Another way of looking at it

Oct 22, 2010 01:17

When people complain about ads - on websites, mainly, but also on TV and at the cinema (oddly, ads in newspapers and magazines seem to slip under the radar these days despite making up around 75% of the 'content'), my response is generally along the lines of ( Read more... )

self-image, hobbies-social engineering, reactions-grumble, arrogance

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Comments 6

boggyb October 21 2010, 17:52:54 UTC
Hmm ( ... )

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dvandom October 21 2010, 17:53:35 UTC
Because the ads support all that content you get ad-free. It's a tragedy of the commons...if everyone blocks the ads, then everyone has to pay more for content or do without the content. Newspapers are 75% ads because without ads they'd cost four times as much (or more). Services like TiVo have to send part of your subscription fee along to the networks to make up for the lost ad revenue due to people skipping. And while a clever person can avoid most of the ads in other places, as soon as too many people start avoiding the ads you get paid content walls going up.

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exp_err October 21 2010, 22:34:19 UTC
We pay less for TV and online content because advertisers pay, but we pay more for everything else, because manufacturers pay advertisers. If advertising ceased to work, we wouldn't be paying more overall.

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dvandom October 21 2010, 23:04:43 UTC
Actually, the cost of running ads is a pretty small part of what we pay, and establishing a national brand lets a company keep prices lower thanks to economies of scale. Without advertising, we'd be limited to local brands because no one would have a reason to buy a non-local brand, and prices might actually be higher.

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exp_err October 21 2010, 23:50:18 UTC
We'd buy non-local brands because they'd be cheaper, again because of economies of scale (or in some cases, because they'd be better quality). Even if companies A and B start out making the same product for two neighbouring villages, if B was producing their product cheaper (because village B was bigger and allowed greater quantities or because labour in B was cheaper or because the local soil was better, or whatever), why wouldn't they offer their product for sale in village A, and why wouldn't people there prefer the cheaper product?

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