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It's not insane. I want to buy things, I'm going to continue to buy things, and advertisements sometimes make me aware of things I want to buy. If you think that's insane, I'm confused about why you're participating on a site that's fundamentally about promoting a culture of entrepreneurial spirit and enterprise, which requires making people aware of new products and services.

> I'm confused about why you're participating on a site that's fundamentally about promoting a culture of entrepreneurial spirit and enterprise, which requires making people aware of new products and services.

Because said site got popular, and diluted, would be my cynical guess. Your observation is spot on, though.

> sometimes

By your own admission, advertising has a poor signal-to-noise ratio. The mental cost of advertising (not to mention the economic cost) is very high[1]. Why should we stick to a system with such a poor efficiency?

> I want to buy

There are other ways to do that. For example, the internet should make it very cheap to make information available to anybody that wants to buy something. Services like google shopping are very primitive attempts.

> making people aware

It's the "making" part that many of us find extremely unethical. Like everything else, consent is opt-in.

[1] If you don't believe there is a high cost, isolate yourself from ads for a month or two. Humans are very good at adapting, so it's easy become blind to how much energy and mental capacity are necessary to filter ads.

The main issue with ads is message saturation. Like how my wife decided to buy me (for xmas) Star Wars tix so we could both go see it.

Yes, I thought it was ok, but she had to hire a babysitter and in the end, if I'd been asked prior, I would've said no, or asked for a better movie (like The Martian).

I have the feeling ads almost always sell you something you'd have been better off not buying anyway.

So you're saying The Martian's ad campaign wasn't as good as Star Wars's?

There are people with needs and people with solutions. I understand where you are coming from, but advertising a solution to people that may have that need is not always evil.

There are many times where I am glad I saw advertising: my favorite band is coming to town, a new product that will save me hours a day just got released, the shoes I have been looking for are being sold at 30% off.

I don't want to give up all of my privacy, but sometimes I don't mind finding a solution to something in my peripheral focus.

There's definitely a grey area. I just think we're so far deep in the black it's almost not worth bringing up.

Once could imagine some software app installed on your machine, that tracks you and gives you interesting offers , without loss of privacy.

Information like "products X, Y, and Z from these manufacturers now solve these problems" or "band Q is visiting your city soon" can be presented in a non-manipulative manner, but current ads go beyond information into manipulation using emotion, repetition, ear worms, and social pressure.

If information by itself worked, I can guarantee you nobody would waste time using all these other techniques.

> If information by itself worked

There are two lessons we can learn form "information by itself doesn't sell $WIDGET". One is that properly informed people don't actually want that product, and the product should be changed or replaced to meet their actual needs.

The alternative lesson - which is unfortunately very popular - is that if people that are properly informed won't buy the product, then they should be kept ignorant and scammed into buying it.

Or the reality, which is neither of those: people don't become properly informed when you present them with unprompted information. They ignore your pitch and move on with their life. You never reach the state where there are "properly informed" people deciding not to buy your product.

> unprompted

That's the problem.

> They ignore your pitch

Of course they do. An unprompted pitch is at best an annoyance and at worst some kind of scam. Why would you expect it to be well received after you wasted their time and energy?

> You never reach the state where there are "properly informed" people deciding not to buy your product.

Sure you do. It's why people pay for things like Consumer Reports - so they can get the information they need to decide if they should buy something. This isn't true in all cases, of course, but most people make informed purchasing decisions regularly.

Just note that they may disagree with you, even when you have the same facts. Situations and opinions are highly variable.

And Consumer Reports reaches about 7 million US households. Out of over 110 million. That's quite the definition of "most" you've got there.

    > things like Consumer Reports
             ^^^^

If it wasn't clear, that was only one example. Every reviewer, search engine, friend-who-already-bought-one, and so on is a resource available to get information.

This is, however, straying from my point, which was: just because people aren't informed about your particular product doesn't give make it ok to try to trick them into buying your product with manipulative advertising, and throwing your pitch at someone unsolicited is still (at best) rude.

If it wasn't clear, that was only one example. People in general do not pay for things like Consumer Reports.

That could easily change if there were no more advertisements and "things like Consumer Reports" were the way to buy things. It would be like a Costco or Amazon Prime membership.

If these costs are not borne evenly, and some people are paying for the consumption of more disciplined people, it's probably contributing to terrible cycles of poverty (ie: some kid spending money on fancy new shoes he doesn't need and can't afford is paying for a well-paid tech-users YouTube habits, because it preys on their lack of education).

Isn't it usually the opposite, though? The poor kid can access the sites for free, because the rich old guy is clicking on the ads and subsidizing the whole site. If there was a paywalled subscription, on the other hand, the kid would be SOL. I don't like web ads, but if anything they seem to be a progressive redistribution system to me.

>We could pay X for the content, and not incur the overhead.

Sure we could, but it's extremely clear that only hyper-specialized niches are willing to do that when someone else is providing similar content at no monetary cost to the end user. Like it or not, the market has spoken; they want content in exchange for ads, and are not willing to pay the content provider directly.

>Advertising isn't free. Insofar it works, for some people, it's basically coercive via psychology and simulated peer pressure.

I've bought ads before. I just wanted people to find out about my product. Short of a guerilla spam campaign, it's the only way to get exposure. I've since learned that so many people tune out ads that guerilla spam campaigns (formal spam campaigns are known as "PR") are really the only way to beat competitors.

There are certainly disgusting and slimy ads out there, but, to cite a recent example, if I am sent a 10% off coupon and I happen to want to buy a major appliance, am I wrong for choosing that store to buy it at over the others? Did they wrong me by giving out a discount?

You can say that they 'manipulated' me into going to their store, but that's only because it was in my own interest to do so in the first place.

If we put the bar for 'manipulation' low enough, it would seem that one shouldn't talk to anyone or get any information from anywhere, lest it change your mind in some way and thus manipulate you.

That's be fine if I just went to a site and searched for coupons, when I needed an appliance. Same result, cheaper and nicer for everybody. Its the pervasive ad noise that's at issue.

Since you agree with me that there exist "disgusting and slimy ads out there", and I agree with you that there's some that merely facilitate information, perhaps the more interesting question is "what's the ratio?"

I firmly believe that the vast majority of ads out there are unarguably manipulative: feigning time-sensitivity to pressure people into purchasing, availing themselves of psychological tricks with color and attraction to retain eyeballs, purchasing praise and endorsements and passing it off as sincerity, etc.

The ratio is probably at whatever gets the most money from the advertiser, or as close to they know how to be.

So perhaps the real question should be what incentives we can create to tilt that ratio towards useful information and away from slimy things?

In my country coupon (or whatever else) in 1-15% range probably means that original price was raised and afterwards discount applied to simulate "sale". This is also heavily influenced by the fact that most of products are imported and bought by dollars/euro and currency is fluctuating every day by several percents. Discount higher than 15% probably means that the product itself is not what I think - it is either refurbished or damaged or without warranty or expired or the market is lying to me somewhere or it is another product altogether.

Any rare cases of honest discounts are statistically below threshold and can be safely dismissed - just threat all sales as a lie and you'll be almost safe, that's what marketers taught me.

The yellow pages (remember that old book?) is advertising. Is that coercive?

Yes when you open it to look for a plumber and see an ad for a pressure-washing service. You were happy with your driveway but now feels it needs something else.

At least with the yellow pages, we were able to close the book once done. With the web, it's anywhere, all the time and with machine learning to make it adjust in real time to your preferences.