I despise advertising as an online revenue model and I agree with the author that it's responsible for all kinds of ills.
That said, I don't agree that there's such thing as "not advertising" and that people can just do their research. The same as there is no such thing as "objective data", everything comes down to presentation and interpretation.
There's not just going to be come common repository of objective facts about different products, that people can peruse to see what fits then. Even if there were, people would do what they could to make their offerings more attractive, or in the case of search, match the search better. They would make their sites more eyecatchjng and engaging, they'd buy ads somewhere to get you to look them up.
Unfortunately, everything is advertising. There are already business models that are not as supported and I hope we have more of those. I don't see advertising going anywhere though - in some cases it will get more clever, in other cases, it will still be banner ads. It's not obsolete, it's just annoying (and can be destructive to products as the author says)
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[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 21.5 ms ] thread- Both parties do not advertise, resulting in zero outcome.
- One party advertises, resulting in a gain for that party and a loss for the other party. (after advertising cost)
- Both parties advertise, resulting in negative outcome.
One equilibrium looks significantly better than the other.
That said, I don't agree that there's such thing as "not advertising" and that people can just do their research. The same as there is no such thing as "objective data", everything comes down to presentation and interpretation.
There's not just going to be come common repository of objective facts about different products, that people can peruse to see what fits then. Even if there were, people would do what they could to make their offerings more attractive, or in the case of search, match the search better. They would make their sites more eyecatchjng and engaging, they'd buy ads somewhere to get you to look them up.
Unfortunately, everything is advertising. There are already business models that are not as supported and I hope we have more of those. I don't see advertising going anywhere though - in some cases it will get more clever, in other cases, it will still be banner ads. It's not obsolete, it's just annoying (and can be destructive to products as the author says)