If I wanted notices about fundraisers it should be because I signed up for them.

If I want to know about concerts I would've subscribed to a feed.

If I wanted to help my cousin find a used car I'd actively go searching for one.

If I have a problem in need of a solution, I'll search for it.

All of that is true for all web ads. The friendly types of ads you're describing only work as offline ads.

If I am online I don't want any of that offline context following me around at the behest of a creepy surveillance industry. A web page knowing what is local to me or what I might be interested in is a bug. Frankly I categorize it in the realm of security vulnerabilities.

And that's still putting aside the question of why I would want to spend time/attention looking at any online ads. The ad for the local concert stuck on a bulletin board can be read while waiting for a burrito if I would otherwise be spacing out, or it can be ignored if I'm thinking about something else or otherwise don't feel like taking new input on new topics. Whereas web page ads are interspersed with what I'm already trying to do - it's like if I went to grab my burrito and the guy gave me a 30 second elevator pitch before he'd hand it over.

Whereas the alternative for online ads is blank 'white' space. If I am online, I'm positively engaged in doing something else. If I'm interested in local concert listings, then I will purposefully check out concert listings.

You are deliberately confusing ads with things that already have better names, such as notices or listings. They feel different because they ARE different.

Advertising is wildly successful because it's literally everywhere and we are conditioned from birth that the whole concept of "strangers using psychological tricks so you give them your money" is just a normal fact of everyday life. Most people are NOT conditioned to be on-guard against ads, and that is the whole problem. It's not until you make the choice to actively avoid ads where possible and give up ad-laden media consumption altogether for a while that you notice how bad (and bad for you) advertising is.

If you haven't tried switching to a low-advertising diet, you are probably missing out on the ability to focus on what really matters in life.

Unfortunately, when that makes up a trillionth of a percent of all ads, it appears to me as though the overall idea is terrible, with a few who got lucky here and there.

Apparently some of the very best-converting ads are repeat sales. Of course it helps if the product is obviously consumable, but I'm told that this counterintuitive strategy actually works well. Maybe it's because they can track conversions but not product returns, so maybe you're searching for a better one after returning the first purchase.

I seem to get a stream of ads for terrible products on YouTube on my phone (I get completely different ads when watching on an Apple TV) - by this point I'm convinced it is Google punishing me into signing up for YouTube Premium...

> What about the ad for your kids' school fundraiser? My kids should come home with a flyer for it.

> Or the ad for a used car that your cousin would love. I will actively seek out and research a car.

> Or the poster for the concert at your local community hall. Presumably this physical paper poster doesn't give me malware/AIDS if I look at it or tear off a slip.

My overriding personal objective is to be able to exist without being expected to consume and spend constantly every moment, waking or otherwise. In an ideal world, I should have to give consent to be advertised to, and should be able to operate in public without being bombarded with companies trying to take my money.

I feel your own examples undermine your positions:

Drinks specifically are one of the most clearcut negative examples to me, where there is zero product discovery/information/customer upside involved; the sole purpose of that CocaCola banner is to marginally shift the ad-targets consumption behavior (fully to his or her detriment, either from overconsuming and/or overpaying).

If I seek product information, ads are the absolute last place to look because they have all the incentive to hide everything negative about the product and to obfuscate any comparison with potentially superior competitors.

I'm not saying that all marketing is a wasteful detriment to humanity as a whole, but a lot of advertising has a zero-sum "benefit" to society, while binding a lot of ressources (but every rational company is somewhat "forced" to play anyway).

The original comment, and your initial response, talked about advertising. The examples you give, and this response in general, are marketing. They are very different, and marketing is much broader.

> first and foremost informs

I'd claim any extent to which ads inform the viewer is downstream of the ultimate goal of having people spend money on the product. The company behind the ad does not inherently care about you being informed, just that informing people (in very selective ways) sometimes happens to be an effective way to increase sales. Where it better serves their purpose to misinform, that's what they do (which legislation can help curb).

> Remember the time you learned of a particular programming library that does the thing that you wanted to do?

Typically by searching a package index, opposed to someone being paid to shove a product in my face unsolicited while I'm trying to look at something else.

I don't think it really helps defend meaningfulness of the job in question ("techy, working on serving ads") to expand the scope to considering other things (writing package documentation, reviewing tourist destinations, ...) and then point to the fact that some of those other things, which the employee in question doesn't do, are useful.

> Why do you drink (coke / pepsi / fav. brand of tea / fav. brand of coffee)? What formed your opinion was some kind of marketing, either directly, or indirectly.

Being persauded to buy one sugary drink over another (or over water) doesn't really seem to be a constructive outcome, especially for all the time and resources wasted. Actual information incidentally gained from Coke ads is little to none - you'd be far better with an independent review/comparison.

Sure; but people are not typically getting paid to post Show HNs, and that content is not shown to victims unsolicitedly, so I don't have any problem with it either.

If you are a "fellow techy, working on serving ads", it is a pretty safe assumption that producing "Show HNs" is neither the main purpose of your job nor very representative.

Even TV ads used to be a bit closer to that.

Likely false but always felt likely there was a bit of respect being paid toward the reader/viewer in terms of recognizing them as an intelligent individual.

Nowadays advertisements aimed at adults are too different than ones for kids stuff. All vulgar (not sexual) fluff and eye candy.

It's extremely rare to find people who aren't criminals yet engaged in behavior that's genuinely detrimental to everyone else. The world isn't new and the obviously unacceptable behaviors have all been forbidden for thousands of years.

That's why when people talk about stuff that's detrimental to "society", they are usually trying to claim that their personal preferences are more universal than they actually are. It's reminiscent of Thatcher's observation that there's no such thing as society in the sense the left use the word. There are families and coworkers and employers and so on, but there's not some monolithic unit called society that can be anthropomorphised and given preferences.

Clearly, advertising is nowhere near detrimental to society, it's the opposite: a society without ads would be a planned communist dystopia well beyond anything seen even in the USSR (which had advertising!). Many, many people benefit from advertising, which is why it's such a big industry.

People who don't believe this is true are typically in the "don't have information others do" bucket. But a few are just trying to dress up animalistic anti-capitalism in more respectable sounding clothes.