Someone paid for those ads. Someone got value from them.

underdown 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The ad industry is a quagmire of fraud. Assuming someone got value out of money spent is tenuous.

	▲	SoftTalker 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Agree, but I'm speaking more in aggregate. And even individually, it's not hard to find people who will say that e.g. an Instagram ad gave them a noticable benefit (I've experienced it myself) as you can who will feel that it was a waste of money.

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dagss 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It isn't that simple. Each company paying for ads would have preferred that their competitors had not advertised, then spend a lot less on ads... for the same value.

It is like an arms race. Everyone would have been better off if people just never went to war, but....

	▲	IncreasePosts 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There's a tiny slice of companies deal with advertising like this. Say, Coke vs Pepsi, where everyone already knows both brands and they push a highly similar product. A lot of advertising is telling people about some product or service they didn't even know existed though. There may not even be a competitor to blame for an advertising arms race.

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xorcist 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That someone might be Google, though. Not all ad dollars are well spent.

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MangoToupe 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Ads are a cancer on humanity with no benefit to anyone and everyone who enables them should be imprisoned for life

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otabdeveloper4 9 hours ago | parent [-]

A monetary economy can't function without advertising or money.

You're tilting at windmills here, we can't go back to barter.

	▲	pessimizer 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It can't function without advertising, money, or oxygen, if we're just adding random things to obscure our complete lack of an argument for advertising. We can't go back to an anaerobic economy, silly wabbit.