As much as I hate ads, if you don’t make yourself known to potential customers you’re very screwed
I don't think we need ads for discovery, I see it more as a nefarious way to occupy space in people's conscious.
How exactly does that work for virtual products?
The problem again is greed. The organic way is too inefficient so advertising needs to come in and make people rich instead of letting the product do the convincing naturally, word of mouth and so on.
Also, word-of-mouth advertising is, as the name suggests, a form of advertising.
But as sibling comment said, if it's really good, people will find it eventually.
Who here never browsed a product or company catalog they found, just because they were curious?
Frankly, they should be illegal. If a physical store did that in Canada, it certainly would be. I'm surprised Canada hasn't reacted to these overabundant fake-product ads.
I want to agree with you, but you only think you're not seeing ads. Obviously, the SEO corruption has made everything you search for distorted by irresistible economic incentives of tilting the search results and search engine in favor of promoters.
Ads solve the discovery problem. Without ads, people still try to solve the discovery problem and try to get your attention. Are those methods still ads?
examples?
- SEO optimization to get to the top of the search result page
- Paying influencers to use their product
- Paying people to post on forums about the product
- Sending / sponsoring reviewers