This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.
This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?
Just post some stuff and don't spam.
It's also a form free market distortion that actual economic conservatives should hate.
Rather than having firms compete for who can make the best product or service, advertising instead lets them compete based on who can best psychologically manipulate the population en masse.
It's a "rich get richer" mechanic that any halfway competent dev would've patched out for balance reasons a long time ago.
It's also such a funny contradiction: a big part of the free market model rests on the idea that well informed consumers can vote with their wallet, which should reward good businesses and punish bad ones. Yet it is very difficult to argue consumers have ever been informed enough to make this work, which is in large part due to advertising flooding communication channels with noise, and also because it is unreasonable to expect a consumer to be fully informed for the hundreds of purchases they make on a daily basis.
I think regulation is better than abolishing it.
With most initiatives that have been made in good faith to avoid bad actors, it will usually hit the little guy the hardest.
In my country, for example, you can apply for grants for your business for developing your business. Great right? Wrong. The bureaucracy is so crazy that small businesses, whom this grant was aimed towards, cannot feasibly take the grant. It is too expensive for them to go through all the steps to get the money for the developmental aspect of the business that they would lose money as a business and not be able to recoup their losses. The grant money are so small and aren't allowed to be used to run the business at all that it simply isn't worth it to even try. You would essentially have to work for free for days or weeks in some cases to get this tiny portion that will now sink your company instead of developing it.
However, a big business with many employees and time and money to spare, could easily apply for the grant and get it without a sweat, despite them not needing it at all.
That is how I'd see a potential ban of ads affect the market. The big businesses who got to benefit from ads and marketing in the past will continue to do well because people know them while any and all new start ups and smaller businesses would drown and go bankrupt due to them not being allowed to make people aware of their business.
It is a bit too utopic for my taste to suggest a ban. But regulation would be a good thing in my opinion.
So this could be interpreted as ban big advertising from ads?
I think ultimately tightening of ad standards is likely the middle ground. I for one am sick of the blatant bulletin. As an industrial chemist even the freakin chemical companies do it. Like buddy, I'm a chemist, I need to know what it is to use it properly. I have now started running a campaign where if they don't cough up the deets, I (in consultancies) don't recommend the use of their products.
Should we allow the best of science to be used to manipulate people's base desires? Or should we protect the average person from being taken advantage of?
Unless you are a sociopath the answer is clear. Advertising in its current form should be completely banned. Perhaps some form of non-comparative advertising could be allowed if it just stated simple facts without creating a psychological hook to subconsciously fuck with the consumer.
Who am I kidding though, give these fuckers even an inch and they will circumnavigate the globe. Ban all advertising.
I don't like to buy anything I've seen advertised. I just don't trust it
Took a trip to Cuba, one of the first things I noticed was lack of billboards and advertising in general. It was quite refreshing.
Advertising is one of the three major incoherent industries along with Insurance and Real Estate.
Believe it or not, advertising on the Internet was originally highly frowned upon. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Siegel
Still is, but it used to be, too.
My adblocker agrees.
I was on a car from ride sharing app recently, and there was a tablet in front of me playing ads continuously for the whole ride. Asked the driver to turn it off and he said, "I have to keep it on". I know it's not the requirement from the app, so honestly how dystopian is it?
The way things are going people can't afford anything and will have ads blasting in front of them for discounts.
this happened to me once and I gave them 1 star for forcing me to watch ads
I wouldve left an awful review, 1 star, no tip. Thats such shit to do. Fuck that guy.
I want to live there. I can't tell you how sick I am of ads. I've seen a lifetime of advertisements and I'm done.
I'm on board and have been for a long time. I am true believer of Bill Hicks' opinion of marketing. I stopped watching broadcast/cable TV in the late 90's because I couldn't stand watching all the propaganda mixed in with the shows. Whenever I'm in a doctor's office lobby or somewhere that has a TV on, it's a bit of a shock to see all the commercial bullshit again.
Does wonders for you once it's not occupying space in your brain.
Ad companies are never going to regulate themselves—it's like hoping for heroin dealers to write drug laws.
Actually, I think that's a good idea. Everyone already knows that banning recreational drugs only makes more people want to try them. And seeing how the legal weed system in my home state is controlled entirely by a handful of billionaires who artificially keep prices high, I think it would be a lot wiser to put legalization in the control of the common people.
What a terrible analogy.
I have hated few things in this world as much as advertising. It is one of the few industries I feel is beyond saving and produces nothing of value at all levels. I am of the opinion that advertising is like cancer, whenever it is allowed to get a foothold somewhere it will eventually kill the host. For-profit companies can not resist the easy money promised by advertising, so the only way to combat it is not have it to begin with.
I go out of my way to pay for the things I use with money and not attention if at all possible. I will nearly always favor buying from a company that does not get most of their revenue from advertising, even if it means I pay more for the product and it is a less capable product or service.
Advertising is propaganda, propaganda should be illegal
It won't be though, because it is too powerful to control us