> 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.

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koliber 7 days ago | parent [-]

Companies exist to make money. They use marketing as part of that process. However, we can not forget that consumers derive value from the things that companies sell. If we only focus on the big bad companies, then it is not possible to see how marketing could also serve the consumer.

Believe it or not, some people do enjoy a sugary drink from time to time. While I don't drink soft drinks regularly, I recently discovered skyr protein yogurts through advertising. That's a product that caters to a desire that I have. Never heard of skyr before!

> 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, ...)

There was a blanket statement that all ads are negative and people making them are useless -- exaggeration and gross simplification is mine. I offered some counterpoints for more balanced thinking. There is plenty of advertising that delivers positive value, hence some advertising jobs are useful.

One problem is that people sometimes think of ads as only web display ads. They are not aware that there are many other kinds of ads. Independent review sites, travel blogs, and posts on HN about an interesting software package are also ads. When truly independent, it's called word-of-mouth advertising.

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Ukv 7 days ago | parent [-]

> Believe it or not, some people do enjoy a sugary drink from time to time

But does that mean spending billions in resources on getting people to consume more sugary drinks is a net positive?

I don't think so. I think the goal of having more people consume sugary drinks is a net negative even if it were achieved for free, and that the direction our decision-making needs to be pushed (if at all) is towards consuming fewer sugary drinks (to counteract our evolutionary bias towards consuming more than is healthy for us), and probably spending less of our time hearing/thinking about them too.

> One problem is that people sometimes think of ads as only web display ads. They are not aware that there are many other kinds of ads. Independent review sites, travel blogs, [...]

Still seems to come back to the same issue - sure you can hold a broad definition of "ads" that includes independent travel blogs if you want, but that isn't what the "fellow techy, working on serving ads" in question is working on, or what people are talking about when they complain about someone being paid to shove a product in their face unsolicited when they're trying to look at something else.

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koliber 7 days ago | parent [-]

My point is that all ads are bad and marketing can provide value for consumers.

Pointing out an egregious case of advertising that does not deliver a net positive does not disprove that point. There are plenty of examples of bad advertising. It does not take a lot of effort to find them. But from that extrapolating that all advertising is bad and calling all jobs related to it as useless is excessive.

	▲	Ukv 7 days ago \| parent [-]
		> Pointing out an egregious case of advertising that does not deliver a net positive does not disprove that point. Coke/Pepsi were your own examples. I don't believe there are just a limited number of bad cases in an otherwise good system, but rather that at it's core is a huge zero-sum game of burning resources to take market share back and forth, with even the non-zero-sum impacts (people hearing more about sugary drinks instead of other things, and consuming more sugary drinks than they otherwise would) being of questionable value in most cases (in some cases potentially good, but still disproportionately small benefit compared to resource wastage). I think it's similar to Bitcoin mining as an example of what happens when competition is not directed towards a useful end like improving the product. > But from that extrapolating that all advertising is bad and calling all jobs related to it as useless is excessive. A job working on serving web ads is almost guarenteed to be a net negative to society in my eyes. I wouldn't really consider someone writing a travel blog to be working in advertising (unless they get paid to push certain destinations) and I don't think anyone here's claiming that to be useless.