Is advertising inherently deceptive?

It is not inherently deceptive. You can take out ads that point out your faults, if you like. (Actually, I've found that publicly discussing my faults works fairly well. Chris and I were talking about printing up shirts saying something like "I HEAR SLICEHOST AND LINODE HAVE EXCELLENT SUPPORT" and 'prgmr.com brand Xen VPS service, we don't assume you are stupid' on the back... but we backed down 'cause we have no idea what the legal ramifications of naming competitors in an advertisement is.)

On the other hand, advertising is usually, if not deceptive, at least not in the consumers best interest. If you click on a product link from google vs clicking on the search result, the cost for the company is quite a bit higher. It could be argued that the advent of good search engines obsoletes advertising.

Why am I still advertising then? I'm trying to have people think "Oh, I've heard of them" - which is a little bit like credibility. Most people think of slicehost as a old company, and prgmr.com as a new one. This tells me that I want more people to know I exist now.

(Granted, I was doing dumb shit like running used hardware until after slicehost was established; you could make a convincing argument that I wasn't worth using until late 2007/early 2008, and slicehost is definitely more established and they won't have the kinds of problems prgmr.com will if one guy gets hit by a bus.)

And yeah, spending the time on advertising is probably not in my customer's best interest; there's lots of things I could be building instead. (and there's no way I'm outsourcing my advertising. Most marketing people and I have very different definitions of the word deceptive. Also, in a very real way, I am prgmr.com. I know what image I want, and you could even argue that I know better how to reach my target market than most marketing people do.)

Now, personally, I think that the most personal advertising is often the worst in this regard. You can bet that if you talk to a salesperson, that person is getting a large chunk of what you are paying. Good salespeople are expensive. It's fairly common for affiliate programs in my industry to give half the expected revenue.

This brings us to the other thing I find irritating about marketing. Variable pricing. I buy the exact same product as the guy next to me, but sometimes what we pay varies as much as 75%. Even if I negotiate to the sellers cost, that negotiation is adding a lot to the cost of the service, both in terms of my time, and in terms of the seller's negotiator's time. But try buying large chunks of bandwidth without negotiation.

I do my best to list all prices on my website. It doesn't make any sense to give a discount to customers who spend more of my time negotiating. they are costing me more, so why should I charge them less? I mean, I'm always happy to get feedback on pricing, especially if some of my prices are out of whack with regard to the market, but my margins would need to be a lot higher (read: I would need to charge you more) if I had to negotiate price with every customer.

Considering this:

Under the Federal Trade Commission Act:

    * Advertising must be truthful and non-deceptive;
    * Advertisers must have evidence to back up their claims; and
    * Advertisements cannot be unfair.

(via http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/adv/bus35.shtm)

Legally it can't be deceptive.

What if we look at advertising as a continuum from spam to individual salesmanship? Well, that's one axis, independent of the one he pointed out. So now we have two axes: specificity of audience and deception. I don't think we've seen a lot of automation at the most personal, least deceptive side of the spectra. Sure, there's keyword-targeted ads, but what else can we do in the nearby region?

this is, I believe, what will eventually bring google low. so long as the search results are more relevant than the ads, people will choose the search results when they are looking for things. If google starts nerfing search, they will eventually be overtaken by the competition.

Advertising is inherently persuasive, but persuasion need not be deceptive.

The Will Rogers quote may be spot on, but even it doesn't evince deception in advertising but, again, merely persuasion. We don't, after all, only buy things we strictly need.

I have sometimes bought things I heard of through advertising, and been subsequently pleased with my purchase.

Therefore, no.

Uh, no. Is Capitalism inherently deceptive?