I mostly agree with you, but I wonder if this view is a little simplistic.
Where a competitive marketplace exists I don't see ads (especially ads purchased by big incumbent vendors) adding any value: it would be better overall if competitors spent that money improving the product (or service) rather than trying to persuade customers to purchase a less-good product (measuring "good" as value/cost, since there is a place for lower quality but lower cost options).
But I do think there might be an economic argument in favour of at least some advertising to bring awareness of new market entrants, and especially of new categories of product/service. (One counterargument might be that this should properly be the role of journalists, and I agree that in an ideal world it would be. But the current dismal quality of the mainstream media suggests that economic incentives may actively hinder having ideal journalism…)
Ads could have a place on dedicated websites, where people go to learn about products. So we see ads only when we want to, and not whenever the company wants to distract us which is basically always.
If this means people see fewer ads, then that's a great way to reduce over-consumption.
> But I do think there might be an economic argument in favour of at least some advertising to bring awareness of new market entrants, and especially of new categories of product/service.
That's the standard argument made: Consumers learn about new products through advertising.
In fact, this is not what happens. At least I've virtually never seen it. The most effective ways to learn about new products are things like trade journals (including ones like Hacker News), blogs, etc. In those contexts, writers select for products which are interesting or which work well.
To the contrary, advertising strongly favors entrenched players with money:
- If Microsoft builds a SaaS, you build a better SaaS, but you have $50k to advertise, and Microsoft has $500M, there will be a gap in consumer perception, in favor of the inferior player.
- If I know, from advertising, that no one ever got fired for buying Microsoft, and Microsoft has additional generic brand recognition, you're at an even greater disadvantage.
In practice, advertising almost always favors entrenched players over new market entrants. Perhaps there's an exception to new market entrants from big players, but that's not nearly enough to justify the economic cost.
I've thought about the second problem a lot, and banning ads would solve both ends of the problem. Journalism is in a poor state because of the attention economy, which is to say: because of ads.
Although I'm not in favour of completely banning advertisements, just taxing advertising revenue heavily, as it sidesteps any censorship accusations. The government still lets you say what you want, but you can't become wealthy just by shilling for corpos.
Exceptions will be made in the name of encouraging viable consumer evaluation content, such as review copies, listing fees and suchlike as long as they are clearly stated and meet a stringent set of requirements.
With very rare exceptions (e.g. nuclear weapons), taxation is almost always a better mechanism than outright bans.
Even for pretty bad things (e.g. really toxic pollution), the taxes just need to be set obnoxiously high. By "obnoxiously high," I mean the trade-off might be cleaning up the Great Garbage Patch or removing a billion tons of CO2; something which clearly helps more than the harm done.
For mild things (e.g. device shitification or not having service manuals), even very modest taxes can help (e.g. a few pennies per device), without throttling innovation. In a commodity market of Chinese off-brands, a few pennies is enough to make-or-break a vendor.
Where a competitive marketplace exists I don't see ads (especially ads purchased by big incumbent vendors) adding any value: it would be better overall if competitors spent that money improving the product (or service) rather than trying to persuade customers to purchase a less-good product (measuring "good" as value/cost, since there is a place for lower quality but lower cost options).
But I do think there might be an economic argument in favour of at least some advertising to bring awareness of new market entrants, and especially of new categories of product/service. (One counterargument might be that this should properly be the role of journalists, and I agree that in an ideal world it would be. But the current dismal quality of the mainstream media suggests that economic incentives may actively hinder having ideal journalism…)