
Is advertising inherently deceptive? - wheels
http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/37925-is-advertising-inherently-deceptive/fulltext
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lsc
It is not inherently deceptive. You can take out ads that point out your
faults, if you like. (Actually, I've found that publicly discussing my faults
works fairly well. Chris and I were talking about printing up shirts saying
something like "I HEAR SLICEHOST AND LINODE HAVE EXCELLENT SUPPORT" and
'prgmr.com brand Xen VPS service, we don't assume you are stupid' on the
back... but we backed down 'cause we have no idea what the legal ramifications
of naming competitors in an advertisement is.)

On the other hand, advertising is usually, if not deceptive, at least not in
the consumers best interest. If you click on a product link from google vs
clicking on the search result, the cost for the company is quite a bit higher.
It could be argued that the advent of good search engines obsoletes
advertising.

Why am I still advertising then? I'm trying to have people think "Oh, I've
heard of them" - which is a little bit like credibility. Most people think of
slicehost as a old company, and prgmr.com as a new one. This tells me that I
want more people to know I exist now.

(Granted, I was doing dumb shit like running used hardware until after
slicehost was established; you could make a convincing argument that I wasn't
worth using until late 2007/early 2008, and slicehost is definitely more
established and they won't have the kinds of problems prgmr.com will if one
guy gets hit by a bus.)

And yeah, spending the time on advertising is probably not in my customer's
best interest; there's lots of things I could be building instead. (and
there's no way I'm outsourcing my advertising. Most marketing people and I
have very different definitions of the word deceptive. Also, in a very real
way, I am prgmr.com. I know what image I want, and you could even argue that I
know better how to reach my target market than most marketing people do.)

Now, personally, I think that the most personal advertising is often the worst
in this regard. You can bet that if you talk to a salesperson, that person is
getting a large chunk of what you are paying. Good salespeople are expensive.
It's fairly common for affiliate programs in my industry to give half the
expected revenue.

This brings us to the other thing I find irritating about marketing. Variable
pricing. I buy the exact same product as the guy next to me, but sometimes
what we pay varies as much as 75%. Even if I negotiate to the sellers cost,
that negotiation is adding a lot to the cost of the service, both in terms of
my time, and in terms of the seller's negotiator's time. But try buying large
chunks of bandwidth without negotiation.

I do my best to list all prices on my website. It doesn't make any sense to
give a discount to customers who spend more of my time negotiating. they are
costing me more, so why should I charge them less? I mean, I'm always happy to
get feedback on pricing, especially if some of my prices are out of whack with
regard to the market, but my margins would need to be a lot higher (read: I
would need to charge you more) if I had to negotiate price with every
customer.

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floodfx
Considering this:

Under the Federal Trade Commission Act:

    
    
        * Advertising must be truthful and non-deceptive;
        * Advertisers must have evidence to back up their claims; and
        * Advertisements cannot be unfair.
    

(via <http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/adv/bus35.shtm>)

Legally it can't be deceptive.

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calcnerd256
What if we look at advertising as a continuum from spam to individual
salesmanship? Well, that's one axis, independent of the one he pointed out. So
now we have two axes: specificity of audience and deception. I don't think
we've seen a lot of automation at the most personal, least deceptive side of
the spectra. Sure, there's keyword-targeted ads, but what else can we do in
the nearby region?

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lsc
this is, I believe, what will eventually bring google low. so long as the
search results are more relevant than the ads, people will choose the search
results when they are looking for things. If google starts nerfing search,
they will eventually be overtaken by the competition.

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mmt
Advertising is inherently persuasive, but persuasion need not be deceptive.

The Will Rogers quote may be spot on, but even it doesn't evince deception in
advertising but, again, merely persuasion. We don't, after all, only buy
things we strictly need.

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randallsquared
I have sometimes bought things I heard of through advertising, and been
subsequently pleased with my purchase.

Therefore, no.

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eli
Uh, no. Is Capitalism inherently deceptive?

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pj
I think anyone who believes that the system America has in place _is_
capitalism has been deceived, so in a way, yes.

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eli
Then what would you call it?

~~~
pj
A mixed economy: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_economy>

