I think the idea that advertising is no longer valid as information dissemination only holds up if you assert that people actively go out and look for information about everything in their life,...
I think the idea that advertising is no longer valid as information dissemination only holds up if you assert that people actively go out and look for information about everything in their life, which they don't.
My example would be that my local grocery store, HEB, runs an ad that talks about their new coffee blends and that they now offer curbside pickup. As someone who sometimes goes to HEB, this is info that is of at least minimal value to me, as I have not had a need to google their in-house coffee blends or their curbside pickup availability.
This is true with a lot of advertised products, especially new products that are just coming to market. How do you go about letting people know your product exists? Just do a press release, and hope it gets covered?
While I think it is definitely true that a lot of advertising is manipulative, some of it is not. So you can't write it off on the whole. And the FTC certainly can't move to outlaw all advertising, as the article suggests.
Of course not, since they're bombarded with unwanted information for most of their waking hours via TV, radio, and the internet. New products don't matter. Nobody wants to know that your product...
I think the idea that advertising is no longer valid as information dissemination only holds up if you assert that people actively go out and look for information about everything in their life, which they don't.
Of course not, since they're bombarded with unwanted information for most of their waking hours via TV, radio, and the internet.
This is true with a lot of advertised products, especially new products that are just coming to market. How do you go about letting people know your product exists? Just do a press release, and hope it gets covered?
New products don't matter. Nobody wants to know that your product exists. Nobody cares. Everybody has more pressing concerns. That's why advertising is intrusive and should be destroyed.
While I think it is definitely true that a lot of advertising is manipulative, some of it is not.
I no longer care. I regard all marketing not based on informed consent as intrusive and unethical.
So you can't write it off on the whole.
Why not? Advertising under the Edward Bernays model is intrusive, obnoxious, and manipulative. It exists for the sole purpose of creating a desire for a product where none previously existed. That is reason enough to destroy advertising.
And the FTC certainly can't move to outlaw all advertising, as the article suggests.
They can certainly try. It's mainly a matter of overcoming existing legal precedent and establishing that corporations are not people and have no claim to individual rights.
See, when you say "nobody" I think you meant to say "I" instead. Because you're making generalizations that aren't applicable to everyone.
New products don't matter. Nobody wants to know that your product exists. Nobody cares. Everybody has more pressing concerns. That's why advertising is intrusive and should be destroyed.
See, when you say "nobody" I think you meant to say "I" instead. Because you're making generalizations that aren't applicable to everyone.
I think you were mistaken, but thanks for your concern. My generalizations might indeed be inaccurate, but I chose to make them knowing this might be the case. As far as I'm concerned, "nobody...
See, when you say "nobody" I think you meant to say "I" instead.
I think you were mistaken, but thanks for your concern.
Because you're making generalizations that aren't applicable to everyone.
My generalizations might indeed be inaccurate, but I chose to make them knowing this might be the case. As far as I'm concerned, "nobody gives a damn" should be the default assumption for everybody looking to sell something.
Man, I tried to avoid it in both the exchange we've had but you comes out as condescending ("thanks for your concern", really?), arrogant ("everybody", everybody who?) and borderline childish ("I...
Man, I tried to avoid it in both the exchange we've had but you comes out as condescending ("thanks for your concern", really?), arrogant ("everybody", everybody who?) and borderline childish ("I no longer care, everything is shit", paraphrasing here).
I'm not saying that you are, but maybe you should slow down just a little.
As I said, you are presenting good points of discussion, just in an unnecessary aggressive way.
Everyone have bad days, but relax, we're not here to be your enemies.
I want food. I do not want to leave my house. Previously, I was unable to do this. Now grocery stores allow this. Isn't them telling me this a good thing?
I want food. I do not want to leave my house.
Previously, I was unable to do this. Now grocery stores allow this. Isn't them telling me this a good thing?
It's a good thing if you provided informed consent before they started advertising to you. If you haven't opted in, then the grocery store is intruding upon you and demanding your attention when...
Previously, I was unable to do this. Now grocery stores allow this. Isn't them telling me this a good thing?
It's a good thing if you provided informed consent before they started advertising to you. If you haven't opted in, then the grocery store is intruding upon you and demanding your attention when it has no legitimate reason to do so.
As someone who actively tries to avoid ads, my two-cents is - you want food, you went seeking that information. That's different from being bombarded with it.
As someone who actively tries to avoid ads, my two-cents is - you want food, you went seeking that information. That's different from being bombarded with it.
I am an entrepreneur with a new gizmo or gadget that I want to show to the world. It does something new and novel in XXX space. How do I get my message out without advertising? Am I missing...
I am an entrepreneur with a new gizmo or gadget that I want to show to the world. It does something new and novel in XXX space. How do I get my message out without advertising?
Ideally, your gizmo or gadget will fulfill some need or provide something of value. So people will find out about it either by looking for a specific solution or browsing that category of goods....
Ideally, your gizmo or gadget will fulfill some need or provide something of value. So people will find out about it either by looking for a specific solution or browsing that category of goods.
So say, I want to entertain myself, and decided on a movie, I would go look up current movies or movies of a specific type. I, basically, don't need to see adverting for it everywhere, like when I'm taking the bus.
The blaring billboards in Times Square is not acceptable nor is an add draped across every available location So basically you want targeted search results and ads relevant to the context your are...
The blaring billboards in Times Square is not acceptable nor is an add draped across every available location
don't need to see adverting for it everywhere
So basically you want targeted search results and ads relevant to the context your are in.
looking for a specific solution or browsing that category of goods.
So through Google search, YouTube, blogs, magazines, Etsy, Amazon Marketplace?
I don't really like to be targeted, but yeah, that's the jist of it. Ideally, even if I am on Amazon, I can enable/disable if I want to see recommendations. Just like if I were at the mall and...
I don't really like to be targeted, but yeah, that's the jist of it. Ideally, even if I am on Amazon, I can enable/disable if I want to see recommendations. Just like if I were at the mall and sales asked me if I wanted help/suggestions, I can say no and not be followed around.
Nobody cares. Nobody cares. If by "advertising" you mean hijacking people's attention and giving them the hard sell without their consent, then the answer is: "you don't". The reason for this is...
I am an entrepreneur with a new gizmo or gadget that I want to show to the world.
Nobody cares.
It does something new and novel in XXX space.
Nobody cares.
How do I get my message out without advertising?
If by "advertising" you mean hijacking people's attention and giving them the hard sell without their consent, then the answer is: "you don't".
The reason for this is that nobody cares about your product or your message.
Am I missing something here?
Yeah. The current "opt out" model of advertising needs to die in a fire, because in many cases the only way to "opt out" is to be a hermit. Instead, all advertising should be on an "opt in" basis. Does this make it harder for businesses? Of course, but who gives a shit?
Your generalizations cloud your point. Maybe I do care if his product is going to make my life better. I'd wager a rather large number of people are interested in products that may improve their...
Your generalizations cloud your point. Maybe I do care if his product is going to make my life better. I'd wager a rather large number of people are interested in products that may improve their lives. Maybe they're not interested in the new McWhatever, but that doesn't mean we should completely eliminate advertising. You saying "nobody cares" without any basis doesn't really do anything for the conversation we should be having.
Maybe you do, but how is he supposed to know that? Under the current model, he simply broadcasts his message, inflicting it on people who have no reason to care in the hope that he'll reach people...
Maybe I do care if his product is going to make my life better.
Maybe you do, but how is he supposed to know that? Under the current model, he simply broadcasts his message, inflicting it on people who have no reason to care in the hope that he'll reach people like you in the process.
This "opt out" model of advertising is wasteful, obnoxious, and intrusive. It ought to be replaced with an "opt in" model based on the informed consent of the viewer. You have the right to know who is trying to sell you something, what they're trying to sell you, why they're trying to sell it to you, and what they intend to do with any personal information you provide them.
Fine. Then there should be a free (to subscribers) newsletter to which you should be able to subscribe. That way you can "opt in" to receive advertising based on a specific interest instead of...
If there's something new and novel I'd like to know.
Fine. Then there should be a free (to subscribers) newsletter to which you should be able to subscribe. That way you can "opt in" to receive advertising based on a specific interest instead of having your interest inferred from your web browsing habits using spyware embedded in web pages.
There's no reason we can't do this already. We've had the technology for decades. You've heard of mailing lists, right?
I find Apple's 'BUY OUR IPHONE 24!!!!!' very annoying but I don't see how you propose we use the internet without advertising.
I've been running my website under various domains without advertising since 2001. I have this magical thing called a day job that gives me money that I can use to pay for annual domain registrations and monthly hosting fees, neither of which are particularly expensive if you do a little research and pick a hosting company that isn't run by money-grubbing assholes.
but if I'm having to pay for every YouTube video I watch, every Facebook post I read, every news article I open, every Google search I make... Well quite frankly I'm going to stop using those products.
So what? Do all those YouTube videos, Facebook posts, and news articles really improve your life? Or are you just using media consumption to procrastinate?
Under your methods, everything is very small scale and limited.
I prefer to call it "human-scale". The systems in which we live are not designed with individual human beings in mind, and this includes the internet. We live in a world that was made by and for corporations, not for individual human beings or even for human communities.
You probably already know this on some level, even if it's just a vague feeling that the world is out of tune.
How am I going to find out about the new restaurant in another city, or even on the other side of my city without advertising?
If it's any good, you'll hear about it. Trust me on this.
I don't use social media, so it's going to have to be by word of mouth.
What's wrong with word-of-mouth? Wouldn't you rather hear about something from a friend or acquaintance whose taste you trust, than from some stranger who doesn't know you and only cares about getting paid?
I can't see this model working.
I doubt it's any worse than the model we currently have.
You're coming off as really condescending here. But regardless, I also maintain several sites with no tracking or ads, and since most are static sites with low traffic, my AWS bills have never...
I have this magical thing called a day job that gives me money that I can use to pay for annual domain registrations and monthly hosting fees, neither of which are particularly expensive if you do a little research and pick a hosting company that isn't run by money-grubbing assholes.
You're coming off as really condescending here. But regardless, I also maintain several sites with no tracking or ads, and since most are static sites with low traffic, my AWS bills have never exceeded the free tier. But I don't have employees to pay.
Without ads, the modern internet wouldn't exist. Even non-profits like NPR rely on advertising (on the web and with underwriting on their shows), so the burden on the audience to donate would be much higher. If you paywall, trying to convince people to pay for something that used to be free is difficult, especially if it's a for-profit corporation. Plus, it seems like every site has a subscription service at this point, in addition to many artists having a Patreon, all vying for my wallet.
Then there should be a free (to subscribers) newsletter to which you should be able to subscribe. That way you can "opt in" to receive advertising based on a specific interest instead of having your interest inferred from your web browsing habits using spyware embedded in web pages.
This isn't really a solution. Ad pricing is based off of impressions, clicks, and actions. If people just sign up for it to support the site and setup a filter to mark as spam or delete, or open it for the impression, the money sites get from it will go down as it won't be worth much. As much as we all dislike ads, most large sites we take for granted would die off without them or require payment to access. I'd argue having much less access to information would be much worse than the annoying ads we have today.
Regardless, the ad-supported internet is a dead end, and any site that depends on ads has no future. Once people figure out how to block ads, you've lost them forever. If you're willing to run...
Regardless, the ad-supported internet is a dead end, and any site that depends on ads has no future.
Once people figure out how to block ads, you've lost them forever. If you're willing to run Firefox on your phone, you can install uBlock Origin, and mobile ads become nothing but a bitter memory. There's a project called Pi-Hole that allows you to run an local ad-blocking DNS for your home network on a Raspberry Pi. If we get to the point where routers have Pi-Hole built into the firmware, it's pretty much "game over" for adtech and for any website that depends on ads.
I've been practicing so I can dance on the ad-supported web's grave. I'm looking forward to it.
Excellent article, the FTC angle for anti-trust cases & it's history is new to me. To their list of problems with Advertising as it exists today I would add: Giving companies with big advertising...
Excellent article, the FTC angle for anti-trust cases & it's history is new to me.
To their list of problems with Advertising as it exists today I would add:
The vast cost in wasted human effort and lives. Too many engineers and artists rather than create media or software to uplift their fellow humans. Are instead paid to track and manipulate us. All to the end of enriching the rich and empowering the powerful.
I'm not sure about the case for and against advertising itself, but the ramifications from getting rid of advertisement would be huge for industries that rely upon it for revenue, e.g. sports,...
I'm not sure about the case for and against advertising itself, but the ramifications from getting rid of advertisement would be huge for industries that rely upon it for revenue, e.g. sports, social media, cable, etc.
Think of the visual, noise, and CO2 pollution we could eliminate by nuking the advertising industry from orbit. The mental health and environmental benefits alone would justify the death of...
but the ramifications from getting rid of advertisement would be huge for industries that rely upon it for revenue, e.g. sports, social media, cable, etc.
Think of the visual, noise, and CO2 pollution we could eliminate by nuking the advertising industry from orbit. The mental health and environmental benefits alone would justify the death of professional sports, social media, and cable TV if these sectors cannot adapt to a world without the "opt-out" model of advertising.
Entertainment, should not be a vessel for advertisement. Advertising has never improved any industry that has resorted to depending it for revenue. What's worst is that it leads to an arms race...
Entertainment, should not be a vessel for advertisement. Advertising has never improved any industry that has resorted to depending it for revenue. What's worst is that it leads to an arms race where if one company advertises, then others in the same industry must as well to stay competitive and relevant.
If an industry is dependent on advertising to exist, then it exists to advertise.
I stopped before reading the section about "The antitrust case against advertising" because it seemed a long list of court cases. Another topic here on tides made me realise the power of...
I stopped before reading the section about "The antitrust case against advertising" because it seemed a long list of court cases.
Another topic here on tides made me realise the power of subjective reality (to use a fancy name) in which a user of ours was surprised that Twitter was so unknown in a list of social network (I was as well).
But then another user made us realise how much the community of Twitter is basically formed by a certain type of users (we're taking raw percentage here).
Applying this concept it becomes obvious how a company that relies only on Influencer (because a society that rely on peer exchange to have a product known, becomes Influencer driven) would become just a worse version for both consumer and companies as they have to relies on specific people to make the same information run around.
Information, internet or not, don't magically appear in people's mind. I don't understand how the writer think the internet works.
I could have missed where the article explain how this system works apart from when it was citing social medias. It's been a rough day and I'm kinda tired :)
Neat article, I've only got two main thoughts about it. While I agreed with a lot of the points about advertisements it seems like the problem is mainly to do with information. Persuasion exists...
Neat article, I've only got two main thoughts about it. While I agreed with a lot of the points about advertisements it seems like the problem is mainly to do with information. Persuasion exists outside of advertising and has been the focus of complaining about social media sites. Advertising goes hand in hand with this, as we got a better understanding of human psychology, the characteristics of information and more data about people we started running into problems.
The second thought is that I don't think advertising is obsolete, I just think it's corrupt and ineffective. People still want to know about products. For every thing created there is a group of individuals interested in it. We still need a good system for connecting these groups together.
I guess that to the extent actual content production is subsidized by advertising (because no one knows how to value genuinely informative content and secure payment for it), we're stuck with...
I guess that to the extent actual content production is subsidized by advertising (because no one knows how to value genuinely informative content and secure payment for it), we're stuck with advertising. That's literally the current model - watch an ad to see the content.
As far as I'm aware, there's little public evidence that advertising actually accomplishes what $200 billion dollars would suggest. Nonetheless, the ability of advertising to normalize the unfamiliar, to attach attributes like sexual prowess or material advancement to property, to make unpalatable political candidates more vote-worthy than their negatively-framed opponents, are still worth building an industry out of.
I'm suspecting that anti-trust and deceptive advertising statutes will founder on free speech concerns, that judges generally favor existing precedent, and that as Bill Hicks said, marketers will remain "Satan's Little Helpers".
I think the idea that advertising is no longer valid as information dissemination only holds up if you assert that people actively go out and look for information about everything in their life, which they don't.
My example would be that my local grocery store, HEB, runs an ad that talks about their new coffee blends and that they now offer curbside pickup. As someone who sometimes goes to HEB, this is info that is of at least minimal value to me, as I have not had a need to google their in-house coffee blends or their curbside pickup availability.
This is true with a lot of advertised products, especially new products that are just coming to market. How do you go about letting people know your product exists? Just do a press release, and hope it gets covered?
While I think it is definitely true that a lot of advertising is manipulative, some of it is not. So you can't write it off on the whole. And the FTC certainly can't move to outlaw all advertising, as the article suggests.
Of course not, since they're bombarded with unwanted information for most of their waking hours via TV, radio, and the internet.
New products don't matter. Nobody wants to know that your product exists. Nobody cares. Everybody has more pressing concerns. That's why advertising is intrusive and should be destroyed.
I no longer care. I regard all marketing not based on informed consent as intrusive and unethical.
Why not? Advertising under the Edward Bernays model is intrusive, obnoxious, and manipulative. It exists for the sole purpose of creating a desire for a product where none previously existed. That is reason enough to destroy advertising.
They can certainly try. It's mainly a matter of overcoming existing legal precedent and establishing that corporations are not people and have no claim to individual rights.
See, when you say "nobody" I think you meant to say "I" instead. Because you're making generalizations that aren't applicable to everyone.
I think you were mistaken, but thanks for your concern.
My generalizations might indeed be inaccurate, but I chose to make them knowing this might be the case. As far as I'm concerned, "nobody gives a damn" should be the default assumption for everybody looking to sell something.
Man, I tried to avoid it in both the exchange we've had but you comes out as condescending ("thanks for your concern", really?), arrogant ("everybody", everybody who?) and borderline childish ("I no longer care, everything is shit", paraphrasing here).
I'm not saying that you are, but maybe you should slow down just a little.
As I said, you are presenting good points of discussion, just in an unnecessary aggressive way.
Everyone have bad days, but relax, we're not here to be your enemies.
I want food. I do not want to leave my house.
Previously, I was unable to do this. Now grocery stores allow this. Isn't them telling me this a good thing?
It's a good thing if you provided informed consent before they started advertising to you. If you haven't opted in, then the grocery store is intruding upon you and demanding your attention when it has no legitimate reason to do so.
That's a good point.
As someone who actively tries to avoid ads, my two-cents is - you want food, you went seeking that information. That's different from being bombarded with it.
I am an entrepreneur with a new gizmo or gadget that I want to show to the world. It does something new and novel in XXX space. How do I get my message out without advertising?
Am I missing something here?
Ideally, your gizmo or gadget will fulfill some need or provide something of value. So people will find out about it either by looking for a specific solution or browsing that category of goods.
So say, I want to entertain myself, and decided on a movie, I would go look up current movies or movies of a specific type. I, basically, don't need to see adverting for it everywhere, like when I'm taking the bus.
The blaring billboards in Times Square is not acceptable nor is an add draped across every available location
So basically you want targeted search results and ads relevant to the context your are in.
So through Google search, YouTube, blogs, magazines, Etsy, Amazon Marketplace?
I don't really like to be targeted, but yeah, that's the jist of it. Ideally, even if I am on Amazon, I can enable/disable if I want to see recommendations. Just like if I were at the mall and sales asked me if I wanted help/suggestions, I can say no and not be followed around.
Nobody cares.
Nobody cares.
If by "advertising" you mean hijacking people's attention and giving them the hard sell without their consent, then the answer is: "you don't".
The reason for this is that nobody cares about your product or your message.
Yeah. The current "opt out" model of advertising needs to die in a fire, because in many cases the only way to "opt out" is to be a hermit. Instead, all advertising should be on an "opt in" basis. Does this make it harder for businesses? Of course, but who gives a shit?
Your generalizations cloud your point. Maybe I do care if his product is going to make my life better. I'd wager a rather large number of people are interested in products that may improve their lives. Maybe they're not interested in the new McWhatever, but that doesn't mean we should completely eliminate advertising. You saying "nobody cares" without any basis doesn't really do anything for the conversation we should be having.
Maybe you do, but how is he supposed to know that? Under the current model, he simply broadcasts his message, inflicting it on people who have no reason to care in the hope that he'll reach people like you in the process.
This "opt out" model of advertising is wasteful, obnoxious, and intrusive. It ought to be replaced with an "opt in" model based on the informed consent of the viewer. You have the right to know who is trying to sell you something, what they're trying to sell you, why they're trying to sell it to you, and what they intend to do with any personal information you provide them.
Fine. Then there should be a free (to subscribers) newsletter to which you should be able to subscribe. That way you can "opt in" to receive advertising based on a specific interest instead of having your interest inferred from your web browsing habits using spyware embedded in web pages.
There's no reason we can't do this already. We've had the technology for decades. You've heard of mailing lists, right?
I've been running my website under various domains without advertising since 2001. I have this magical thing called a day job that gives me money that I can use to pay for annual domain registrations and monthly hosting fees, neither of which are particularly expensive if you do a little research and pick a hosting company that isn't run by money-grubbing assholes.
So what? Do all those YouTube videos, Facebook posts, and news articles really improve your life? Or are you just using media consumption to procrastinate?
I prefer to call it "human-scale". The systems in which we live are not designed with individual human beings in mind, and this includes the internet. We live in a world that was made by and for corporations, not for individual human beings or even for human communities.
You probably already know this on some level, even if it's just a vague feeling that the world is out of tune.
If it's any good, you'll hear about it. Trust me on this.
What's wrong with word-of-mouth? Wouldn't you rather hear about something from a friend or acquaintance whose taste you trust, than from some stranger who doesn't know you and only cares about getting paid?
I doubt it's any worse than the model we currently have.
You're coming off as really condescending here. But regardless, I also maintain several sites with no tracking or ads, and since most are static sites with low traffic, my AWS bills have never exceeded the free tier. But I don't have employees to pay.
Without ads, the modern internet wouldn't exist. Even non-profits like NPR rely on advertising (on the web and with underwriting on their shows), so the burden on the audience to donate would be much higher. If you paywall, trying to convince people to pay for something that used to be free is difficult, especially if it's a for-profit corporation. Plus, it seems like every site has a subscription service at this point, in addition to many artists having a Patreon, all vying for my wallet.
This isn't really a solution. Ad pricing is based off of impressions, clicks, and actions. If people just sign up for it to support the site and setup a filter to mark as spam or delete, or open it for the impression, the money sites get from it will go down as it won't be worth much. As much as we all dislike ads, most large sites we take for granted would die off without them or require payment to access. I'd argue having much less access to information would be much worse than the annoying ads we have today.
Regardless, the ad-supported internet is a dead end, and any site that depends on ads has no future.
Once people figure out how to block ads, you've lost them forever. If you're willing to run Firefox on your phone, you can install uBlock Origin, and mobile ads become nothing but a bitter memory. There's a project called Pi-Hole that allows you to run an local ad-blocking DNS for your home network on a Raspberry Pi. If we get to the point where routers have Pi-Hole built into the firmware, it's pretty much "game over" for adtech and for any website that depends on ads.
I've been practicing so I can dance on the ad-supported web's grave. I'm looking forward to it.
Excellent article, the FTC angle for anti-trust cases & it's history is new to me.
To their list of problems with Advertising as it exists today I would add:
Giving companies with big advertising budgets power over the media.
The vast cost in wasted human effort and lives. Too many engineers and artists rather than create media or software to uplift their fellow humans. Are instead paid to track and manipulate us. All to the end of enriching the rich and empowering the powerful.
I'm not sure about the case for and against advertising itself, but the ramifications from getting rid of advertisement would be huge for industries that rely upon it for revenue, e.g. sports, social media, cable, etc.
Think of the visual, noise, and CO2 pollution we could eliminate by nuking the advertising industry from orbit. The mental health and environmental benefits alone would justify the death of professional sports, social media, and cable TV if these sectors cannot adapt to a world without the "opt-out" model of advertising.
Entertainment, should not be a vessel for advertisement. Advertising has never improved any industry that has resorted to depending it for revenue. What's worst is that it leads to an arms race where if one company advertises, then others in the same industry must as well to stay competitive and relevant.
If an industry is dependent on advertising to exist, then it exists to advertise.
I stopped before reading the section about "The antitrust case against advertising" because it seemed a long list of court cases.
Another topic here on tides made me realise the power of subjective reality (to use a fancy name) in which a user of ours was surprised that Twitter was so unknown in a list of social network (I was as well).
But then another user made us realise how much the community of Twitter is basically formed by a certain type of users (we're taking raw percentage here).
Applying this concept it becomes obvious how a company that relies only on Influencer (because a society that rely on peer exchange to have a product known, becomes Influencer driven) would become just a worse version for both consumer and companies as they have to relies on specific people to make the same information run around.
Information, internet or not, don't magically appear in people's mind. I don't understand how the writer think the internet works.
I could have missed where the article explain how this system works apart from when it was citing social medias. It's been a rough day and I'm kinda tired :)
You could have skipped over the list of cases establishing legal precedent for attacking advertising on antitrust grounds, but whatever. You're tired.
Care to elaborate it as it is objectively an interesting article but quite long as well?
It'll still be here tomorrow. Go get some sleep.
Neat article, I've only got two main thoughts about it. While I agreed with a lot of the points about advertisements it seems like the problem is mainly to do with information. Persuasion exists outside of advertising and has been the focus of complaining about social media sites. Advertising goes hand in hand with this, as we got a better understanding of human psychology, the characteristics of information and more data about people we started running into problems.
The second thought is that I don't think advertising is obsolete, I just think it's corrupt and ineffective. People still want to know about products. For every thing created there is a group of individuals interested in it. We still need a good system for connecting these groups together.
For that we already have websites, forums, and internet search.
I guess that to the extent actual content production is subsidized by advertising (because no one knows how to value genuinely informative content and secure payment for it), we're stuck with advertising. That's literally the current model - watch an ad to see the content.
As far as I'm aware, there's little public evidence that advertising actually accomplishes what $200 billion dollars would suggest. Nonetheless, the ability of advertising to normalize the unfamiliar, to attach attributes like sexual prowess or material advancement to property, to make unpalatable political candidates more vote-worthy than their negatively-framed opponents, are still worth building an industry out of.
I'm suspecting that anti-trust and deceptive advertising statutes will founder on free speech concerns, that judges generally favor existing precedent, and that as Bill Hicks said, marketers will remain "Satan's Little Helpers".