A world without advertising

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

by bemmu • 16 years ago

54 51 16 years ago

bemmu.posterous.com

catechu• 16 years ago

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

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

thret• 16 years ago

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

tensor• 16 years ago

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

tomjen3• 16 years ago

Advertising is intrusive if the target would rather not see it. The only place where advertising belongs is in searches online because you are by definition looking for it.

But that will never happen.

chaosmachine• 16 years ago

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

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

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

bemmu4• 16 years ago

I really like this approach, not the least since I enjoy writing. Returning to the example, I wonder what would be a good place to post such writings so that bakers could then discover them.

stcredzero2• 16 years ago

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

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

beoba• 16 years ago

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

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

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

vannevar3• 16 years ago

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

boredguy8• 16 years ago

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

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

bemmu4• 16 years ago

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

davidhollander• 16 years ago

Baker A: lives in a cave and consumes zero information

Baker B: actively pulls in information about surroundings

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

ph0rque• 16 years ago

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

bemmu4• 16 years ago

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

makmanalp2• 16 years ago

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

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

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

axod• 16 years ago

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

makmanalp2• 16 years ago

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

maeon3• 16 years ago

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

ericd• 16 years ago

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

treelovinhippie• 16 years ago

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

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

Stormbringer• 16 years ago

Wrong. Ads are only not annoying when they are fun or entertaining. Also, the diminishing marginal returns are pretty steep.

Let's say you make an ad with a cat burping. It's pretty funny. Everybody laughs the first time they see it. No one will be laughing the 100th time they see it. By the 1000th time they se it, they will change the channel rather than see it again.

Now, people in other countries will hear about it, so they will seek it out because it's allegedly funny, and they haven't seen it yet.

// begin bitter

But it will be hard to find, because for some strange reason people in the US don't think that people in other countries buy products, they believe we all live in mud huts and make all our goods out of mud.

Oh, and let me say, it is a royal pain in the butt making an iMac out of clay and twigs, though wireless is really easy when you don't have any wires to start with. You should see the shiny rock I pretend is my Android phone... such a beautiful touch interface, so smooth and durable!

// end bitter

Anyway, when you do finally track down the ad, it will be on Hulu, and Hulu will block you from seeing it, because seeing the ad and then not buying the product is theft, or piracy, or something like that.

#&%#$% HULU.

// really end bitter this time

srean• 16 years ago

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

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

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

reinhardt2• 16 years ago

I'd be curious to know how will this perfectly targeted advertising find its perfect targets for, say, selling V1aGra.

j_baker• 16 years ago

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

andreyf• 16 years ago

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

mdonahoe• 16 years ago

Start a bakery

elvirs• 16 years ago

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

pjch• 16 years ago

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

nileshtrivedi• 16 years ago

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

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

hasenj• 16 years ago

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

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

fakespastic• 16 years ago

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

bcaulf• 16 years ago

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

erikstarck2• 16 years ago

SEO.

erikstarck2• 16 years ago

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

My answer: SEO.

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

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

We stop calling it advertising when it's relevant.

vannevar3• 16 years ago

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

jrockway• 16 years ago

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

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

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

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

bemmu4• 16 years ago

Thanks, you're right that almost all the products I can remember buying I have been actively looking for, or I've learned about from word of mouth, forums or news sites.

I wasn't trying to argue that advertising is necessary, I was open to either opinion. I genuinely wanted to know how to approach businesses without causing annoyance, while still staying competitive.

Best answer to that I got was "write articles". Also I started considering putting an ad on some industry magazine more seriously now, since some people said that such advertising is not annoying, because people are actively looking for this information. When I remember reading magazines related to my own interests, I do recall reading the ads too and being interested in them (Wired magazine crossed the line though).

robeastham• 16 years ago

I think you might be slightly overemphasising how the average person responds to advertising. Not everyone thinks that all advertising is evil and intrusive. Most people don't like to admit that they are influenced by ads, but they are, especially if the ad is relevant and executed well. Think of some of the great TV ads of the past, people like them. Not all advertising should be tarred with the same brush.

Having said that I do hate the fact that ad's seem to be following me around these days. I checked out the supplement mentioned in Tim Ferris's Four hour body book and it followed me round for ages until I cleared my cookies. Now that is irritating.

By the way I think TF's new book is pretty shabby compared to his first.

edanm• 16 years ago

Just as a counterpoint, I often find out about new things through advertising, on sites where the advertising is good. For example, I've found several tools that I use via Stack Overflow ads. They're a great example of targeted advertising that really delivers value to me, because it actually helps me discover tools that I need that I wouldn't have otherwise known existed.

clarkm• 16 years ago

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

jerf• 16 years ago

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

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

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

AllahJesus• 16 years ago

Hmm...

That's a good question.

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

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

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

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

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

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

parka• 16 years ago

And here's how that world without advertising would look

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonydemarco/sets/72157600075508...

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

falava• 16 years ago

A world without _bad_ advertising:

Opt-in + Opt-out advertising.

Asking your friends, alpha-geeks are better.

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

smutticus• 16 years ago

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

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

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

stcredzero2• 16 years ago

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

Of course, the effects are profound.

scotty79• 16 years ago

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

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

chrisbennet• 16 years ago

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

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

lynx44• 16 years ago

This article has an interesting premise.

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

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

vannevar3• 16 years ago

...advertising can genuinely create awareness of value adding answers.

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

A world without advertising

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