titzer wrote:
| We built computers to store information and make that
| information searchable. Imagine! The place that sells stuff
| has a list of things...that you could search through...using
| a computer. Since you have to sell things somewhere, I am
| pretty sure the people selling them might put them in the
| place where people search for them.
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| Sure - NOW. Growing up in the 80s? How did you FIND things?
| For example, a shop willing to install random non-OEM car
| part for me? I had to hunt through the yellow pages, cold-
| call a bunch of places, etc.
|
| My parents are STILL in that mind-set - TV "tells you"
| about stuff - and TV never lies!!
|
| They're seeing more and more advertising during their
| "shows". And sadly, becoming more and more susceptible to
| it as they age - like the thousands of dollars of
| "apocalypse food buckets" they bought from some
| televangelist. Most of which they had to leave behind when
| they moved into the retirement community (ignoring the
| rationality of buying it in the first place).
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Everyone knows it was impossible to run a niche business
| before 2006 when Google thankfully shoved irrelevant
| advertisements in the way of everything we wanted to do!
|
| There definitely wasn't prior art of entire industries
| building themselves up out of nothing by making something
| that was self evidently good and selling it to like five
| turbo nerds who made sure everyone they found wanted it.
|
| That industry is definitely not for example the software
| services industry before about 2000, and there definitely
| isn't a huge trove of examples of literally two guys in a
| garage building software, sometimes mediocre software, and
| selling it to niche businesses.
|
| That's definitely not the, like, founding narrative of our
| entire sector of the economy or anything.
|
| There definitely wasn't such a thing like trade magazines
| where you could browse a vague and generic interest and find
| all sorts of awesome and expensive and niche products to buy
| for your hobby, like low production run test equipment or
| literal scams built by weird guys in a garage, again.
|
| China definitely doesn't have a clear current example of a
| huge industry that runs basically from a bunch of guys with a
| box of junk in a stall in a giant physical building that
| westerners literally go to as a niche tourist destination
| that drives a bunch of niche product development.
|
| No no, we definitely need to let Google rewrite the very
| words in front of your face to sell you whatever the highest
| bidder wants to sell you. How else could you possibly find
| things?
| Lammy wrote:
| Ideally none at all. They aren't entitled to my attention. I
| disagree with the very premise of this question.
| popalchemist wrote:
| The conclusion that every government came to after Bernays'
| "Crystallizing Public Opinion" is that the society who can be
| arbitrarily manipulated by propaganda is better because it's
| something like adding a rudder to a rudderless ship.
| staplers wrote:
| If democracy is predicated on independent thought and
| decision (free speech, free vote), then the "rudder" in this
| analogy becomes authoritarianism with an additional step.
| popalchemist wrote:
| Yes, I am not advocating for it. Just pointing to the
| historical moment when the insight became concrete enough
| to deploy. The propaganda arm of the modern economic
| apparatus is -literally- The Matrix. The political /
| economic theories that inspired The Matrix are works like
| Society of the Spectacle which express exactly what you
| just said in extreme detail; that whoever has control or
| even just a significant influence over the images and words
| that move through peoples' minds in effect has them
| enslaved in a form of Panopticon.
| cm2012 wrote:
| A touch dramatic, chap.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| I strongly disagree. Hearing an ad makes me a little
| miserable/angry almost instantly, without even the context of
| the ad yet. They are one of the major categories of corporate
| mistreatment of humans, which together are the #2 most
| hideous by-design facets of our civilization, after war ("by-
| design" meaning to the exclusion of illegal activity).
| kimbernator wrote:
| I find it surprising that more people aren't dismayed at how
| many advertisements we are being exposed to daily. I think
| that once you're used to it, you don't feel much concern
| about it, but when you manage to cut a lot of them out (e.g.
| I have a pi-hole filtering a large portion of ads in my whole
| home) it becomes extremely upsetting to be dropped back into
| a place where they are everywhere.
|
| Few things upset me as much as driving around a beautiful
| place and having billboards plastered up and down the
| highway. A few states have come to their senses and banned
| them.
|
| The issue as a whole is that it genuinely is eroding the
| human experience. Being alive in a world where your eyesight
| is real estate to be filled with images that are meant to
| leave you with negative emotions with the intent of taking
| your money from you is bleak.
| venturecruelty wrote:
| >I find it surprising that more people aren't dismayed at
| how many advertisements we are being exposed to daily.
|
| Click through users' profiles here and see where they work.
| alexashka wrote:
| > A society with a pragmatic regard for its own survival would
| ban it outright
|
| Western society would cease to exist if it didn't continue its
| diabolical lies, falsehoods and abuse. The lies are not
| optional.
|
| It is because of pragmatic regard for survival of the status
| quo that the lies do continue. That word 'pragmatic' is what
| keeps diabolical people from seeing themselves for what they
| are.
| lukan wrote:
| You say that like western culture is the worst here?
|
| Where is it better? Russia? Where stating that a war is a war
| can get you in prison? China, where historical events, like
| 1989 at tianamen square are wiped out? North Korea where
| everyone cheers up to the beloved genius leader?
| scubbo wrote:
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/no-bitch-dats-a-whole-new-
| x-w...
| venturecruelty wrote:
| Can we not critique something without whataboutism? We're
| not talking about China or Russia, where presumably scant
| few HN contributors live.
| lukan wrote:
| The topic is advertising. As of my knowledge, happens all
| around the world.
|
| So .. why single out "the west" here like this in the
| first place?
| venturecruelty wrote:
| Because western society, especially the American flavor,
| sees every ad as sacrosanct and necessary for the planet
| to keep on spinning, while the mere suggestion that maybe
| we don't need billboards is met with disproportionate
| vitriol. I mean, someone elsewhere suggested that it
| would upend the economy if people couldn't shove their
| marketing copy in your face 24/7. Oh, imagine the horror!
|
| Hacker News also has a, largely, American audience, so we
| ought not to pretend that we're not mostly talking about
| America and the west when we have these discussions. "But
| what about China?" I don't care, I don't live in China,
| most people here don't live in China. I have a laundry
| list of criticism of China, but something tells me we're
| not talking about China.
| lukan wrote:
| Advertisement works pretty much the same, whether in the
| west, as well as the east ( whatever those terms mean
| anyway). So I would rather like to talk about
| advertisement in general, how we as humanity can maybe
| move past it. How to fund online services in a different
| way, instead of advertisement. Venting about how all is
| shit, I see as not so productive in making any progress
| here.
| alexashka wrote:
| I imagine slave owners who didn't abuse their slaves felt
| quite righteous and even superior to other slave owners.
|
| Where is it better? Who treats slaves better than I do,
| they'd say.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| 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.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| 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.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > 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.
| brk wrote:
| Unless you like cantaloupes.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| If advertising was for my benefit it would be optional.
| cm2012 wrote:
| I have run hundreds of millions in advertising dollars for
| dozens of companies. The vast majority of ad spend is the
| former category.
| sershe wrote:
| 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 :)
| kerkeslager wrote:
| 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
| RustySwarf wrote:
| As Charlie Munger pointed out, our economy does not run on greed,
| it runs on envy. Why? Because advertising discovered insecurity
| as the most effective crowbar. Advertising is the bedrock of the
| consumer value system, which has been the basis for the US
| economy since the end of World War II.
|
| What can we as individuals do about it? Recognize advertising as
| hostile and banish it. Most of us, instead, are trying to
| assemble a worldview out of mismatched pieces of advertising,
| which is not working out very well. When we write and think, we
| are often thinking in units of advertising, which is a horrifying
| realization.
|
| Even the fact that this discussion is being framed in terms of
| Happiness and Satisfaction is downstream of those qualities being
| centered by the consumer value system. Previous societies might
| have considered integrity or duty primary.
| marssaxman wrote:
| It should not be surprising that advertising is a source of
| dissatisfaction, since that is _literally the point_ : inducing a
| feeling of unfulfilled desire is the mechanism by which ads
| generate sales. It would be more surprising if advertising were
| found _not_ to be a major source of dissatisfaction, since we
| would have trouble explaining why businesses spend so much money
| on it.
| apengwin wrote:
| "what is happiness? It's a moment before you need more happiness.
| You don't want most of it, you want all of it" - Churchill
| chistev wrote:
| Oh, I didn't know that was from Churchill.
|
| Don Draper from Mad Men had a similar quote about success.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| Interesting finding from the paper:
|
| Newspapers & magazines drive the negative link. TV/radio/film ads
| show no clear effect
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| this isn't a "credibility revolution" paper, it doesn't show
| causality, it doesn't use randomization anywhere, and it is very
| much a post hoc ergo proctor hoc sort of thing
|
| some evidence of the contrary: DTC pharmaceutical ads about
| Zoloft, a depression medication, _cause_ better health outcomes
|
| https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/695475
|
| not merely correlation but causation. the approach used here was
| part of a family of approaches that won the Nobel in 2012
|
| another good one: advertising caused increases in treatment and
| adherence to medicine
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37275770/
|
| there is also a great paper that scary lawyer ads about statins
| CAUSE lower adherence to statins, so negative advertising causes
| negative outcomes. unsurprising.
|
| i'm not saying that these two papers generalize to the whole of
| digital advertising. it is as difficult to generalize about
| global digital advertising at it is to generalize about the US
| defense budget - they are comparable in size (about $800b/y both)
| and complexity of missions. it does feel good though. i'm glad
| this comment will get downvoted by people who are not interested
| in actually discussing the merits of the paper versus their
| vibes.
|
| instead you could look at it as a victory for the FDA, it has
| done a great job at regulating drugs (at least since 1965 when
| the SSA created medicare and the regulations started to matter)
| such that advertising them is mostly a good thing. You can
| extrapolate from there to say, well we should regulate what you
| can advertise instead of delegating it out to upvotes and
| downvotes on Facebook, which is really how bad and good ads are
| controlled.
| ctoth wrote:
| Pharma reps (advertising) consume physician time --> doctors
| have less time per patient --> patients don't get properly
| evaluated --> DTC ads "help" by telling patients what their
| doctor didn't have time to ---> study shows DTC ads improve
| outcomes --> this is cited as evidence advertising is good
| xriddle wrote:
| Yet how many of our jobs wouldn't exist without advertising ...
| I'm not saying it's right or wrong just a fact. Advertising is
| foundational to many modern industries, especially digital ones.
| Social platforms, media companies, search engines, news, free
| apps, podcasts, streaming tiers. A ton of your daily internet
| exists because ads bankroll the whole mess. Without advertising,
| half the tech economy collapses into subscription-only fiefdoms.
| Unfortunately if advertising vanished tomorrow, lots of companies
| would die, tons of jobs would evaporate, and the economy would
| contort into something unrecognizable.
| ben_w wrote:
| With GenAI, I suspect a lot that could be ad-supported will
| evaporate anyway.
|
| How can you get a reputation for a high-quality well-researched
| podcast(/youtuber) when your voice(/face) can be cloned by the
| advertiser who buys a slot somewhere in your podcast(/video) to
| sell some snakeoil?
|
| Are those your friends you're seeing on social media enjoying
| ${brand} or supporting ${politician}? Or did your friends all
| leave the site years ago, and these are just fakes, legally
| licenced by the advertisers from the social media firm thanks
| to a clause in the TOS that's hard for non-lawyers to
| comprehend the consequences of?
| yoavm wrote:
| You're saying that like it was a bad thing...
| morleytj wrote:
| If advertising is no longer financially rewarding, is there not
| an argument that labor could transition into a different sector
| of the economy?
|
| Companies based around advertising would die, yes, but they
| only exist in the first place because of how lucrative the
| activity is. Nobody is sitting around dreaming of how they
| could sell ads better than anyone else while not thinking of
| the financial compensation. At least I hope they aren't.
|
| If someone was saying "many people have jobs in running
| offshore internet sports betting companies, if we put
| regulations on offshore internet sports betting, it would
| remove jobs" wouldn't the natural question be whether those
| industries are actually productive to have people employed in,
| or if it's a harmful industry overall? Generally in my view its
| somewhat sad that the system as a whole optimizes for
| advertising work rather than orienting in a way that everyone
| could be putting their work towards something they see as more
| fulfilling.
|
| There is certainly more need for product discoverability
| broadly than something like online gambling, but I think the
| more relevant conversation is if the current advertising model
| is more like a local minima preventing progress towards a more
| economically viable method of handling product discoverability.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > the economy would contort into something unrecognizable.
|
| You say it as if it was a self evident negative, but isnt that
| the goal of people who want to ban ads? To dramatically change
| the economy?
| venturecruelty wrote:
| "We can't get rid of this toxic part of society because what if
| people lose jobs?" has never really been a great argument.
| Like, maybe society could find a way to financially support
| people who transition to a new career (although if you've made
| any sort of money from ads, I'd argue that uh... you should've
| saved more, but whatever. Labor rights, etc.). "We ban
| something and then you're just out of a job" doesn't _have_ to
| be what happens, it 's just what typically happens. We can get
| creative, though! Other modes of governing society are entirely
| possible. We can both support people and keep them happy and
| healthy, while also getting rid of things like advertising. We
| just need to imagine a better world.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| The best digital services I use are without exception ones I
| pay for with money.
|
| The services I pay for with attention are without exception
| ones I have a love/hate relationship with, which maybe fulfill
| some occasional need but just as often I return to out of
| addictive pattern. It's not hard to imagine better ways to
| fulfill those needs which are simply not viable as businesses
| because of the competition from attention-paid services.
| arjie wrote:
| Advertising for content-creators is just a tool to capture value
| provided to people. The vast majority of people would rather pay
| in advertising than pay in dollars. In fact, if you use
| hn.algolia.com and look around you'll see that paywall complaints
| are far more common than advertising ones. This also applies on
| Reddit and Instagram and so on.
|
| So far there are a few known theoretical approaches to reward
| content-creators:
|
| * subscriptions/paywalls
|
| * advertising
|
| * micro-transactions
|
| Paywalls work if you have a high brand value with a relatively
| fixed audience that will accept a steady stream of content. The
| WSJ, NYT, etc. can command these. Even Slow Boring et al. can do
| that. But the majority of smaller brand value content creators
| face the terrible fact that brands have a Pareto property: the
| top few ones occupy almost all of customers' minds and then
| you're battling for a tiny portion of their attention. The
| subscription revenue is similar to a patronage model, and
| information in general has to be like this because replicating it
| is zero cost but obtaining it is high-cost. This means that you
| can easily be out-competed by the guy who just copies your stuff
| and posts it. You have to somehow convince your audience that
| it's worth paying for your _next_ stuff.
|
| Micro-transactions are the weakest model. They are infeasible and
| socially unacceptable because consumers expect the full range of
| financial protection they have on 'macro'-transactions - and that
| cannot come for free. This sets a floor on micro-transactions and
| the overhead makes that not worth it. To make it worse, a micro-
| transaction-based economy has the problem that you don't really
| incentivize the content creator. You incentivize the guy who can
| best capture your attention. Either SEO or submarine Word-of-
| Mouth or native advertising. It doesn't matter which. That guy
| can always undercut the creator because he's not producing the
| thing he's selling. It's worse for information-things like Slow
| Boring etc. Matt Yglesias cannot stop someone from copy-pasting
| his stuff.
|
| For the vast majority of content creators, advertising is a
| fantastic thing. It allows this massive three-sided marketplace
| between consumers, content creators, and brands. It lowers the
| marketing effort so more creators can participate. It allows
| consumers to pay for content by getting things they want. It
| allows brands to reach consumers they want.
|
| To be honest, I think Internet Advertising and especially the
| real-time bidding approach is as good as one can imagine for the
| vast majority of people to be able to consume all the content
| they want. It's led to this absolute explosion of services and
| information that no one could ever have imagined.
|
| And the low barrier on running targeted ads has meant that even
| small indie bands can survive with a good marketing effort. Gone
| are the days when only the big multinationals were taste-makers.
| Now you have micro-audiences that smaller creators can reach and
| for whom it's worth them producing content for.
|
| Honestly, it's fantastic to see. I'm a huge fan of advertising
| for what it's enabled. I prefer to use YouTube Premium, and I
| have my subscriptions, but when I didn't have as much money it
| was much nicer to be able to trade by allowing brands to be seen
| by me. So yes, there are the shady football streaming sites that
| will shove porno into your face, but you know the game going
| there. For the rest of the world, I think the websites are
| correctly on the frontier of value vs. annoyance.
|
| Also, is it just me or are the results mostly statistically
| insignificant here? It seems like a grand claim with very weak
| evidence.
| fpauser wrote:
| When I realized how much ads manipulate me and my thinking, I
| stopped consuming radio/TV stations that send ads. This was >= 25
| years ago. Additionally, I never surf without ad blocking and use
| DNS based ad blocking on all my devices + in our home router
| (nextdns). Besides this, I like to pay for the content I am
| interested in - which helps against ads. This is my personal
| mostly ad free bubble, I couldn't stand it any different.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Nobody in the comment section is apparently reading the paper,
| because the only subcategory that reached p<0.05 significance was
| newspaper advertising expenditure.
|
| When they stretch the p-value threshold for significance to
| p<0.1, they claim magazine advertising expenditure reached that
| threshold.
|
| TV, Radio, and Cinema advertising did not reach significance even
| at the expanded p<0.1 threshold.
|
| The methodology of the paper is also not great at all. They
| looked at changes in advertising expenditure and changes in
| happiness measures and then tried to correlate the two.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| This makes every single comment irrelevant/false?
| Aurornis wrote:
| The comments that assume this paper supports their claims
| about digital, TV, or radio advertising are not as supported
| as they seem.
|
| Most comments are just airing opinions and grievances loosely
| related to the topic anyway.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| I read the paper, there's tons of interesting research showing
| advertising CAUSING certain effects (oftentimes good ones!)
| but, what's the point of participating with that substance?
| People want to participate in a hand up-and-down motion on
| circularly adjacent partners about "advertising bad," not learn
| something.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Why this bitterness in defense of advertisers of all things?
| Engage with the comments, rather than disparaging them all
| from above in a blanket statement. They all have substance
| regardless of the details of the study.
| Jolliness7501 wrote:
| Thats why I singed out from ads everywhere I could. Adblocking
| everywhere it's possible, no legacy radio or tv - only add-free
| subscriptions or free alternatives, alt-apps for youtube, no
| social-media like f...book, twitter or (Thor forbid) tictok. I
| always reject any discounts, special offers when it require to
| agree to "marketing cominication". I block all robocalls and if
| any pass throu I chase down the company behind it and file
| complain to authorities (in my country it's illegal to contact
| anyone without him/her agree for it). Not everything works of
| course and only ads I cannot block are OOH like billboards. I
| support creators directly where it's worth and pay or donate for
| all sites/services/apps I use frequently (if applicable).
| zkmon wrote:
| There is a basic correlation which doesn't need data or research.
| Advertising is about gaining people's attention and creating
| familiarity for a product. People's satisfaction is about gap
| between their expectation and actuals. Since advertising tends to
| increase expectations, it would lead to more dissatisfaction.
| This is a direct consequence.
| kyboren wrote:
| I'll take this opportunity to get on a soapbox and preach: We
| need to shift our understanding of digital programmatic
| advertising to basically the pimp/hoe model.
|
| It's population-scale digital pimping. They put your ass on the
| RTB street to turn tricks. You get mindfucked by--and maybe catch
| some viruses from--any John who wants to take a crack at you. In
| return, you get this nice cheap TV/YouTube/Gmail/article.
|
| It's exploitative, dirty, exposes the bitches (i.e. you and your
| kids) to risks, and on a population scale it poses a serious
| safety and national security risk to our country. RTB bidstream
| surveillance means that all the data used in the pimps'
| matchmaking services can be used by many nefarious actors to
| physically track and target people, including spies, politicians,
| and other politically-exposed persons.
|
| Would you let your kid turn tricks for a pimp to get a Gucci
| handbag? No? Then why would you let Alphabet pimp your kid out to
| get a YouTube video?
| xnx wrote:
| Before a product can solve a problem, advertising must create the
| problem.
| talkingtab wrote:
| OMG. This is like reading a headline that says "Cigarette Smoking
| is a source of dissatisfaction"
|
| It is not advertising. It is a targeted attempt by other people
| to persuade you to do something for _their_ benefit, their good.
| Without regard to the effects on you.
|
| Do you remember the Marlboro Man persuading people to buy
| cigarettes? Many people made lots of money from owning that
| stock. Lots of people died. Lots of people got addicted. Lots of
| people suffered.
|
| Do you remember Purdue Pharma? They made billions after
| persuading doctors to prescribe their drugs. They destroyed the
| lives of millions of Americans. Calling that "a source of
| dissatisfaction" is just wrong.
|
| Targeting makes this persuasion more effective and more
| abhorrent.
|
| You live your life, but targeted propaganda is designed to ensure
| that someone else gets the benefits. As though you were some
| domesticated animal.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Social Comparison and the Idealised Images of Advertising (1991)
|
| https://www.academia.edu/download/49742224/Social_Comparison...
|
| Lower Life Satisfaction Related to Materialism in Children
| Frequently Exposed to Advertising (2012)
|
| http://www.pattivalkenburg.nl/images/artikelen_pdf/2012_Opre...
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