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Comment by A_D_E_P_T | Hacker News Reader

Like cancer, I think it's possible to split ads into two categories: Benign and malignant.

Benign ads are like ads for toothpaste, Febreeze, or airlines.

Malignant ads are, to give but two examples, for things like gambling and pharmaceuticals. The pharmaceutical business, in particular, was much more widely trusted and had far higher public favorability ratings in the old days when their advertising to the public was severely frowned upon.

Advertisements for vices are generally a huge net negative for society. Cigarettes, alcohol, prostitution/OnlyFans, TikTok and other mind-melting social media and mobile lootbox games... The less we see of them, the healthier society is. In places like the UK, where a huge volume (if not an absolute majority) of advertisements are for vices like sports gambling, you know that things have gone sideways. You can feel it.

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No, even 'good' advertisement is mostly zero-sum game bad for the consumer. However, Overton window has shifted so much that people just accept them (at best as a free entertainment) without questioning.

Example with airlines: airlines stealing each other's customers just raises the price for the tickets (by the amount paid for advertisement) without net benefit for the consumer.

The only advertisement I can consider a good one is a shop sign on the shop/restaurant and perhaps a sign on a nearby crossing to direct me there.

Logically, a 'really good deal just became available' should be a useful one (information - wise), but that has been gamed to such an extent...

Here's an airline advertisement: "We're starting direct service from $YOUR_CITY to Cancun."

Here's another airline advertisement: "Look how much fun the people are having flying on our airline."

One gives actual information about something that is now available that wasn't before. The other is a zero-sum game with the other airlines.

> The only advertisement I can consider a good one is a shop sign on the shop/restaurant and perhaps a sign on a nearby crossing to direct me there.

You could argue that the original Google search ads fall into this category ( before they were changed to look more like search results ) - ie they much more likely to be directly relevant, indeed helpful, to the search activity.

I think a better wording is to say that "advertising is like bateria". Using cancer is way too one-sided as all cancers are bad.

Some bacterias are bad, some are good.

Most of the time we talk about bacteria it is the bad ones we think of, mostly because study of the good ones are so underpriotized and we don't understand them well.

Humans could absolutely not survive without the good bacteria in the stomach. They produce some of the vitamins we need (plus other roles).

Could humans survive without the “good advertising”?

It would be very difficult for many new companies to get the word out about their new product. Innovation would suffer.

If you can't advertise for the AirFryer, how do you get people to know about this new product and what it can do? Mouth-to-mouth is too slow and inefficient for most products. How often do you drop by a kitchen store just to check out if there is any new invention?

That's why internet exist to make the mouth-to-mouth as fast and effective as possible

I wasn’t saying advertising served no purpose and had no benefit. I just asked a question to point out the absurdity of the comparison. Perhaps ads are like bacteria, both good, bad and indifferent. But specifically calling out the fact that you can’t live without good bacteria makes the comparison ridiculous.

I think you put the split at the wrong point. It's not just what is being advertised; it's also how.

Take lite beer, for example. Ignoring the issue of whether beer fits into your "vice" category, you could make a case for benign advertising of lite beer: "Hey, there's this kind of beer that has less calories than regular beer. If you like beer but worry about the calories, maybe this is for you."

Or you can have malignant advertising for it: "Drink this brand of lite beer, and all the pretty girls will be all over you. Drink some other brand and you'll be all alone like a loser." Stealing a quote, from which I don't have the source handy: This kind of advertising tries to make the person you are envy the person you could be with their product. In other words, it tries to steal your satisfaction and then offers to sell it back to you. That's malignant no matter what the product is.

Advertising industry has been considered malignant long before the advent of the internet. Originally published in 1976, "Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture" by Stuart Ewen is an interesting read.

Thomas Carlyle was pretty hard on it in the 19th century.

> Consider, for example, that great Hat seven-feet high, which now perambulates London Streets; which my Friend Sauerteig regarded justly as one of our English notabilities; "the topmost point as yet," said he, "would it were your culminating and returning point, to which English Puffery has been observed to reach!"—The Hatter in the Strand of London, instead of making better felt-hats than another, mounts a huge lath-and-plaster Hat, seven-feet high, upon wheels; sends a man to drive it through the streets; hoping to be saved thereby. He has not attempted to make better hats, as he was appointed by the Universe to do, and as with this ingenuity of his he could very probably have done; but his whole industry is turned to persuade us that he has made such! He too knows that the Quack has become God. Laugh not at him, O reader; or do not laugh only. He has ceased to be comic; he is fast becoming tragic.

(From Past and Present, 1843)

Brand awareness is zero sum. Spending escalates within permissible bounds, with ad inventory sellers acting like landlords, extracting rent. This mechanic is as true for benign as it is for malignant ads.

> two categories: Benign and malignant.

You are thinking of tumors, not cancer.

Here in the UK, it's still illegal to advertise prescription only drugs to the consumer. You can promote them to health care professionals ( prescribers ), but in a very rightly regulated way.

> Like cancer, I think it's possible to split ads into two categories: Benign and malignant.

I think you mean tumors because all cancer is malignant. There’s no benign cancer.

> you know that things have gone sideways. You can feel it.

What you’re feeling is your totally subjective value system bumping up against things that don’t jibe with it.

> these things are acceptable, and these things are not

You’re just taking those values and applying them to everything and everyone else. Febreeze gives me migraines, airlines are often totally shit companies, and toothpaste is a million of the same product full of a bunch of worthless gimmicks. Pharmaceutical ads depend on the pharmaceutical, and what you consider ‘vice’ ads are mostly for products used responsibly by many millions of people even if abused by many. Just because they make you uncomfortable doesn’t mean they should make everyone else uncomfortable.

I disagree. I think your examples of "benign" ads are as malignant as the others.

Did I just read a febreeze ad?

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