

A world without advertising - bemmu
http://bemmu.posterous.com/a-world-without-advertising

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jrockway
Seems like the article is just setting up a strawman. You can't send bulk
email, so you can't initiate contact at all, so you can't set up an industry
event? Seems unlikely -- the result does not follow from the preconditions.

Basically, a world without unsolicited advertising would be one where you type
"widgets" into Google and get a list of companies that make widgets. A lot of
people do this even in the world _with_ advertising.

Similarly, how do you know that Target exists down the street? Not from ads
you see while reading _The Atlantic_... you know it exists because you can see
it with your eyes.

So anyway, this argument is not very good. A world without spam and banner ads
would be just fine. I'm already living in it.

~~~
clarkm
But if I have never seen Target advertised and I haven't made an effort to go
inside, how am I supposed to know what they sell? Are customers expected to
make a visit to each new store that opens? Are they expected to give them a
call or google the name of the store when they get home? How else would they
initiate contact?

~~~
jerf
We do not exist in a vacuum. My wife just left on a baby shower with some of
her friends. They're going to eat at a local restaurant we've all seen, but
only one of them have been to. They said it was good.

How miraculous! How spectacular! How.... utterly ordinary and common.

Most people are complaining about push advertising. I don't know anyone who
says they want stores to take down their signs or websites and wants to ensure
none of their friends ever talk about any products or restaurants or anything.

------
treelovinhippie
Advertising is only annoying when it isn't targeted enough. Perfectly targeted
advertising will be indistinguishable from any other piece of information in
the near future with advanced recommendation engines.

Once everyone is online (in some sense), and that data is made open and
accessible (perhaps Semantic Web)... then advertising will still exist. But
you will pay a small amount for your message to go out to the exact people
that you want it to go out to, in this case, bakeries. And the message won't
blanket-out to every bakery, only those that don't already have a fancy bakery
business app... plus it will focus primarily on bakeries which hint at a need
for such an app (based on their online postings).

~~~
srean
Ads can be made less annoying by targeting them well. But the major problem is
that annoying advertisement and spam _works_. Even though a bulk of them fall
on deaf ears, the benefit, that a small percentage of them initiates a sale,
more than compensates for the costs. That, followed by the other property that
ads can persuade people to buy things that they dont really need, makes it
unlikely that annoying ads are not going to go away soon. Companies will
continue to have an incentive to show ads to people who don't really need that
stuff or have interest in that stuff.

Effectively, the target becomes not that population who will not be annoyed,
but the population that can be persuaded to buy with a profitably high
probability. The operating point will largely be dictated by the cost of
delivery and probability of conversion. Competition sort of guarantees that
the former is driven lower and lower.

So far, the loophole has been that the advertisers are not charged an
annoyance fee that is over and above the delivery cost. But as treelovinhippie
suggests once they start getting charged, things will change.

------
smutticus
I moved to Warsaw Poland in 1992 for one year of foreign study. The wall had
come down 3 years earlier and Poland was quickly transitioning. There were no
billboards when I moved there. Nothing. Nada. There might have been the
occasional Coca Cola sign on the side of a kiosk but billboards didn't exist.

I distinctly remember when I saw the first billboard in Warsaw. After the
first one they just started popping up everywhere, on all the streets. I
remember the psychological realization that Poland was now somehow joining in
some international conversation. The adverts made me feel less isolated in
Poland. But also made me feel small and insignificant. Seeing adverts for the
first time in a year, and the first time in my new country, was a catalyst for
a psychological reevaluation of my place in the world.

This experience led me to believe that advertising disempowers while also
connecting people. And its affect is psychological. Not physical but still
profound.

~~~
stcredzero
Commerce disempowers while connecting people. Commerce also empowers people
while creating or reinforcing social distance. There are different trade-offs.

Of course, the effects are profound.

------
chaosmachine
There are lots of ways to advertise that don't resemble cold calling, spam, or
banner ads. Probably the simplest is article writing.

Write about a problem your customers have, and explain how your product can
solve it. Write about a subject popular with your target audience and bring
your product into the story (or just stick in a promo paragraph at the end).

If you write well and have a good product, people will find you, and they will
tell their friends.

~~~
stcredzero
A world of _search and micropayments_ would be a world without advertising.
Everything would be in the form of information services. You pay for searching
to find what you like, then you pay additional when you find it.

I wonder if it's now possible to set up a "Free Market Information Bubble"?
Have a browser add-on that removes all ads and makes the Internet operate on
micropayments? It seems that there's a subset of the Internet who would be
delighted to pay for such a thing.

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boredguy8
I'm confused: How are you solving problems for a profession when you know
nobody who does it? And if you're solving problems for people you do know, why
is there difficulty getting the word out?

Also, for what its worth: tech isn't the only industry with magazines,
listservs, and conventions.

~~~
bemmu
It could be a service that benefits many industries, so you don't necessarily
have just those bakers in mind. For example Campaign Monitor could be useful
for many industries to improve customer retention. The POS system the bakery
uses would be another example.

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elvirs
Any smart baker who wants to increase efficiency and lower the costs or who
wants to grow or at least remain in the rapidly changing market will never
ignore the industry and will try to keep up with latest industry news and
listen to recommendations from his fellow bakers. If your app/software really
helps bakers save money, increase efficiency, keep the costs down, etc. don't
worry, those smart bakers will somehow hear about, you don't have to spam or
buy superbowl ads, attending a few bakery related industry expos, etc would be
enough. Those bakers will hear you, but those who don't, you don't need them,
they are going to be out of the market in a few years anyway. They say only
half of the money spent on advertising was worth it, but which half? Nobody
knows. While the half that worked are the ads that hit targeted consumers, the
other half just annoyed people. Now when even offline targeting will become
possible I don't think advertisers will be still willing to pay the other half
just to annoy people where they can spend half the budget and target that half
of people who are potential consumers.

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AllahJesus
Hmm...

That's a good question.

I'd first ask what is advertising a direct response to? And what was
eliminating advertising a direct response to?

For the former, I believe the first ad was placed in like the 1700s. Wait...
I'll Google it... the first newspaper ad was placed in 1704 by a seller in
Oyster Bay who wanted a buyer for their estate. (Thanks to AdAge for that one:
<http://adage.com/century/timeline/index.html>)

So, I'd say that advertising is a form of getting the word out about
something, when you know that someone might need it, but you're not exactly
who specifically.

Then eliminating advertising would be getting rid of it because too many
people were trying to get the word out, so much so that the channels for even
knowing what was relevant to the receiver were saturated beyond belief.

I'd say get rid of the profit incentive, not the advertising. If there's no
profit incentive for advertising, but instead direct communal bartering gain,
then fewer people would advertise. The adverts you would see would be direct
needs targeted to direct people who needed that stuff.

This reminds me of Craig's List. I used to love Craig's List because it was so
much about community, and people sharing their needs and or looking to fill
others' needs. However, when the traffic grew, the profit incentive grew, now
Craig's List is over saturated. Way, way over saturated. That's why I'm now a
member of Quentin's Friends. I pay $15 bucks a quarter for access to a
community of people where there's minimal profit incentive driven advertising
and posting, and more communal driven exchanges.

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catechu
I think product sales is a game of incomplete information in which sellers
don't know what each buyer wants and buyers don't necessarily know what they
want either. It seems to me that advertising, which is effectively gambling on
consumers' unknown desires, is the only way for either party to discover that
hidden knowledge of what buyers want -- a commercial Monte Carlo simulation of
sorts.

"If I had asked my customers what they wanted," Henry Ford once said, "they
would have said a faster horse."

------
chrisbennet
I don't have a problem with _passive_ advertising. What I find annoying is the
advertising that steals the most precious thing I have - time. Spam emails,
cold calls and link baiting scraper sites fall into that category.

If you _really_ think your product is in my best interest, pay me to listen to
your pitch. Otherwise, place your ad on a web site containing interesting
original content or get a web page and let me google you if I need your
service/product.

------
fakespastic
In Cary, NC, signs are heavily regulated. Driving around the city is quite
peaceful as a result; there isn't much, if any advertising visible. People
know what they want and need, and know where to get it, so it's not
problematic. However, in the software space, there have been times that I
would not have known about a helpful piece of software if it were not
advertised.

~~~
bcaulf
That Cary situation sounds lovely to me. Business signs are naturally engaged
in never ending war to be attention getting, new looking, big, bright, high
off the ground, and generally impossible to ignore. As far as I can see, only
government regulation can address this problem.

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makmanalp
> "Imagining for a moment that we live in such an ideal world, how will people
> find out about new products or services?"

They look for them. I realize that part of salesmanship is making people feel
they need something that they did not know existed. The problem is most sales
people seem to think that you need whatever they're pandering regardless of
whether you actually do. So I'd rather leave the decision of whether I need
something or not to myself rather than to salesmen.

Maybe what you're really asking for is not "how will they find out about them"
but rather "how will I make them find out"? The answer is you won't. The
internet is good enough, thank you. Maybe you'll be covered by my favourite
blog or magazine, or I'll hear about you from a colleague.

~~~
axod
I don't have time to look for things. That is the service advertising affords
me. It tells me about stuff I might be interested in.

~~~
makmanalp
In theory, I agree. In practice, even targeted ads such as google or facebook
ads rarely hit the mark. I've clicked maybe one in the past year.

~~~
reinhardt
It's a hard problem; 99% of everything is irrelevant to 99% of all people.

------
thret
We are already heading towards a world where the advertising someone is
exposed to depends on their expressed interests. Advertising the user wants is
no longer annoying, it is useful and helpful. If advertising is so negative we
could start calling directed advertising 'advice'.

~~~
tensor
I think a really good example of this is Amazon's "other products you might
like." Bad examples are distracting banner ads, even if they are targeted. By
distracting, I mean blinking, moving, making sounds, or otherwise drawing the
reader away from the content they are trying to view.

------
beoba
Site wants a lame login to comment, so I'll just do it here:

The solution is you need to know some bakers, who have baker friends. In
theory you'd have already developed these connections while working on your
bakery software. (Seeking advice on what they'd find useful + testing of early
versions)

On advertising more generally, I was once opposed to using adblock and such
since it theoretically hurt the ability for sites to pay their bills. Now that
intrusive user tracking has become more popular, I figure all bets are off. I
think that advertising's worst enemy is itself.

~~~
vannevar
Taking this a step farther, the bakery industry would be interconnected via
social tools like Twitter and LinkedIn. People in the industry would subscribe
to each other's industry-related streams and so would find out about the
events without bothering anyone who wouldn't be interested. The key word here
is 'unsolicited', obviously if you solicit information you aren't going to be
annoyed when it's presented to you.

------
davidhollander
Baker A: lives in a cave and consumes zero information

Baker B: actively pulls in information about surroundings

If the product you introduce actually generates substantial value for bakers,
then Baker A will be forced out of the market by Baker B. In the very unlikely
event the entire market of bakers is type A, then you launch your own bakery
and make a killing. In the unlikely event there are plenty of type B Bakers
but none of them have started an information pull source, then you launch your
own information pull source and make a killing.

------
nileshtrivedi
Advertising is obnoxious when it is interruptive. Surely, the bakers would
like to read more about your product when they are looking for software
solutions for bakeries. But interruptive ads (like cold calling, TV ads etc.)
do not respect the audience's context.

Make your product easily discoverable but only with the right targeting. And
avoid push-based advertising like bulk emails, SMS, cold calls.

------
parka
And here's how that world without advertising would look

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonydemarco/sets/72157600075508...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonydemarco/sets/72157600075508212/detail/)

Just came about it on Flickr a few days ago, coincidentally.

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ph0rque
Here's another idea... in world without advertising, there would be a Baker
News site that the cutting-edge bakeries would visit and participate in. The
hacker would post a link to their software there, and have a chance of it
reaching the most forward-thinking bakeries.

~~~
bemmu
It might be difficult to have a HN-like addictive site for people in fields in
which computers are used less. All my friends work in science / software /
engineering fields, so this might be a false assumption though.

------
pjch
There is a difference between ads that intrude in our lives or attempt to
influence us and those that serve to gently inform us of something valuable. I
think we need more of the latter and less of the former.

------
scotty79
I'd much prefer there was one place to go when you need to buy something. One
directory where companies would place their announcements about their products
services with full descriptions and current prices and cathegorize it in all
ways possible. Directory would be diligently moderated and flaws of the system
that could give some people unfair advantage would be fixed daily.

It almost already happened for used goods. If you want to buy used good you go
to ebay. If you want to sell used good you adertise it on ebay.

------
lynx44
This article has an interesting premise.

Some products spread because they are so high quality. Google became a giant
because its search was superb, Starbucks its experience great, and Facebook so
life-enhancing.

But advertising is just a part of free enterprise. Such quick successes are
the exception, and advertising can genuinely create awareness of value adding
answers.

~~~
vannevar
_...advertising can genuinely create awareness of value adding answers._

While certainly it can, the problem is that the vast majority of time for the
vast majority of people it doesn't and is consequently wasteful and annoying.
I imagine that there were a small fraction of cases in which leaches were also
medically effective.

------
andreyf
Word of mouth? If a product is good, people will talk about it (there's
certainly no shortage of avenues to publish your thoughts nowadays).

------
hasenj
I already live in a world without ads, thanks to adblock plus (and the fact I
don't watch TV, because we have no room for it in our tiny living room, and we
didn't care enough to make room for it).

I find out about interesting stuff using the internet. Blogs, stackoverflow,
HN, forums, word of mouth, etc.

------
j_baker
Wait? People need to have heard of a product before they'll buy it? _And_
people who make products need to be the ones to tell people about them? Next
you'll try to tell me water is wet or that the earth revolves around the Sun.
Surely you have something to add to the subject other than truisms.

------
falava
A world without _bad_ advertising:

Opt-in + Opt-out advertising.

Asking your friends, alpha-geeks are better.

Trusty recommendation engines where I place my interests and earn my respect
by don't trying to fool me.

------
mdonahoe
Start a bakery

------
erikstarck
SEO.

~~~
erikstarck
I should flesh this out a little bit... the original poster asked for a world
without advertising and how a company would find customers in such an
environment.

My answer: SEO.

A world without advertising is a world where search engine optimization rules
supreme because you must be at the top whenever someone searches actively for
the answer to a problem.

Of course the whole proposition becomes nil once you realize that what we call
advertising is really just suboptimally placed commercial information.

We stop calling it advertising when it's relevant.

~~~
vannevar
I would suggest that you would do even better if you came up at the top even
for unrelated searches, because some small fraction of the people that you
reach by doing so will become customers. Of course you'll annoy and
inconvenience all the others but that's _their_ problem, isn't it?

------
maeon3
They would have us believe that cold calling, spam and banner ads, keep
countries running strong by bringing innovative solutions to businesses. As if
people who run businesses are not actively searching for ways to save money.

~~~
ericd
Many small businesses are too caught up in day to day operations to actively
try and refine their operations very frequently.

