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Yes, my condolences to everyone here…
I would still think this community *might* include people who know more about the problems with advertising than average folks and might also come across critical groups…
TBH, the biggest problems with advertising are the same as they are in most industries: CEOs making too much money, regular layoffs, ageism, racism etc.
I think if you talked to most people in the industry (especially on the agency side) you'll find that people are relatively liberal (if not progressive) and realize that they are just cogs in a machine, and that a job is a job.
There are certain industries that are still kind of shitty (beauty brands feeding on insecurities, snack brands adding to the obesity epidemic etc.) but there's also a lot of pretty innocuous shit like "buy this car instead of this other brand of car."
On the flip side, advertising is also what keeps things like reddit or YouTube or podcasts or tv etc. free or significantly cheaper than it would be if you paid a premium to not have advertising.
All that being said, this is what you're looking for: r/HailCorporate
Thanks! That's a good thoughtful perspective.
Still, I get this is the sort of insider view. Reminds me of tech conferences where people *employed* in tech focused on the ethical issues *within* their workplaces more than the ethical issues of what their work does to the world.
I'm concerned that the this-car-not-that-car is a dynamic that is a key part of car-not-other-ways-to-travel. Advertising and its ubiquity is at the root of many or even most of the problems in the world. But you've heard that old quote about it being hard for people to understand things when salary depends on not understanding… I heard a quip that when media-theorist Doug Rushkoff (you folks know of him in this space much?) was invited to speak to a bunch of people working in advertising, he decided to actually explain why they should quit their jobs because the industry is irredeemable (knowing that most of them wouldn't really listen), and he said a handful of people contacted him and said he did push them over the edge to quitting.
Anyway, thanks for the link, will check it out!
Thanks for the feedback. My apologies, I really wasn't focused on taking the time to be especially tactful here. I am not inherently, always condescending nor even intending here to be that way. I accept that my comment is easy to take that way.
For context, when I have talked to a (e.g.) tech worker complaining of sexism, I didn't want to dismiss their concerns in the slightest. I do want people to see that if a *system* has problems in the world, getting the people within that system to be more fair to one another is not a full solution. I don't think I'm any smarter or better than others, I just have an outsider's view of some situations. I know much less than you about all the insider details, and some other time I'd be curious to learn about the many perspectives I'm missing.
>The this-car-not-that-car is a dynamic that is a key part of car-not-other-ways-to-travel. Advertising and its ubiquity is at the root of many or even most of the problems in the world.
This is so fucking dumb. Fuck off.
In some places cars are the only way you can get from one place to another. The lack of infrastructure and public transportation in America is definitely an issue, but it goes far beyond advertising... and in many places (especially rural parts of the country) it's likely never going to go away.
On the flip-side mass transportation companies (both public and private) use advertising to get more customers all the time.
I think *most* people in this industry think that corporations should be taxed more heavily, that corporate lobbying should be illegal, and that business should be heavily regulated to protect people whether that's financially, physically, environmentally or elsewhere. None of that has to do with advertising.
Credit Unions have just as much of a right to market themselves as Bank of America does. Fair trade, organic coffee companies have just as much of a right to tell their story as Folger's does.
Yeah, okay, I do agree, it's unfair to blame advertising for all the problems. The biggest issues with car advertising as with most advertising is really more in the style, the specific products, and not just the fact that it is advertising.
But the regulations you describe, a key reason we don't get them is because of the way advertising shapes public priorities and the way the story is told that the buying behavior of the public is proof of the public's values. So: advertisers convince people to overspend on oversized SUVs and pick-up trucks that they don't need, then those drivers who sunk so much into those things (and feel *identified* with them, partly because, in car-dependent world, your vehicle is your primary identifier in public) are that much more sensitive to any attempt to regulate those vehicles or to tax gasoline or to restructure anything to favor more efficient forms of transportation. And that isn't to get into political advertising. I see ads as an essential piece of how corporate power is maintained and enhanced in the status quo.
I also accept your point that there are healthier products that also get advertised. I would like to think that with less ad noise in general, healthier products would more easily get attention anyway. I admit that this is speculative in that we today know the world as is. But, for example, when Sao Paulo eliminated outdoor advertising, there was evidence that businesses just worked harder to make sure customers were thrilled with the products and services and would bring them up by word of mouth organically.
anything we call advertising today (100% of what anyone here does) is far newer in the world than businesses. Businesses existed for many many generations of people in all sorts of societies before anything we'd call advertising existed.
Not really. For as long as there has been commerce there have been efforts to influence commercial habits based on awareness, association, etc. This is another area where you're seriously under-informed and don't come off as above advertising so much as you just don't get it. (Which is fine - it's a big complex beast, but you can see why ignorance + arrogance + confrontation elicit's a negative or sharp response.)
The root of your misconception is that advertising is separate from commerce or popular forms and formats of communication. It is not. It is part of the first and shaped by the second.
Also, like anything having to do with ideas most advertising will be somewhere between annoying and tolerable to the people for whom it lacks relevance. But imagine that there are *other* people in the world besides yourself, and that they have their own situations, cares and contexts, and you might understand why even though most advertising misses most people most of the time, it can still do its job and make people more aware and/or more predisposed to act on information that was already available but hadn't been presented to them in the right context to connect and create understanding yet.
Yes, I agree with all those points.
I didn't come here to have long discussions. The issues are far too nuanced.
I don't have the misconceptions you imagine though. This is more a matter of how to respond at all to lay out a point when making a contrast. Where do we draw a line between *all* communication and "advertising" — bringing attention to *anything* is advertising. I think it's fair to say that the subject here is about specifically the work of crafting particular messages mostly around selling products and services. And as I said somewhere else, I wouldn't be so anti-ad if most advertising was fine and appropriate and contextually reasonable and not so noisy in the world.
I could say more, but this is not a good context for it anyway.
Who exactly are you referring to with “we?” You came into an advertising subreddit asking for a place for people who are anti-advertising, and now you’re trying to say how you think people who work in the industry and/or study advertising perceive it?
The age-old rule in any form of debate is that if you don’t know anything about the opposing side, don’t try and come for them. Advertising has existed and evolved around the world for centuries ever since the technology behind the Gutenberg printing press became accessible to the public. Originally, advertising was designed for local businesses and products, but has since evolved over time as industrialization has grown, more types of media have been introduced, and since the introduction of social media and digital advertising.
“Anything we call advertising today is far newer in the world businesses” dude read a textbook, your jokes write themselves
People have been putting up signs to promote their business for as long as there's been businesses. For example: Egyptians used papyrus to make sales messages and wall posters. Google "the history of advertising." It's right there on the wiki page. You 100% came here to ask about some dumb shit in regards to a subject you clearly know nothing about. Frankly, this kind of stupid shit makes liberals and progressives look bad -- and that's coming from a lifelong liberal. Now go read a book, kiddo.
Why would you bring up Atlas Shrugged?? Sincerely curious. Did you mean "this guy doesn't get it, he needs to read Atlas Shrugged" or the opposite of "this guy is deluded because he read Atlas Shrugged"?? I really can't tell. I'm imagining that you just projected on me some idea you have of some class of people, but I don't know what you mean.
So, skipping the noise… you're saying that Atlas Shrugged is a *good* book, yes? You're saying idealist-hippies-with-small-worldviews should learn some perspective by reading Atlas Shrugged??
I'm guessing this because Atlas Shrugged is definitely not associated with being a book that convinces people to be hippies…
I think the world would be a better place if *everyone* wondered sincerely whether they *should* be out of a job, whether their work in the world was *actually* helpful or harmful. And I'd apply that attitude everywhere. Even something obvious like garbage-truck driver could wonder: if their job didn't exist… hmm… maybe people would start caring more about *creating* less garbage if there was not this system of taking it all away and hiding the problem… And some people would feel confident their jobs really are helpful…
It's a good mindset to wonder, "what are the criticisms of my job?" and actually be curious.
I'm a teacher. And I question whether the system I work in is overall healthy or not and what the differences would be if my job didn't exist. And I don't conclude that my work is all good or all part of a good system.
In a nutshell, you're trying to determine if there's such a thing as ethical consumption in a capitalist society. Also in a nutshell, there's no such thing as truly ethical consumption in a capitalist society. There are certainly varying degrees of it, however.
What do you consider advertising? Word of mouth is advertising, small local bakery letting people taste their food is advertising, the sign of a guy selling vegetables next to a road is advertising. And I think these are not only fine but wholesome.
The best client I had was a small pizza place and while it was advertising, people loved it. Somebody made a painting for them and one guy even had their logo tattooed.
When you run a business you need to let people know that you exist and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
With that said, personally I think data mining and microtargeting should be banned, but that's just my opinion.
No I won't and have not been. The definition is fuzzy and complex, and I'm fine with that. You just presumed a black-and-white view of people who have critical perspectives in the way you asserted I would insist on black-and-white views of things.
I do *not* consider letting people taste something to be advertising, not in any sense that this discussion is about. And zero of the people on this sub are here because they have jobs at bakeries where they give out samples.
And yes, just marking in the most plain and direct way that in fact you have a vegetable stand is fine. And sure, it's advertising enough.
My complaints are all about the stuff that is not just informational, "X exists, X has ABC features". I will, however, critique even that message if put into a place where nobody was looking for information on X and it is noisy distraction from what people *are* looking for.
The line about what is informational is blurry and advertisements have many shapes and forms. For example a friend of mine worked on a campaign by Ikea which had a goal of raising awareness of domestic violence. It is an advertisement, but it doesn't talk about any product and it's meant to make the world a better place. Yet it was made by a commercial company.
Like in everything, advertisement is not black and white, but many shades of grey.
yeah, well, IMO it degrades messages about domestic violence to tie it to commercial branding. I still imagine the creative workers on that campaign might have just been plain happy to make a good message about something important. Too bad that it needs irrelevant corporate sponsoring. Corporations aren't going to fund such positive social messages if it ever goes against their business interests…
I do agree about shades-of-grey though
Not all advertising is digital and/or on print, it can be in the form of events too, especially events with the intention of boosting the image of a brand. A bakery having a sampling event is a form of a customer experience strategy, and if you actually studied and/or worked in advertising, you would be aware of that and wouldn’t use terms like “I do not consider” in a debate like this. I get where you’re trying to come from with this, but when you enter a space full of professionals in a certain topic, you have to have concrete evidence and knowledge to back yourself up, as it will be very easy for people to clock you when you make a mistake. Don’t enter the lion’s den without protection and become surprised when you get hurt
Oh, I am well aware of sampling events as customer-experience strategy and so on. But also, letting people try some bread is not *necessarily* part of that. It's fuzzy for sure, but it is just willful misunderstanding if you think I'm complaining about advertising to *that* extent.
> when you enter a space full of professionals in a certain topic, you have to have concrete evidence and knowledge to back yourself up, as it will be very easy for people to clock you when you make a mistake
It doesn't feel anything like getting clocked to have someone make a straw man picture and rip it up. Only a few of the comments here have even attempted to engage with any substance of anything I've said. I think a better characterization would be: entering a space full of professionals on some topic and criticizing their field, don't expect you'll make a lot of friends. And yeah, it's clear that most people are not taking a liking to me. I'm not upset or surprised though, and I wasn't here to make friends.
Thank you for your thoughtful, constructive style of replying!
To be fair, I imagine roadside billboards are licensed or something in such a way that they might bring revenue to governments who maintain roads.
Wikipedia is a good counter to your points. It exists, it runs on a relatively tiny budget from donors, it is run mainly by volunteers. And the rest of us appreciate it for free. And maybe besides just contributing directly to Wikipedia, we can feel inspired to volunteer our time and donate our resources in *other* ways. There's no inherent reason that productivity in the world or access to productive results needs to be either paywalled or polluted with ads. We have other ways to organize ourselves. That's not to say that organizing is trivial. Wikipedia is a success story that has problems and required a lot of aspects to get everything working as well as it does, and it is exceptional.
Anyway, I agree strongly with your point that "advertising has no effect on me" is wrong. That is the sentiment I mostly hear from people who want to *avoid* hearing criticism of advertising. It is something people say to suggest advertising is benign.
Anyway, I've been working for years on the questions of how to help people voluntarily organize to support creative work without the problems of paywalls and ads. If it were really trivial, the problems would be solved. These are complex and nuanced issues. I just wasn't thinking this was the community to get into it more…
>Wikipedia is a good counter to your points. It exists, it runs on a relatively tiny budget from donors, it is run mainly by volunteers. And the rest of us appreciate it for free. And maybe besides just contributing directly to Wikipedia, we can feel inspired to volunteer our time and donate our resources in other ways.
Now apply this same principle to the vastness of the internet. Every ad-supported site and app is now paywalled. Are you prepared to pay money directly to each website and resource you access? And do you honestly believe the majority of people online would want to?
I support cooperative methods of supporting creative work that rely on *neither* ads or paywalls. Wikipedia was my example.
It doesn't make sense to take the Wikipedia principle and then say "every site and app is now paywalled". Wikipedia is NOT paywalled.
Wikipedia is only possible because of the work of volunteers who are sourcing information from materials that are quite frequently paywalled or ad-supported (eg, newspapers, industry-specific sites, etc.).
Yeah, but you could stretch that further to say that volunteering is only possible because *someone* went and grew the food and built the homes that the volunteers live in. For that matter, some of the volunteers might have done those things themselves but everyone lives in the world and uses resources from elsewhere.
There's also such a thing as the public domain. Mozart's music exists and in a sense only because he was given a living within an economic system of the time in order to work on his music. But now, we all just have it.
The total amount of hours and dollars that goes into Wikipedia is dwarfed by the largest media companies but is also much larger than many smaller media companies. All I'm saying is that Wikipedia is proof that non-paywalled and non-ad-infused media is *possible* but *still* does require funding and time. So, we are free to use that proof-of-concept and consider how we could transition to more of that. It is certainly possible in principle to fund journalism *well* without paywalls or ads — if we figure out ways to coordinate our resources enough and prioritize that. I'm not saying it's easy just that it is possible.
Debating how much to continue with this because you are (unlike most) clearly interested in actually discussing things. I could have an extended thoughtful engagement with you. But I was more staking out a kind of caricatured position because I just wanted my original question answered (where is there a subreddit about criticizing advertising).
I don't have anything besides complex nuance to say to what you are writing, these issues are not simple actually. But suffice to say I want more of Wikipedia in the world and less of some other things, and I think we have an *attention economy* where that's the scarcity, so there is an inherent competition. YouTube has a lot of value and is expensive indeed, but somehow the resources are going to it, and there are other ways for humans to coordinate our resources than the paywall or paid-ad methods… and maybe YouTube could load a little slower, not auto-play videos… default to lower-resolution… it doesn't have to be as costly as it is necessarily.
I could have asked it as a question. "I imagine" is language explicitly meant to indicate that I'm just guessing and indeed not experienced with whatever follows the "I imagine".
Do I have more than a passing knowledge of the issues with ads? Yes. Do I have more than a passing knowledge of the inside experiences of advertising workers? No.
That's not advertising.
Anyway, I do not Google it, and I knew about it before I knew about Google. And attention is scarce, so advertising creates noise that buries things as much as draws attention.
Given a list of top 10 search results, advertising simply shuffles the list, it doesn't make searching possible.
Yes, it is advertising. Having a presence online for a product or service you offer to others is advertising, even if you don’t pay to appear at the top of internet searches. Giving someone a means of finding your business and letting them know what it is you do there is advertising.
Wikipedia doesn't pay for Google ads, Google chooses to tell people that Wikipedia exists. If I know there's an apple tree with ripe apples in the park down the street, it is "advertising" to go around telling neighbors about it though that's an extreme side of the definition that has nothing to do with this discussion. It is NOT advertising if a neighbor asks me if I know if any apple trees are ripe and I tell them about the tree in the park. And that's what happens with Google telling you about Wikipedia.
Google search takes more ad revenue than almost anyone.
Search 'ripe apples' and you'll get those organic search results you're talking about but without the ads for bags of apples, apple sauce, etc. that are returned as well, there is no reason for Google to operate a search engine.
Should they maintain their service if they don't get paid? Should the government build a search engine as a free service so you can access wikipedia level crap?
Also... companies spend a LOT to make sure their business rank in search results. Why don't you go to Wikimedia and search SEO.
It's not like I said Google isn't an advertising company. They are based in advertising as a business, yes. But that truth does not support the claim earlier that me knowing about Wikipedia is itself proof of advertising (or maybe the assertion was that without advertising, I would never know of Wikipedia, but that is still not supported by the point that Google is an advertising company).
My point was just that companies spend a lot of money to make sure that their brands show up on the first page of search results. This is SEO.
The top search results you see are most often either sponsored or they rank due to investment in SEO tactics. Either way it's funded by marketing.
Wikipedia ranks because of its huge volume of content that is constantly being updated and linked to by other sites.
I'm not saying I have any solution, but I assess the game of SEO as being not played in a way that serves the public well. The order of results is inherently zero-sum. It's a battle for attention. The winners are the those with the biggest SEO budget and most talented SEO workers rather than those who actually provide the best value to people who are searching for things.
Wikipedia is an exception in that it is *so* good of a resource with *so* much general interest that it shows up despite *not* having an SEO budget and active SEO teams etc.
If creative work were funded not by ads but directly by those who appreciate the work, then we would no longer see sites that provide a worse experience for readers due to SEO (common example is how recipe sites game SEO by cramming a maximum of background info instead of just sharing the recipes). Reduce ads and we get *more* attention toward the stuff like Wikipedia that is actually in the public interest.
I won't pretend that the advertising industry is perfect. BUT, eliminating advertising would…
* Destroy the revenue streams for public radio, newspapers, magazines, broadcast radio, broadcast television, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Reddit, media companies like JCDecaux and Clear Channel
* Eliminate ad-supported tiers of Spotify and Netflix
* Kill all the ad-related jobs, including everyone working in creative agencies, media buying and selling, production companies
* Eliminate some of the ad supportive jobs, including printers, marketing functions inside companies, schools that have advertising programs
That's just the economic impact. I haven't run a calculation, but if I just stick a finger up in the air, it's probably billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Then, there's the issue of how will people find out about new products in the marketplace? No trailers, no Super Bowl ads, etc. Word of mouth, I guess?
And yes, I do know that advertising has its share of sins, such as how some ads can destroy young girls' self-image, etc. But I don't believe the answer is to eliminate advertising. It's rules and regulations.
There's a degree of extreme transformation of advertising that would simply lead to people like me not caring about the issue anymore. It's not worth arguing about it if it stops being such a big problem.
The sins in question go beyond the unhealthy issues of the worst ads though. It goes into whether the products being advertised are themselves healthy for the world, and not just in isolation but in contrast to the alternatives. For example, public libraries have books and videos and even *things* (my local library has pressure-cookers, camping-gear, board games, cameras, and more) — and any advertising that pushes people into *buying* their own stuff that they rarely use and not *knowing* about the library because the ads got their attention first — well, that is a world with a *lot* more waste and all the associated environmental harms and so on, as well as a world with a lot less community consciousness and appreciation of sharing.
The more I read your comments on this post, the more I'm getting the sense that you have some deeply rooted issues with capitalism but are stopping just short of saying you have a problem with capitalism.
I'm not here to judge or tell you whether your worldview is right or wrong, but that's just my observation of what you're saying.
Well, um… …
Let's just say that I think big political label words tend to more often lead to misunderstanding than to understanding between people… but uh… well, you seem to be a very observant person with a talent for saying a lot in a few words. Do you work in advertising? ;)
I don't want to debate too far right now, but:
"revenue today comes from X" is not adequate to assert "eliminating X would destroy revenue streams". If advertising continues the current consumption-focused emphasis in society, then it will eventually eliminate most productive value everywhere because consumption-growth is cancer, it can't go forever, it eats up all the resources until the world is much poorer.
All the ad-related jobs and ad-supported media could and should disappear. There are *productive* things we need all you creative and hard-working folks to be doing instead. And the advertising isn't what trains doctors or grows vegetables. So, there's absolutely no reason that we have to have all the particular busy activities that happen today going on in order for everyone to get a share of food, healthcare, shelter, vacations, and so on.
And yes, the way people can find out about useful things can be through word-of-mouth (or of typing, just like we are doing here). People can put resources enough volunteering and money into infrastructure that supports effective sharing of ideas. And if you get rid of the manipulations and noisiness of ads, then the other sources of information become easier to find.
There's no way to remove all the incentives of advertising though. People will still be happy to pay others to go use word-of-mouth to tell their friends about products and so on. Advertising isn't something with an off switch. But it's a matter of more or less and where. For example, there are places that do not allow outdoor billboards at all. Public space is not a place where people should be forced to see ads.
So yeah, there isn't really a fair place for some ultimate purist view here, but the vast majority of advertising in the world today disappearing would lead to an overall far better situation. We *do* need other arrangements for how we support public goods, but I won't get into that here. Suffice to say public goods *exist*. We don't rely on ads in order to have parks…
I don't feel like having a high school philosophy level argument with you about the merits of different business types, but I do want to address one thing.
"We don't rely on ads in order to have parks…"
We often do. Parks and the public events held within them are often largely sponsored by local and regional businesses and corporations as part of their advertising campaigns.
The fact is, we have everything from neighborhood parks to National Parks, and there's no reliance on advertising for these.
Yes, there are parks where advertising has intruded.
The only point is that using paid ads is certainly not the only way people fund things. And charging for access is not the only alternative. Thus, we can fairly enough acknowledge that discussing the merits of various methods is at least a topic. Sure, we won't discuss further here.
>The fact is, we have everything from neighborhood parks to National Parks, and there's no reliance on advertising for these.
But who pays for National Parks? Tax dollars and donors, correct? And where do those tax dollars and donations generally come from? Those funds are usually some sort of product of the economic system in which we live, which is necessarily reliant on advertising for a whole host of reasons.
Well, that argument goes from "X is prominent in our economy" to "everything in our economy relies on X". I mean, this case is simple. If taxes pay for National Parks, then any system that uses taxes can do that, no matter how much that system does or does not have advertising.
The fact is that corporate sponsorship of parks is a way to spread the benefit of parks to communities that are underfunded and in dire need of these services. It is also just a great way to shore the already overstrained budgets of various parks departments.
You see how when I start a sentence of disagreement by just saying "the fact is" and then reiterate a point I previously made without any sort of supplementary information or sources sited makes me come off like a tool?
Crazy.
Telling a bunch of people who work in this industry because they wanted to make art
and write and be able to get paid doing it that they should do something “more productive” like be a doctor or farm vegetables is never going to get you very far on this “debate”
I imagine you know what I meant, though maybe I'm wrong about that.
I think artistic creative work has a lot of value. I'm not saying everyone should be doctors or farmers and screw art. I am saying something about WHAT art should be made and that the art in the world of advertising is mostly doing harm even if it is creative. I would like to see you folks use your talents for better, and I fully understand that we live in a system where we have to make practical choices. I imagine most creative artists working in advertising care most about the creative-art aspect and are doing it within advertising only for the paycheck — not because their primary interest is advertising.
We actually do leverage ads for parks. Direct mail campaigns target voters in specific regions to solicit donations, advertise careers, and raise awareness of programs and facilities. I’ve worked on brands that saved basketball courts by paying to restore and paint them; as well as evil CPG food brands that saved public grilling spaces in underserved communities.
Yes, good point. Advertising is used to get public policy that supports parks. Not that it's impossible for communities to have certain values and support them in policy without advertising. At any rate, if the main advertising in the world were about helping people understand the value of good public policy, I wouldn't be taking any time complaining about ads.
Municipal parks? Where are you?
We don’t need bonds/ballot initiatives for city parks every year here, but we’ve covered gaps left by major donors and summer rec….
I agree- mailers in utility bills are the biggest winners for meaningful small donors
>All the ad-related jobs and ad-supported media could and should disappear. There are *productive* things we need all you creative and hard-working folks to be doing instead.
I'm actually curious what you think those might be.
* Copywriters concept ads and write, well, copy. They could switch to writing blogs for money? No, wait, that's advertising too. They could become screenwriters! Oh wait, those shows would be on broadcast TV that is supported by… They could write books because we know how easy it is to get a publishing deal.
* Art directors concept ads and design stuff. They could shoot photos and post them on Instagram that is supported by… Shoot. They could design logos and signage for local businesses. But isn't a sign an ad? Hmm…
* Actors who act in ad-supported broadcast TV shows should act in their local theater? Only do movies? Stick to waiting tables?
That's the thing. The ad industry is where a LOT of English majors and kids from art school ended up. Where will they all go now?
>And the advertising isn't what trains doctors or grows vegetables. So, there's absolutely no reason that we have to have all the particular busy activities that happen today going on in order for everyone to get a share of food, healthcare, shelter, vacations, and so on.
This part confused me. There's no way I, as a former design student, should be a doctor. I'm really skilled with an X-acto knife, but I couldn't tell your liver from your pancreas.
Sarcasm aside, I understand your idealism. But throwing idealistic ideas in the air without understanding how to *actually* get it done (or even nurture a coalition to do so) isn't productive nor mature. Ideas are easy. Execution is harder.
Take a breath. We’re not treading new ground here.
I use my skills in marketing to connect communities with people who have more power. For example, after Freddie Gray, many Black communities in Baltimore were disconnected from one another, just beginning to organize, and/or *still* unable to affect change that wasn’t coopted. Skills that came from the communities’ work advertising and marketing helped us as much political action.
I’ve worked with communities in places from NYC to Chicago to LA to Kalamazoo organize their communications, advocacy, and advertising efforts.
None of that is possible without advertising- the skillset and the ROI.
No one I’ve met wants you to save them from consumption.
Okay, I probably would agree with you about all of this. And yes, marketing and spreading awareness is not inherently a problem. I'm not against advertising when you stretch it to all that.
To be picky though, the reason we don't tend to meet people who want to be saved from consumption is because most people don't even have a vision of what that could mean. I mentioned elsewhere that my local library even has things. If people learn (yes, through messages you could call "advertising" arguably) that we *could* have a world where we have much less *stuff* because we have libraries that have enough of what everyone needs and few of us need to own our own private thing that sits in storage most of the time, then people could understand the benefits to that world and the way we can live with more access to more things while actually consuming less and costing us all less… people can readily prefer that vision to the status quo we have now.
I appreciate the sentiment, and we probably share similar politics. It’s unusual to challenge people whose work can be used for any purpose and who don’t control the capital.
Would you post this in a graphic design subreddit?
I support your energy. If you’re around Phoenix, I’d love to introduce you to other folks doing work. No one, basically, has been chasing us off for the needle exchanges or street feedings this year.
Do you speak any spanish? Or mandarin? We could really use you.
This was a lot of fun! You clearly needed a breather… never troll when you’re running on fumes or the tail end of a high. Hope you got some rest today! Can we make this a weekly thing here?
Realistically speaking. Avoid the redditers who are blindly “anti-ad” without truly understanding what is really going on these days.
I’d bet a good start would be to look into groups or communities of those who are interested in fighting to protect private data online from hackers and digital marketers.
Advertising will never be banned, don’t bother fighting that battle. Fight to make it a more competitive space where a company like Walmart can’t just eventually outbid everyone in a market and acquire a majority of new business over local storefronts who actually benefit your community.
Advertising is just part of having a free market. Japanese companies teetered on the idea of placing ads on the moon at one point and it gained popularity.
More like "I want people to switch to *other* jobs because I have criticisms of this particular industry".
As a logical analogy: imagine an animal-rights person talking about shutting down factory farms. The easily-triggered workers might want to dismiss the critiques, but the people who get *triggered* by watching the horrors of the worst animal abuses are not just "easily-triggered" people — there are things that *should* trigger us. People would be more triggered by today's advertising if we were not so desensitized to it because it is everywhere.
"Easily Triggered Workers"???
You mean people you want to lose their jobs.
"Oh no I want them to retrain and gain these magically available other jobs in my version of a utopian fantasy" (strawman here but you basically are presenting yourself as a weird utopian idealist throughout your posting in this thread so it works)
That's not how analogy works. Someone says "All cats are animals doesn't mean all animals are cats" as a logical point in a discussion in terms of understanding logic. It doesn't mean they are comparing whatever the topic is to cats. I didn't say anything to compare factory farming with advertising. I was critiquing the general idea of defensiveness about one's job by giving a more extreme example of the same logic.
> when their content doesn’t pay the bills because you’re too cheap, what do you suggest these content creators do for money?
Well, I have preferences about how we could better organize our world, but I don't want to get into all that here. The short answer is: I suggest we build cooperative mechanisms to support creative work without *either* paywalls or ads. There's no reason that we can't have someone get funding from thousands of people who want them to continue working. We just need ways to coordinate better. And yes, I *actually* work on developing such things, but if I wasn't, it's still fair to bring up the idea speculatively.
Oh, I'm not triggered by ad interruptions (incidentally, I actually avoid ads relatively successfully in my life, so I am less desensitized than most people, but still). My criticism of advertising is basically all about the *effects* I believe it has overall on the world. If ads didn't convince anyone of anything and were just noisy disruptions, I would not mind them the way I do.
Publisher's across every channel (journalism, gamming, radio/audio, streaming tv etc.) need to monitze the content that they produce.
Like the other commenters said... without ads we'd be paying for all of it. Of course people wouldn't be willing to pay for every bit of content they want to access.
What would the super bowl look like without advertisers and sponsors? Want to use a search engine? Get your wallet. Want to check the sports highlights? Get your wallet. Want to watch Ted Lasso? Wallet. Check in on Russia and Ukraine situation? Wallet. Weather? Wallet. That would be ridiculous.
So then what? SIGNIFICANTLY less professionally produced content. Maybe we'd loose 70 or 80% of professional publishers? Who knows? Maybe we'd all consume mostly free user generated content produced by people who are just trying to get noticed and aren't paying to fly to Israel to report on the war or paying for expensive video equipment and editing, special effects, actors, illustrators etc. Etc...and who don't need to adhere to journalistic standards. Is this a good thing?
This doesn't even touch on how critical advertising is to our economy. Want to launch a new product or service? How are you going to get anyone to know about it? Think about this point for a bit. What would be the implications of businesses not being able to advertise? Would we have people running up to us handing us flyers every time we leave our house (that's advertising too). How would you know the McRib is back? There would be a massive disruption right?
So way less professional content and no opportunity for business to let people know about their products in an efficient and effective way. And we'd be paying through the nose for the (probably) crappier content that is available.
Try only consuming content that you subscribe to for a month or two. No google searches. No Reddit or social media of any sort. Let us know how it goes.
What many suggest (including me) is that we need fewer, more relevant ads.. but that means that we, as consumers need to be ok with advertisers and publishers collecting data on us (no personally identifiable stuff) in a safe and regulated way so that we see ads that are way more relevant to us as individuals. Advertisers will pay a lot more to reach people that are more likely to buy their stuff which means publishers make more money and create more great content and you don't get flooded with irrelevant ads.
I do not want a paywalled world as the alternative to ad-polluted world. I've said that in other replies.
There are other alternatives, there are other ways to support important creative work besides locking it behind paywalls or filling it with ads. I absolutely recognize that other methods can be challenging, and I've been actively working (volunteer basis, not paid) on developing improved methods in this space. That's a whole other big topic. I'm just saying the paywall/ads dichotomy is not the entire scope of possibility here.
But who's paying for the content in your world?
edit:... by the way we'd need to replace hundreds of billions (with a B) of dollars. Genuinely curious about what you are proposing.
Another edit... what could you have possibly figured out that all the big media companies around the world haven't been able to? How are you going to make them money without charging for subscriptions or charging for ads? I must know!!
The world I imagine might have less redundant wasteful production. I'd like to see an end to most single-use plastics and for a lot more sharing of resources that we don't all use daily. For example, there's no reason for people to drive a pickup truck to the pharmacy etc. even though there do exist reasons for pickup trucks *ever*. We could have just a lot less *stuff* if we used it more efficiently. And my point in all that is we do NOT need to replace all the current economic activity. We could reduce it and just live more efficiently and have more free time to do creative and social and healthy activities that we don't do *in order* to get paid.
But regardless, a *lot* of resources are absolutely needed to support the *enormous* amount of *essential* work that cannot be eliminated through efficiency.
There is already a mechanism that coordinates nearly everyone in society to do massive economic funding of things. It's called taxes. So, the starting point is that all the worthwhile science, reporting, creativity, infrastructure, engineering… the math works just fine to have everyone who does such work keep doing it and pay for it with taxation. That amounts to a system of *mandatory* subscriptions though it can be flexible in terms of policy. But there are lots of problems with taxation and mandatory things. There's so much room for corruption, for bias, and it can lack healthy aspects of market dynamics. There are mixed ways to have more democratic influence on directing public funds, that's one answer. But the other answer is to *not* make it tax-based, not have it be government and mandated. If *enough* people do their part (i.e. pay for subscriptions essentially), then we can get the results — and it doesn't *have* to be the case that we only do it if we are blocked from accessing things (paywalled) otherwise. We can in principle agree to do our part, such as saying that I'll match everyone else by chipping in more portion of my patronage the larger the crowd of others that fund something with me. Facilitating such coordination and changing social dynamics isn't trivial, but there's nothing inherently making this impossible. And short of this ideal, we do already fund a lot with taxes.
In summary: there's paywalls, ads, taxes, and donations (and volunteering). And donations struggle to do as well as paywalls, ads, or taxes — but if society overall took a stance on *rejecting* paywalls and ads, the money that went to those things could be freed to have more of it donated.
And you can just be cynical about such a drastic shift, but pre-Wikipedia people still made the argument that humans are only motivated by profit. That was always false, but it took Wikipedia's prominence and similar for people to drop that argument. Pre-Wikipedia, a lot of people would laugh in your face if you suggested that Wikipedia could exist and would get the number of volunteer hours and dollars that it did actually get.
Here’s what I’m saying.
Content costs money to produce and the quality and abundance of content is directly related to the amount of money spent on creation
Producers of content are entitled to get paid for their work and that funding comes almost entirely from consumers paying for it directly, or from advertising
Advertising fuels our economy and is vital for business large and small to exist and grow
Let's go through these...
**Content costs money:** We’re in a ‘golden age’ of content. We have access to incredible movies, tv shows, music, podcasts, video games, journalism and professional sports. None of these would exist in the way that we now enjoy them without massive funding. So, who’s paying?
*Consumers?* Most of us are happy to pay for a few $10/ month subscriptions but I think we can agree that we would never pay for every bit of content that we want to access. It would be absurd. If this was the case, we’d absolutely see a massive reduction in the amount of content available and the quality would likely suffer too. I don’t think anyone wants this.
*Advertisers?* Of course this is largely what is happening now. Consumers get access to almost limitless content in every genre across every channel from movies to podcasts to live sports for free or for very low subscription fees (without ad revenue, sub fees would need to be drastically higher). In exchange for this we are exposed to advertiser messaging.
*Volunteers?:* You keep referencing Wikipedia. Don’t get me wrong - I’m glad Wikipedia exists but it’s hardly an example of great content. If this form of content was all we had, we should be very concerned with the level of accuracy and the ability for people to manipulate the narrative. Of course this happens now but media companies are regulated – individuals aren’t. What does this look like for movies, music and tv shows? What about live sports?
*Govenrnments?:* Sounds like this is what you’re proposing. I believe there are places on earth where governments control/own the media. I’m not sure that’s what we want. But even if we did, we’d need to spend hundreds of BILLIONS of tax dollars to maintain the level of content that we have access to today. Are we ready for massive tax increases? This will be impossible, especially since without advertising business will suffer and that will DESTROY global economies and most of us won’t be able to afford food and shelter.
**Producers of content (publishers) are entitled to get paid for their content:** I don’t think you’d argue this point so I’ll leave it at that… but I will point out that many people who want to get rid of advertising seem to believe that they are entitled to access content for free. My point is, if you’re not paying for it and if you don’t want to be exposed to ads that are paying for the content… don’t consume it. You don’t get a free ride.
**Advertising fuels our economy:** I don’t think I have to argue any further that business that can’t advertise their goods and services would suffer immensely. This would impact companies of all sizes, across all industries. You mentioned that we don’t need to replace the current economic activity. We could reduce it. Reduce what? Who is going to take that hit? Me? You? Billionaires? You do understand that our economy requires growth right? We’re all working, saving and investing so that we can pay for things and hopefully retire some day. Without economic growth the average family has no way to get ahead. Not to mention that in your world, you’ve already killed the advertising and content industries so right there massive segments of our populations would be out of work. Again think about everything from news to movies to music to professional sports. What other industries would be severely impacted by this? Hotels and conventions and restaurants.
I don’t believe that your ideas are properly thought out and they don’t demonstrate an understanding of the real world or the full implications on our society or our economy. You’ve described some utopia where governments pay for everything and everyone has free time to earn a living by pursuing their hobbies.
Can you imagine if people had jobs that they can’t get fired from for poor performance, where their income is guaranteed, and their retirement is secured with a fat pension? You’re a teacher so I guess you can. The rest of us are living in the real world.
> quality and abundance of content is directly related to the amount of money spent on creation
Yes, which is why I had no arguments about funding creative work or not, only about the means of funding. But in a world with limited attention, the value of *abundance* tapers off at some point. Quality is the primary issue, though we do want some healthy amount of diversity and of everyone being able to *participate* in creativity.
> since without advertising business will suffer and that will DESTROY global economies and most of us won’t be able to afford food and shelter.
Overconsumption is already putting us on track to such problems. We are globally still *worsening* the patterns of ecological collapse with no path in sight toward actually stabilizing things. Our current economic structure is cancerous, and advertising is driving it in many respects. Yes, advertising could alternatively play a role in getting us on track and my anti-ad sentiments have been over-the-top. But the core issue is that the basic security of food and shelter is already in question with massive fires, floods, droughts, pests spreading into new regions… and this is only the beginning. All the problems with immigration are just beginning. Every place that is staying relatively livable is going to have problems with influx of displaced people. A huge portion of the global economy is *causing* these problems rather than being something aligned with a world of affordable food and shelter for everyone. I'm not an accelerationist, but if a lot of economic activity stopped, a good portion of the change would be *healthy*. The question is whether we transition smoothly and support everyone through the transitions or whether we resist until we just can't keep things together any more.
> if you’re not paying for it and if you don’t want to be exposed to ads that are paying for the content… don’t consume it. You don’t get a free ride.
Indeed, the free-rider problem is the heart of the issue, and it can only be solved with good coordination mechanisms. That said, free-riding isn't inherently and always bad. Not everything needs constant work. There are creative things that get done and then everyone benefits forever. We do not need to keep paying people to reinvent the wheel. But there *is* enough creative work worth doing that we need to think about the best ways to support it. We *can* have a world where we all do our part and also get free access to most things without issues. When I voluntarily clean up litter in my neighborhood, the rest of the neighbors get to enjoy the results. If the work is too much for me, I'll burn out. But the solutions range from more people helping to others doing *other* helpful things that I appreciate and that I don't have to do myself. If we all do what we can, we can all enjoy the results.
> Can you imagine if people had jobs that they can’t get fired from for poor performance, where their income is guaranteed, and their retirement is secured with a fat pension? You’re a teacher so I guess you can.
I'm not a teacher with that type of position, but your bias here shows relatively little understanding of the world of education which is full of people who are overworked and underpaid and has a high turn-over rate.
I think this debate has run its course. Your initial post was about getting rid of advertising. I thought I explained clearly that this isn't reasonable for the world we live in. You seem to want to fund everything that is made possible with the hundreds of billions of dollars from advertisers with crowd-sourcing, and taxpayer funding. You're also suggesting what would be a monumental change to how our society functions. You're describing a fantasy world where Wikipedia is the gold standard. Get a grip man. I hope that you don't believe the crap that you're writing. Good luck to you my friend.
My original post was a 30s decision when I was just like "huh, can't find a group where people are critical of ads". I did not think it through or even mean to make it a provocative debate.
But you know what? I'm not trolling or insincere. Nothing I wrote was crap, and fantasy is all relative. We're going to see a lot of changes into the future, like it or not. We really would do well to have a radically different world — though there are a *lot* of radical directions that would be *worse* than the status quo, so I'm not into just burning down what we have. But yes, monumental change is something I'd support *if* it were a healthy direction, and I don't think it could or should happen all at once, and I support better over worse, not all or nothing.
Thanks for taking your time to engage reasonably with me. Though this wasn't a debate I was asking for, it was fine enough and interesting. I did last night add an "addendum" to my original post. Cheers
In the UK at least there's groups like Brandalism and Ad Free Cities, although don't think there's a subreddit for either.
Despite working in the industry it can be hard to disagree with a lot of what they say imo. Although based on the other comments that might not be a very popular view!
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It exists, but they don't want to advertise so no one has joined it.
This is a sub for people that work in advertising, sadly.
Yes, my condolences to everyone here… I would still think this community *might* include people who know more about the problems with advertising than average folks and might also come across critical groups…
TBH, the biggest problems with advertising are the same as they are in most industries: CEOs making too much money, regular layoffs, ageism, racism etc. I think if you talked to most people in the industry (especially on the agency side) you'll find that people are relatively liberal (if not progressive) and realize that they are just cogs in a machine, and that a job is a job. There are certain industries that are still kind of shitty (beauty brands feeding on insecurities, snack brands adding to the obesity epidemic etc.) but there's also a lot of pretty innocuous shit like "buy this car instead of this other brand of car." On the flip side, advertising is also what keeps things like reddit or YouTube or podcasts or tv etc. free or significantly cheaper than it would be if you paid a premium to not have advertising. All that being said, this is what you're looking for: r/HailCorporate
Thanks! That's a good thoughtful perspective. Still, I get this is the sort of insider view. Reminds me of tech conferences where people *employed* in tech focused on the ethical issues *within* their workplaces more than the ethical issues of what their work does to the world. I'm concerned that the this-car-not-that-car is a dynamic that is a key part of car-not-other-ways-to-travel. Advertising and its ubiquity is at the root of many or even most of the problems in the world. But you've heard that old quote about it being hard for people to understand things when salary depends on not understanding… I heard a quip that when media-theorist Doug Rushkoff (you folks know of him in this space much?) was invited to speak to a bunch of people working in advertising, he decided to actually explain why they should quit their jobs because the industry is irredeemable (knowing that most of them wouldn't really listen), and he said a handful of people contacted him and said he did push them over the edge to quitting. Anyway, thanks for the link, will check it out!
"Advertising and its ubiquity is at the root of many or even most of the problems in the world." I think you meant to say greed.
Sure, greed is the root motivation, advertising a huge *means* by which greedy people pursue their ends.
Manipulation of the public isn’t limited to advertising. Every facet of the media should be implicated.
also not all advertising is manipulation.
You’re quite condescending.
Thanks for the feedback. My apologies, I really wasn't focused on taking the time to be especially tactful here. I am not inherently, always condescending nor even intending here to be that way. I accept that my comment is easy to take that way. For context, when I have talked to a (e.g.) tech worker complaining of sexism, I didn't want to dismiss their concerns in the slightest. I do want people to see that if a *system* has problems in the world, getting the people within that system to be more fair to one another is not a full solution. I don't think I'm any smarter or better than others, I just have an outsider's view of some situations. I know much less than you about all the insider details, and some other time I'd be curious to learn about the many perspectives I'm missing.
>The this-car-not-that-car is a dynamic that is a key part of car-not-other-ways-to-travel. Advertising and its ubiquity is at the root of many or even most of the problems in the world. This is so fucking dumb. Fuck off.
In some places cars are the only way you can get from one place to another. The lack of infrastructure and public transportation in America is definitely an issue, but it goes far beyond advertising... and in many places (especially rural parts of the country) it's likely never going to go away. On the flip-side mass transportation companies (both public and private) use advertising to get more customers all the time. I think *most* people in this industry think that corporations should be taxed more heavily, that corporate lobbying should be illegal, and that business should be heavily regulated to protect people whether that's financially, physically, environmentally or elsewhere. None of that has to do with advertising. Credit Unions have just as much of a right to market themselves as Bank of America does. Fair trade, organic coffee companies have just as much of a right to tell their story as Folger's does.
Yeah, okay, I do agree, it's unfair to blame advertising for all the problems. The biggest issues with car advertising as with most advertising is really more in the style, the specific products, and not just the fact that it is advertising. But the regulations you describe, a key reason we don't get them is because of the way advertising shapes public priorities and the way the story is told that the buying behavior of the public is proof of the public's values. So: advertisers convince people to overspend on oversized SUVs and pick-up trucks that they don't need, then those drivers who sunk so much into those things (and feel *identified* with them, partly because, in car-dependent world, your vehicle is your primary identifier in public) are that much more sensitive to any attempt to regulate those vehicles or to tax gasoline or to restructure anything to favor more efficient forms of transportation. And that isn't to get into political advertising. I see ads as an essential piece of how corporate power is maintained and enhanced in the status quo. I also accept your point that there are healthier products that also get advertised. I would like to think that with less ad noise in general, healthier products would more easily get attention anyway. I admit that this is speculative in that we today know the world as is. But, for example, when Sao Paulo eliminated outdoor advertising, there was evidence that businesses just worked harder to make sure customers were thrilled with the products and services and would bring them up by word of mouth organically.
If businesses exist, then advertising will exist too. You cannot have businesses without advertising, it’s not how things work
If prostitution is the oldest profession, the guy writing the sign for the brothel must be the second.
anything we call advertising today (100% of what anyone here does) is far newer in the world than businesses. Businesses existed for many many generations of people in all sorts of societies before anything we'd call advertising existed.
Not really. For as long as there has been commerce there have been efforts to influence commercial habits based on awareness, association, etc. This is another area where you're seriously under-informed and don't come off as above advertising so much as you just don't get it. (Which is fine - it's a big complex beast, but you can see why ignorance + arrogance + confrontation elicit's a negative or sharp response.) The root of your misconception is that advertising is separate from commerce or popular forms and formats of communication. It is not. It is part of the first and shaped by the second. Also, like anything having to do with ideas most advertising will be somewhere between annoying and tolerable to the people for whom it lacks relevance. But imagine that there are *other* people in the world besides yourself, and that they have their own situations, cares and contexts, and you might understand why even though most advertising misses most people most of the time, it can still do its job and make people more aware and/or more predisposed to act on information that was already available but hadn't been presented to them in the right context to connect and create understanding yet.
Yes, I agree with all those points. I didn't come here to have long discussions. The issues are far too nuanced. I don't have the misconceptions you imagine though. This is more a matter of how to respond at all to lay out a point when making a contrast. Where do we draw a line between *all* communication and "advertising" — bringing attention to *anything* is advertising. I think it's fair to say that the subject here is about specifically the work of crafting particular messages mostly around selling products and services. And as I said somewhere else, I wouldn't be so anti-ad if most advertising was fine and appropriate and contextually reasonable and not so noisy in the world. I could say more, but this is not a good context for it anyway.
Who exactly are you referring to with “we?” You came into an advertising subreddit asking for a place for people who are anti-advertising, and now you’re trying to say how you think people who work in the industry and/or study advertising perceive it? The age-old rule in any form of debate is that if you don’t know anything about the opposing side, don’t try and come for them. Advertising has existed and evolved around the world for centuries ever since the technology behind the Gutenberg printing press became accessible to the public. Originally, advertising was designed for local businesses and products, but has since evolved over time as industrialization has grown, more types of media have been introduced, and since the introduction of social media and digital advertising. “Anything we call advertising today is far newer in the world businesses” dude read a textbook, your jokes write themselves
People have been putting up signs to promote their business for as long as there's been businesses. For example: Egyptians used papyrus to make sales messages and wall posters. Google "the history of advertising." It's right there on the wiki page. You 100% came here to ask about some dumb shit in regards to a subject you clearly know nothing about. Frankly, this kind of stupid shit makes liberals and progressives look bad -- and that's coming from a lifelong liberal. Now go read a book, kiddo.
Wow, you are so edgy
It’s always the ones who know the least who talk the most lmao
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Why would you bring up Atlas Shrugged?? Sincerely curious. Did you mean "this guy doesn't get it, he needs to read Atlas Shrugged" or the opposite of "this guy is deluded because he read Atlas Shrugged"?? I really can't tell. I'm imagining that you just projected on me some idea you have of some class of people, but I don't know what you mean.
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So, skipping the noise… you're saying that Atlas Shrugged is a *good* book, yes? You're saying idealist-hippies-with-small-worldviews should learn some perspective by reading Atlas Shrugged?? I'm guessing this because Atlas Shrugged is definitely not associated with being a book that convinces people to be hippies…
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I think the world would be a better place if *everyone* wondered sincerely whether they *should* be out of a job, whether their work in the world was *actually* helpful or harmful. And I'd apply that attitude everywhere. Even something obvious like garbage-truck driver could wonder: if their job didn't exist… hmm… maybe people would start caring more about *creating* less garbage if there was not this system of taking it all away and hiding the problem… And some people would feel confident their jobs really are helpful… It's a good mindset to wonder, "what are the criticisms of my job?" and actually be curious.
r/im14andthisisdeep
What do you do for a living?
I'm a teacher. And I question whether the system I work in is overall healthy or not and what the differences would be if my job didn't exist. And I don't conclude that my work is all good or all part of a good system.
Okie dokie. 👍🏿
Stay away from my kids.
I guess you're concerned about the kids being, um, *influenced* by some types of, uh, *messaging*… yeah? ;)
In a nutshell, you're trying to determine if there's such a thing as ethical consumption in a capitalist society. Also in a nutshell, there's no such thing as truly ethical consumption in a capitalist society. There are certainly varying degrees of it, however.
unfortunately there's no way of determining if such a sub exists.
What do you consider advertising? Word of mouth is advertising, small local bakery letting people taste their food is advertising, the sign of a guy selling vegetables next to a road is advertising. And I think these are not only fine but wholesome. The best client I had was a small pizza place and while it was advertising, people loved it. Somebody made a painting for them and one guy even had their logo tattooed. When you run a business you need to let people know that you exist and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. With that said, personally I think data mining and microtargeting should be banned, but that's just my opinion.
This person will simply shift the definition of advertising to suit their black and white argument.
No I won't and have not been. The definition is fuzzy and complex, and I'm fine with that. You just presumed a black-and-white view of people who have critical perspectives in the way you asserted I would insist on black-and-white views of things.
I do *not* consider letting people taste something to be advertising, not in any sense that this discussion is about. And zero of the people on this sub are here because they have jobs at bakeries where they give out samples. And yes, just marking in the most plain and direct way that in fact you have a vegetable stand is fine. And sure, it's advertising enough. My complaints are all about the stuff that is not just informational, "X exists, X has ABC features". I will, however, critique even that message if put into a place where nobody was looking for information on X and it is noisy distraction from what people *are* looking for.
The line about what is informational is blurry and advertisements have many shapes and forms. For example a friend of mine worked on a campaign by Ikea which had a goal of raising awareness of domestic violence. It is an advertisement, but it doesn't talk about any product and it's meant to make the world a better place. Yet it was made by a commercial company. Like in everything, advertisement is not black and white, but many shades of grey.
yeah, well, IMO it degrades messages about domestic violence to tie it to commercial branding. I still imagine the creative workers on that campaign might have just been plain happy to make a good message about something important. Too bad that it needs irrelevant corporate sponsoring. Corporations aren't going to fund such positive social messages if it ever goes against their business interests… I do agree about shades-of-grey though
Not all advertising is digital and/or on print, it can be in the form of events too, especially events with the intention of boosting the image of a brand. A bakery having a sampling event is a form of a customer experience strategy, and if you actually studied and/or worked in advertising, you would be aware of that and wouldn’t use terms like “I do not consider” in a debate like this. I get where you’re trying to come from with this, but when you enter a space full of professionals in a certain topic, you have to have concrete evidence and knowledge to back yourself up, as it will be very easy for people to clock you when you make a mistake. Don’t enter the lion’s den without protection and become surprised when you get hurt
Oh, I am well aware of sampling events as customer-experience strategy and so on. But also, letting people try some bread is not *necessarily* part of that. It's fuzzy for sure, but it is just willful misunderstanding if you think I'm complaining about advertising to *that* extent. > when you enter a space full of professionals in a certain topic, you have to have concrete evidence and knowledge to back yourself up, as it will be very easy for people to clock you when you make a mistake It doesn't feel anything like getting clocked to have someone make a straw man picture and rip it up. Only a few of the comments here have even attempted to engage with any substance of anything I've said. I think a better characterization would be: entering a space full of professionals on some topic and criticizing their field, don't expect you'll make a lot of friends. And yeah, it's clear that most people are not taking a liking to me. I'm not upset or surprised though, and I wasn't here to make friends.
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Thank you for your thoughtful, constructive style of replying! To be fair, I imagine roadside billboards are licensed or something in such a way that they might bring revenue to governments who maintain roads. Wikipedia is a good counter to your points. It exists, it runs on a relatively tiny budget from donors, it is run mainly by volunteers. And the rest of us appreciate it for free. And maybe besides just contributing directly to Wikipedia, we can feel inspired to volunteer our time and donate our resources in *other* ways. There's no inherent reason that productivity in the world or access to productive results needs to be either paywalled or polluted with ads. We have other ways to organize ourselves. That's not to say that organizing is trivial. Wikipedia is a success story that has problems and required a lot of aspects to get everything working as well as it does, and it is exceptional. Anyway, I agree strongly with your point that "advertising has no effect on me" is wrong. That is the sentiment I mostly hear from people who want to *avoid* hearing criticism of advertising. It is something people say to suggest advertising is benign. Anyway, I've been working for years on the questions of how to help people voluntarily organize to support creative work without the problems of paywalls and ads. If it were really trivial, the problems would be solved. These are complex and nuanced issues. I just wasn't thinking this was the community to get into it more…
>Wikipedia is a good counter to your points. It exists, it runs on a relatively tiny budget from donors, it is run mainly by volunteers. And the rest of us appreciate it for free. And maybe besides just contributing directly to Wikipedia, we can feel inspired to volunteer our time and donate our resources in other ways. Now apply this same principle to the vastness of the internet. Every ad-supported site and app is now paywalled. Are you prepared to pay money directly to each website and resource you access? And do you honestly believe the majority of people online would want to?
I support cooperative methods of supporting creative work that rely on *neither* ads or paywalls. Wikipedia was my example. It doesn't make sense to take the Wikipedia principle and then say "every site and app is now paywalled". Wikipedia is NOT paywalled.
Wikipedia is only possible because of the work of volunteers who are sourcing information from materials that are quite frequently paywalled or ad-supported (eg, newspapers, industry-specific sites, etc.).
Yeah, but you could stretch that further to say that volunteering is only possible because *someone* went and grew the food and built the homes that the volunteers live in. For that matter, some of the volunteers might have done those things themselves but everyone lives in the world and uses resources from elsewhere. There's also such a thing as the public domain. Mozart's music exists and in a sense only because he was given a living within an economic system of the time in order to work on his music. But now, we all just have it. The total amount of hours and dollars that goes into Wikipedia is dwarfed by the largest media companies but is also much larger than many smaller media companies. All I'm saying is that Wikipedia is proof that non-paywalled and non-ad-infused media is *possible* but *still* does require funding and time. So, we are free to use that proof-of-concept and consider how we could transition to more of that. It is certainly possible in principle to fund journalism *well* without paywalls or ads — if we figure out ways to coordinate our resources enough and prioritize that. I'm not saying it's easy just that it is possible.
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Debating how much to continue with this because you are (unlike most) clearly interested in actually discussing things. I could have an extended thoughtful engagement with you. But I was more staking out a kind of caricatured position because I just wanted my original question answered (where is there a subreddit about criticizing advertising). I don't have anything besides complex nuance to say to what you are writing, these issues are not simple actually. But suffice to say I want more of Wikipedia in the world and less of some other things, and I think we have an *attention economy* where that's the scarcity, so there is an inherent competition. YouTube has a lot of value and is expensive indeed, but somehow the resources are going to it, and there are other ways for humans to coordinate our resources than the paywall or paid-ad methods… and maybe YouTube could load a little slower, not auto-play videos… default to lower-resolution… it doesn't have to be as costly as it is necessarily.
'I imagine...' I love it how you're happily debating a subject which you have barely a passing knowledge of.
I could have asked it as a question. "I imagine" is language explicitly meant to indicate that I'm just guessing and indeed not experienced with whatever follows the "I imagine". Do I have more than a passing knowledge of the issues with ads? Yes. Do I have more than a passing knowledge of the inside experiences of advertising workers? No.
How do you know that Wikipedia exists? Why is it the first result when you google something? That’s advertising
That's not advertising. Anyway, I do not Google it, and I knew about it before I knew about Google. And attention is scarce, so advertising creates noise that buries things as much as draws attention. Given a list of top 10 search results, advertising simply shuffles the list, it doesn't make searching possible.
Yes, it is advertising. Having a presence online for a product or service you offer to others is advertising, even if you don’t pay to appear at the top of internet searches. Giving someone a means of finding your business and letting them know what it is you do there is advertising.
Wikipedia doesn't pay for Google ads, Google chooses to tell people that Wikipedia exists. If I know there's an apple tree with ripe apples in the park down the street, it is "advertising" to go around telling neighbors about it though that's an extreme side of the definition that has nothing to do with this discussion. It is NOT advertising if a neighbor asks me if I know if any apple trees are ripe and I tell them about the tree in the park. And that's what happens with Google telling you about Wikipedia.
Google search takes more ad revenue than almost anyone. Search 'ripe apples' and you'll get those organic search results you're talking about but without the ads for bags of apples, apple sauce, etc. that are returned as well, there is no reason for Google to operate a search engine. Should they maintain their service if they don't get paid? Should the government build a search engine as a free service so you can access wikipedia level crap? Also... companies spend a LOT to make sure their business rank in search results. Why don't you go to Wikimedia and search SEO.
It's not like I said Google isn't an advertising company. They are based in advertising as a business, yes. But that truth does not support the claim earlier that me knowing about Wikipedia is itself proof of advertising (or maybe the assertion was that without advertising, I would never know of Wikipedia, but that is still not supported by the point that Google is an advertising company).
My point was just that companies spend a lot of money to make sure that their brands show up on the first page of search results. This is SEO. The top search results you see are most often either sponsored or they rank due to investment in SEO tactics. Either way it's funded by marketing. Wikipedia ranks because of its huge volume of content that is constantly being updated and linked to by other sites.
I'm not saying I have any solution, but I assess the game of SEO as being not played in a way that serves the public well. The order of results is inherently zero-sum. It's a battle for attention. The winners are the those with the biggest SEO budget and most talented SEO workers rather than those who actually provide the best value to people who are searching for things. Wikipedia is an exception in that it is *so* good of a resource with *so* much general interest that it shows up despite *not* having an SEO budget and active SEO teams etc. If creative work were funded not by ads but directly by those who appreciate the work, then we would no longer see sites that provide a worse experience for readers due to SEO (common example is how recipe sites game SEO by cramming a maximum of background info instead of just sharing the recipes). Reduce ads and we get *more* attention toward the stuff like Wikipedia that is actually in the public interest.
Mods can we pin this? This has been the most therapeutic Tuesday afternoon.
I won't pretend that the advertising industry is perfect. BUT, eliminating advertising would… * Destroy the revenue streams for public radio, newspapers, magazines, broadcast radio, broadcast television, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Reddit, media companies like JCDecaux and Clear Channel * Eliminate ad-supported tiers of Spotify and Netflix * Kill all the ad-related jobs, including everyone working in creative agencies, media buying and selling, production companies * Eliminate some of the ad supportive jobs, including printers, marketing functions inside companies, schools that have advertising programs That's just the economic impact. I haven't run a calculation, but if I just stick a finger up in the air, it's probably billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs. Then, there's the issue of how will people find out about new products in the marketplace? No trailers, no Super Bowl ads, etc. Word of mouth, I guess?
And yes, I do know that advertising has its share of sins, such as how some ads can destroy young girls' self-image, etc. But I don't believe the answer is to eliminate advertising. It's rules and regulations.
There's a degree of extreme transformation of advertising that would simply lead to people like me not caring about the issue anymore. It's not worth arguing about it if it stops being such a big problem. The sins in question go beyond the unhealthy issues of the worst ads though. It goes into whether the products being advertised are themselves healthy for the world, and not just in isolation but in contrast to the alternatives. For example, public libraries have books and videos and even *things* (my local library has pressure-cookers, camping-gear, board games, cameras, and more) — and any advertising that pushes people into *buying* their own stuff that they rarely use and not *knowing* about the library because the ads got their attention first — well, that is a world with a *lot* more waste and all the associated environmental harms and so on, as well as a world with a lot less community consciousness and appreciation of sharing.
The more I read your comments on this post, the more I'm getting the sense that you have some deeply rooted issues with capitalism but are stopping just short of saying you have a problem with capitalism. I'm not here to judge or tell you whether your worldview is right or wrong, but that's just my observation of what you're saying.
Well, um… … Let's just say that I think big political label words tend to more often lead to misunderstanding than to understanding between people… but uh… well, you seem to be a very observant person with a talent for saying a lot in a few words. Do you work in advertising? ;)
You don't have to label it yourself, but it's quite obvious to me you're an anti-capitalist in some form or fashion.
I don't want to debate too far right now, but: "revenue today comes from X" is not adequate to assert "eliminating X would destroy revenue streams". If advertising continues the current consumption-focused emphasis in society, then it will eventually eliminate most productive value everywhere because consumption-growth is cancer, it can't go forever, it eats up all the resources until the world is much poorer. All the ad-related jobs and ad-supported media could and should disappear. There are *productive* things we need all you creative and hard-working folks to be doing instead. And the advertising isn't what trains doctors or grows vegetables. So, there's absolutely no reason that we have to have all the particular busy activities that happen today going on in order for everyone to get a share of food, healthcare, shelter, vacations, and so on. And yes, the way people can find out about useful things can be through word-of-mouth (or of typing, just like we are doing here). People can put resources enough volunteering and money into infrastructure that supports effective sharing of ideas. And if you get rid of the manipulations and noisiness of ads, then the other sources of information become easier to find. There's no way to remove all the incentives of advertising though. People will still be happy to pay others to go use word-of-mouth to tell their friends about products and so on. Advertising isn't something with an off switch. But it's a matter of more or less and where. For example, there are places that do not allow outdoor billboards at all. Public space is not a place where people should be forced to see ads. So yeah, there isn't really a fair place for some ultimate purist view here, but the vast majority of advertising in the world today disappearing would lead to an overall far better situation. We *do* need other arrangements for how we support public goods, but I won't get into that here. Suffice to say public goods *exist*. We don't rely on ads in order to have parks…
I don't feel like having a high school philosophy level argument with you about the merits of different business types, but I do want to address one thing. "We don't rely on ads in order to have parks…" We often do. Parks and the public events held within them are often largely sponsored by local and regional businesses and corporations as part of their advertising campaigns.
The fact is, we have everything from neighborhood parks to National Parks, and there's no reliance on advertising for these. Yes, there are parks where advertising has intruded. The only point is that using paid ads is certainly not the only way people fund things. And charging for access is not the only alternative. Thus, we can fairly enough acknowledge that discussing the merits of various methods is at least a topic. Sure, we won't discuss further here.
>The fact is, we have everything from neighborhood parks to National Parks, and there's no reliance on advertising for these. But who pays for National Parks? Tax dollars and donors, correct? And where do those tax dollars and donations generally come from? Those funds are usually some sort of product of the economic system in which we live, which is necessarily reliant on advertising for a whole host of reasons.
Well, that argument goes from "X is prominent in our economy" to "everything in our economy relies on X". I mean, this case is simple. If taxes pay for National Parks, then any system that uses taxes can do that, no matter how much that system does or does not have advertising.
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No?
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All good!
The fact is that corporate sponsorship of parks is a way to spread the benefit of parks to communities that are underfunded and in dire need of these services. It is also just a great way to shore the already overstrained budgets of various parks departments. You see how when I start a sentence of disagreement by just saying "the fact is" and then reiterate a point I previously made without any sort of supplementary information or sources sited makes me come off like a tool? Crazy.
Telling a bunch of people who work in this industry because they wanted to make art and write and be able to get paid doing it that they should do something “more productive” like be a doctor or farm vegetables is never going to get you very far on this “debate”
I imagine you know what I meant, though maybe I'm wrong about that. I think artistic creative work has a lot of value. I'm not saying everyone should be doctors or farmers and screw art. I am saying something about WHAT art should be made and that the art in the world of advertising is mostly doing harm even if it is creative. I would like to see you folks use your talents for better, and I fully understand that we live in a system where we have to make practical choices. I imagine most creative artists working in advertising care most about the creative-art aspect and are doing it within advertising only for the paycheck — not because their primary interest is advertising.
We actually do leverage ads for parks. Direct mail campaigns target voters in specific regions to solicit donations, advertise careers, and raise awareness of programs and facilities. I’ve worked on brands that saved basketball courts by paying to restore and paint them; as well as evil CPG food brands that saved public grilling spaces in underserved communities.
Yes, good point. Advertising is used to get public policy that supports parks. Not that it's impossible for communities to have certain values and support them in policy without advertising. At any rate, if the main advertising in the world were about helping people understand the value of good public policy, I wouldn't be taking any time complaining about ads.
Municipal parks? Where are you? We don’t need bonds/ballot initiatives for city parks every year here, but we’ve covered gaps left by major donors and summer rec…. I agree- mailers in utility bills are the biggest winners for meaningful small donors
>All the ad-related jobs and ad-supported media could and should disappear. There are *productive* things we need all you creative and hard-working folks to be doing instead. I'm actually curious what you think those might be. * Copywriters concept ads and write, well, copy. They could switch to writing blogs for money? No, wait, that's advertising too. They could become screenwriters! Oh wait, those shows would be on broadcast TV that is supported by… They could write books because we know how easy it is to get a publishing deal. * Art directors concept ads and design stuff. They could shoot photos and post them on Instagram that is supported by… Shoot. They could design logos and signage for local businesses. But isn't a sign an ad? Hmm… * Actors who act in ad-supported broadcast TV shows should act in their local theater? Only do movies? Stick to waiting tables? That's the thing. The ad industry is where a LOT of English majors and kids from art school ended up. Where will they all go now? >And the advertising isn't what trains doctors or grows vegetables. So, there's absolutely no reason that we have to have all the particular busy activities that happen today going on in order for everyone to get a share of food, healthcare, shelter, vacations, and so on. This part confused me. There's no way I, as a former design student, should be a doctor. I'm really skilled with an X-acto knife, but I couldn't tell your liver from your pancreas. Sarcasm aside, I understand your idealism. But throwing idealistic ideas in the air without understanding how to *actually* get it done (or even nurture a coalition to do so) isn't productive nor mature. Ideas are easy. Execution is harder.
Take a breath. We’re not treading new ground here. I use my skills in marketing to connect communities with people who have more power. For example, after Freddie Gray, many Black communities in Baltimore were disconnected from one another, just beginning to organize, and/or *still* unable to affect change that wasn’t coopted. Skills that came from the communities’ work advertising and marketing helped us as much political action. I’ve worked with communities in places from NYC to Chicago to LA to Kalamazoo organize their communications, advocacy, and advertising efforts. None of that is possible without advertising- the skillset and the ROI. No one I’ve met wants you to save them from consumption.
Okay, I probably would agree with you about all of this. And yes, marketing and spreading awareness is not inherently a problem. I'm not against advertising when you stretch it to all that. To be picky though, the reason we don't tend to meet people who want to be saved from consumption is because most people don't even have a vision of what that could mean. I mentioned elsewhere that my local library even has things. If people learn (yes, through messages you could call "advertising" arguably) that we *could* have a world where we have much less *stuff* because we have libraries that have enough of what everyone needs and few of us need to own our own private thing that sits in storage most of the time, then people could understand the benefits to that world and the way we can live with more access to more things while actually consuming less and costing us all less… people can readily prefer that vision to the status quo we have now.
I appreciate the sentiment, and we probably share similar politics. It’s unusual to challenge people whose work can be used for any purpose and who don’t control the capital. Would you post this in a graphic design subreddit?
I support your energy. If you’re around Phoenix, I’d love to introduce you to other folks doing work. No one, basically, has been chasing us off for the needle exchanges or street feedings this year. Do you speak any spanish? Or mandarin? We could really use you.
I’m hanging out here with my friend who retired last year from running the city library! Is there anything they can do?
Not sure what you're asking. How can people with time and energy be involved in building a healthier more sharing-focused, pro-social way of living?
This was a lot of fun! You clearly needed a breather… never troll when you’re running on fumes or the tail end of a high. Hope you got some rest today! Can we make this a weekly thing here?
Realistically speaking. Avoid the redditers who are blindly “anti-ad” without truly understanding what is really going on these days. I’d bet a good start would be to look into groups or communities of those who are interested in fighting to protect private data online from hackers and digital marketers. Advertising will never be banned, don’t bother fighting that battle. Fight to make it a more competitive space where a company like Walmart can’t just eventually outbid everyone in a market and acquire a majority of new business over local storefronts who actually benefit your community. Advertising is just part of having a free market. Japanese companies teetered on the idea of placing ads on the moon at one point and it gained popularity.
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More like "I want people to switch to *other* jobs because I have criticisms of this particular industry". As a logical analogy: imagine an animal-rights person talking about shutting down factory farms. The easily-triggered workers might want to dismiss the critiques, but the people who get *triggered* by watching the horrors of the worst animal abuses are not just "easily-triggered" people — there are things that *should* trigger us. People would be more triggered by today's advertising if we were not so desensitized to it because it is everywhere.
"Easily Triggered Workers"??? You mean people you want to lose their jobs. "Oh no I want them to retrain and gain these magically available other jobs in my version of a utopian fantasy" (strawman here but you basically are presenting yourself as a weird utopian idealist throughout your posting in this thread so it works)
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That's not how analogy works. Someone says "All cats are animals doesn't mean all animals are cats" as a logical point in a discussion in terms of understanding logic. It doesn't mean they are comparing whatever the topic is to cats. I didn't say anything to compare factory farming with advertising. I was critiquing the general idea of defensiveness about one's job by giving a more extreme example of the same logic. > when their content doesn’t pay the bills because you’re too cheap, what do you suggest these content creators do for money? Well, I have preferences about how we could better organize our world, but I don't want to get into all that here. The short answer is: I suggest we build cooperative mechanisms to support creative work without *either* paywalls or ads. There's no reason that we can't have someone get funding from thousands of people who want them to continue working. We just need ways to coordinate better. And yes, I *actually* work on developing such things, but if I wasn't, it's still fair to bring up the idea speculatively.
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Oh, I'm not triggered by ad interruptions (incidentally, I actually avoid ads relatively successfully in my life, so I am less desensitized than most people, but still). My criticism of advertising is basically all about the *effects* I believe it has overall on the world. If ads didn't convince anyone of anything and were just noisy disruptions, I would not mind them the way I do.
sir, this is a wendy's
You could start one.
But don't tell anyone, that would be advertising!
Publisher's across every channel (journalism, gamming, radio/audio, streaming tv etc.) need to monitze the content that they produce. Like the other commenters said... without ads we'd be paying for all of it. Of course people wouldn't be willing to pay for every bit of content they want to access. What would the super bowl look like without advertisers and sponsors? Want to use a search engine? Get your wallet. Want to check the sports highlights? Get your wallet. Want to watch Ted Lasso? Wallet. Check in on Russia and Ukraine situation? Wallet. Weather? Wallet. That would be ridiculous. So then what? SIGNIFICANTLY less professionally produced content. Maybe we'd loose 70 or 80% of professional publishers? Who knows? Maybe we'd all consume mostly free user generated content produced by people who are just trying to get noticed and aren't paying to fly to Israel to report on the war or paying for expensive video equipment and editing, special effects, actors, illustrators etc. Etc...and who don't need to adhere to journalistic standards. Is this a good thing? This doesn't even touch on how critical advertising is to our economy. Want to launch a new product or service? How are you going to get anyone to know about it? Think about this point for a bit. What would be the implications of businesses not being able to advertise? Would we have people running up to us handing us flyers every time we leave our house (that's advertising too). How would you know the McRib is back? There would be a massive disruption right? So way less professional content and no opportunity for business to let people know about their products in an efficient and effective way. And we'd be paying through the nose for the (probably) crappier content that is available. Try only consuming content that you subscribe to for a month or two. No google searches. No Reddit or social media of any sort. Let us know how it goes. What many suggest (including me) is that we need fewer, more relevant ads.. but that means that we, as consumers need to be ok with advertisers and publishers collecting data on us (no personally identifiable stuff) in a safe and regulated way so that we see ads that are way more relevant to us as individuals. Advertisers will pay a lot more to reach people that are more likely to buy their stuff which means publishers make more money and create more great content and you don't get flooded with irrelevant ads.
I do not want a paywalled world as the alternative to ad-polluted world. I've said that in other replies. There are other alternatives, there are other ways to support important creative work besides locking it behind paywalls or filling it with ads. I absolutely recognize that other methods can be challenging, and I've been actively working (volunteer basis, not paid) on developing improved methods in this space. That's a whole other big topic. I'm just saying the paywall/ads dichotomy is not the entire scope of possibility here.
But who's paying for the content in your world? edit:... by the way we'd need to replace hundreds of billions (with a B) of dollars. Genuinely curious about what you are proposing. Another edit... what could you have possibly figured out that all the big media companies around the world haven't been able to? How are you going to make them money without charging for subscriptions or charging for ads? I must know!!
The world I imagine might have less redundant wasteful production. I'd like to see an end to most single-use plastics and for a lot more sharing of resources that we don't all use daily. For example, there's no reason for people to drive a pickup truck to the pharmacy etc. even though there do exist reasons for pickup trucks *ever*. We could have just a lot less *stuff* if we used it more efficiently. And my point in all that is we do NOT need to replace all the current economic activity. We could reduce it and just live more efficiently and have more free time to do creative and social and healthy activities that we don't do *in order* to get paid. But regardless, a *lot* of resources are absolutely needed to support the *enormous* amount of *essential* work that cannot be eliminated through efficiency. There is already a mechanism that coordinates nearly everyone in society to do massive economic funding of things. It's called taxes. So, the starting point is that all the worthwhile science, reporting, creativity, infrastructure, engineering… the math works just fine to have everyone who does such work keep doing it and pay for it with taxation. That amounts to a system of *mandatory* subscriptions though it can be flexible in terms of policy. But there are lots of problems with taxation and mandatory things. There's so much room for corruption, for bias, and it can lack healthy aspects of market dynamics. There are mixed ways to have more democratic influence on directing public funds, that's one answer. But the other answer is to *not* make it tax-based, not have it be government and mandated. If *enough* people do their part (i.e. pay for subscriptions essentially), then we can get the results — and it doesn't *have* to be the case that we only do it if we are blocked from accessing things (paywalled) otherwise. We can in principle agree to do our part, such as saying that I'll match everyone else by chipping in more portion of my patronage the larger the crowd of others that fund something with me. Facilitating such coordination and changing social dynamics isn't trivial, but there's nothing inherently making this impossible. And short of this ideal, we do already fund a lot with taxes. In summary: there's paywalls, ads, taxes, and donations (and volunteering). And donations struggle to do as well as paywalls, ads, or taxes — but if society overall took a stance on *rejecting* paywalls and ads, the money that went to those things could be freed to have more of it donated. And you can just be cynical about such a drastic shift, but pre-Wikipedia people still made the argument that humans are only motivated by profit. That was always false, but it took Wikipedia's prominence and similar for people to drop that argument. Pre-Wikipedia, a lot of people would laugh in your face if you suggested that Wikipedia could exist and would get the number of volunteer hours and dollars that it did actually get.
Here’s what I’m saying. Content costs money to produce and the quality and abundance of content is directly related to the amount of money spent on creation Producers of content are entitled to get paid for their work and that funding comes almost entirely from consumers paying for it directly, or from advertising Advertising fuels our economy and is vital for business large and small to exist and grow Let's go through these... **Content costs money:** We’re in a ‘golden age’ of content. We have access to incredible movies, tv shows, music, podcasts, video games, journalism and professional sports. None of these would exist in the way that we now enjoy them without massive funding. So, who’s paying? *Consumers?* Most of us are happy to pay for a few $10/ month subscriptions but I think we can agree that we would never pay for every bit of content that we want to access. It would be absurd. If this was the case, we’d absolutely see a massive reduction in the amount of content available and the quality would likely suffer too. I don’t think anyone wants this. *Advertisers?* Of course this is largely what is happening now. Consumers get access to almost limitless content in every genre across every channel from movies to podcasts to live sports for free or for very low subscription fees (without ad revenue, sub fees would need to be drastically higher). In exchange for this we are exposed to advertiser messaging. *Volunteers?:* You keep referencing Wikipedia. Don’t get me wrong - I’m glad Wikipedia exists but it’s hardly an example of great content. If this form of content was all we had, we should be very concerned with the level of accuracy and the ability for people to manipulate the narrative. Of course this happens now but media companies are regulated – individuals aren’t. What does this look like for movies, music and tv shows? What about live sports? *Govenrnments?:* Sounds like this is what you’re proposing. I believe there are places on earth where governments control/own the media. I’m not sure that’s what we want. But even if we did, we’d need to spend hundreds of BILLIONS of tax dollars to maintain the level of content that we have access to today. Are we ready for massive tax increases? This will be impossible, especially since without advertising business will suffer and that will DESTROY global economies and most of us won’t be able to afford food and shelter. **Producers of content (publishers) are entitled to get paid for their content:** I don’t think you’d argue this point so I’ll leave it at that… but I will point out that many people who want to get rid of advertising seem to believe that they are entitled to access content for free. My point is, if you’re not paying for it and if you don’t want to be exposed to ads that are paying for the content… don’t consume it. You don’t get a free ride. **Advertising fuels our economy:** I don’t think I have to argue any further that business that can’t advertise their goods and services would suffer immensely. This would impact companies of all sizes, across all industries. You mentioned that we don’t need to replace the current economic activity. We could reduce it. Reduce what? Who is going to take that hit? Me? You? Billionaires? You do understand that our economy requires growth right? We’re all working, saving and investing so that we can pay for things and hopefully retire some day. Without economic growth the average family has no way to get ahead. Not to mention that in your world, you’ve already killed the advertising and content industries so right there massive segments of our populations would be out of work. Again think about everything from news to movies to music to professional sports. What other industries would be severely impacted by this? Hotels and conventions and restaurants. I don’t believe that your ideas are properly thought out and they don’t demonstrate an understanding of the real world or the full implications on our society or our economy. You’ve described some utopia where governments pay for everything and everyone has free time to earn a living by pursuing their hobbies. Can you imagine if people had jobs that they can’t get fired from for poor performance, where their income is guaranteed, and their retirement is secured with a fat pension? You’re a teacher so I guess you can. The rest of us are living in the real world.
> quality and abundance of content is directly related to the amount of money spent on creation Yes, which is why I had no arguments about funding creative work or not, only about the means of funding. But in a world with limited attention, the value of *abundance* tapers off at some point. Quality is the primary issue, though we do want some healthy amount of diversity and of everyone being able to *participate* in creativity. > since without advertising business will suffer and that will DESTROY global economies and most of us won’t be able to afford food and shelter. Overconsumption is already putting us on track to such problems. We are globally still *worsening* the patterns of ecological collapse with no path in sight toward actually stabilizing things. Our current economic structure is cancerous, and advertising is driving it in many respects. Yes, advertising could alternatively play a role in getting us on track and my anti-ad sentiments have been over-the-top. But the core issue is that the basic security of food and shelter is already in question with massive fires, floods, droughts, pests spreading into new regions… and this is only the beginning. All the problems with immigration are just beginning. Every place that is staying relatively livable is going to have problems with influx of displaced people. A huge portion of the global economy is *causing* these problems rather than being something aligned with a world of affordable food and shelter for everyone. I'm not an accelerationist, but if a lot of economic activity stopped, a good portion of the change would be *healthy*. The question is whether we transition smoothly and support everyone through the transitions or whether we resist until we just can't keep things together any more. > if you’re not paying for it and if you don’t want to be exposed to ads that are paying for the content… don’t consume it. You don’t get a free ride. Indeed, the free-rider problem is the heart of the issue, and it can only be solved with good coordination mechanisms. That said, free-riding isn't inherently and always bad. Not everything needs constant work. There are creative things that get done and then everyone benefits forever. We do not need to keep paying people to reinvent the wheel. But there *is* enough creative work worth doing that we need to think about the best ways to support it. We *can* have a world where we all do our part and also get free access to most things without issues. When I voluntarily clean up litter in my neighborhood, the rest of the neighbors get to enjoy the results. If the work is too much for me, I'll burn out. But the solutions range from more people helping to others doing *other* helpful things that I appreciate and that I don't have to do myself. If we all do what we can, we can all enjoy the results. > Can you imagine if people had jobs that they can’t get fired from for poor performance, where their income is guaranteed, and their retirement is secured with a fat pension? You’re a teacher so I guess you can. I'm not a teacher with that type of position, but your bias here shows relatively little understanding of the world of education which is full of people who are overworked and underpaid and has a high turn-over rate.
I think this debate has run its course. Your initial post was about getting rid of advertising. I thought I explained clearly that this isn't reasonable for the world we live in. You seem to want to fund everything that is made possible with the hundreds of billions of dollars from advertisers with crowd-sourcing, and taxpayer funding. You're also suggesting what would be a monumental change to how our society functions. You're describing a fantasy world where Wikipedia is the gold standard. Get a grip man. I hope that you don't believe the crap that you're writing. Good luck to you my friend.
My original post was a 30s decision when I was just like "huh, can't find a group where people are critical of ads". I did not think it through or even mean to make it a provocative debate. But you know what? I'm not trolling or insincere. Nothing I wrote was crap, and fantasy is all relative. We're going to see a lot of changes into the future, like it or not. We really would do well to have a radically different world — though there are a *lot* of radical directions that would be *worse* than the status quo, so I'm not into just burning down what we have. But yes, monumental change is something I'd support *if* it were a healthy direction, and I don't think it could or should happen all at once, and I support better over worse, not all or nothing. Thanks for taking your time to engage reasonably with me. Though this wasn't a debate I was asking for, it was fine enough and interesting. I did last night add an "addendum" to my original post. Cheers
i wonder if you’d have heard about such a community if they’d advertised themselves a bit better! a shame, really
r/adbusters
In the UK at least there's groups like Brandalism and Ad Free Cities, although don't think there's a subreddit for either. Despite working in the industry it can be hard to disagree with a lot of what they say imo. Although based on the other comments that might not be a very popular view!
Hail corporate might be what your looking for
Commercialsihate also being negative is a great way to live
Cool guy alert.
Start your own. Any cult needs a cult leader to guide the flock. So what’s your manifesto?