Better from whom? As a user, maybe. But if you're trying to compete, it's incredibly useful to get exposure. For instance, suppose you run a competitor to Salesforce and you want to buy the Salesforce keyword because you provide a better product. I don't know how you would bootstrap that otherwise.

If anything the big businesses use advertising as a protection moat. As a small business, I would def prefer to be in a world that allows me to advertise, even if I have to compete for things like my own name

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MiddleEndian 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

If I search for "Salesforce alternative" and something that isn't Salesforce shows up, great! That's what I want!

If I search for Salesforce and something that isn't Salesforce shows up above Salesforce, the tool I'm using is wrong and I will assume that the promoted product is a scam.

This happened to me yesterday when installing the mobile version of Brotato. Some other game appeared above Brotato in the Google Play store. I already hate Android but this only makes me hate it more. Google already gets an unjustified cut of the money I'm paying for the game, yet on top of that they serve me the wrong result at the top.

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Anon1096 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

>Google already gets an unjustified cut of the money I'm paying for the game

Brotato is free to distribute their game outside the Play Store as well, Android isn't locked down. If the cut was unjustified why would they give money away to Google for free? The reasons are actually extremely similar to the reasons ads benefit society.

	▲	MiddleEndian 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		They kinda created this fake locked down market that people expect to be able to be used, same as Apple, compared to say, just downloading apps normally like on a computer. Also "sideloaded" apps cannot be automatically updated, although personally I think it would be better if nothing could automatically update lol I'm also not the biggest fan of Steam. But at least on Steam if I search for Brotato it's the top result, Steam is not tied to the OS so if gamers and game makers decided they hate Steam they could jump to some other market (as opposed to, say, the built-in Microsoft store in Windows that thankfully seems to be failing), and Steam has helped drag Linux into the 21st century in a good way.

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Rygian 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And if I am not searching for Salesforce or alternatives, and an ad for Salesforce or an alternative gets pushed into my face, the ad is wrong and the advertiser is wrong.

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lkramer 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It's infuriating, the other day I had to download an app to pay for parking. What the fuck do I need the top choice to be a competing parking app? That won't do me any good when the place I'm parking need the one I searched for and who the hell goes "oh, an exciting new parking app? I'm gonna drive around until I can find a place that uses it so I can park there!"

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titzer 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> If anything the big businesses use advertising as a protection moat. As a small business, I would def prefer to be in a world that allows me to advertise, even if I have to compete for things like my own name

These two sentences are contradictory. Big business uses it as a defensive measure, yet you think a small business can use it as an offensive measure. It's an absurd outcome of the SEO of the last two decades that people think it's fine to pay for get traffic using your own keywords. Stockholm syndrome.

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vel0city 2 days ago | parent [-]

I can see how it's contradictory on its face, but the reality is pretty nuanced.

Large brands continue to run ads to enforce brand loyalty and keep their image fresh. For a lot of companies, dropping advertising will lead to reduced sales.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/cmo/2024/12/18/why-cutting-adve...

However, as a new entrant to a consumer facing market, how is one supposed to drive new customers to try their product? Just being a bit better or a little cheaper isn't necessarily going to win over a lot of people if they never bother trying it due to existing brand loyalties. So you've got to do some amount of advertising to build some kind of awareness to the product and get people to try it.

That doesn't necessarily mean unskippable video advertisements or whatever, but one should try and do some kind of marketing push to get awareness of your product up other than hoping presence on some store shelves will result in enough sales fast enough to keep your company alive.

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dcrimp 2 days ago | parent [-]

If you have to advertise - shove your product in people's faces - to keep sales, your product is not supplying enough real value, does not have staying power, and you should lose.

"Just being a bit better or a little cheaper isn't necessarily going to win over a lot of people if they never bother trying it due to existing brand loyalties"

This is a feature, not a bug. Brand loyalties are built when products are reliable and good. Your product should be enough of an improvement to make people move of their own accord.

If your new product solves frustrations present in an incumbent, on a long enough timescale, your product will come out on top.

If both products are presented equally in a marketplace, the better one will win. If your company does not survive because you can't shove it in people's faces, this is a good thing.

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vel0city 2 days ago | parent [-]

> If your new product solves frustrations present in an incumbent, on a long enough timescale, your product will come out on top.

I've got numerous examples where this didn't happen because of other brand awareness. Neato had a very competitive and better bot vacuum to iRobot for years and yet they failed to gain traction. A large part of that would be because everyone knew about iRobot's offerings and yet ask any random person if they've ever heard of Neato Botvac and you'll get crickets. You're imagining an ideal world where clear better performers always win. This doesn't often happen in practice.

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dcrimp 2 days ago | parent [-]

How did everyone know about irobot's offering?

What if in the stores, botvacs and irobots were presented right next to each other with the same amount of real estate?

	▲	vel0city 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		First mover advantage, brand awareness, word of mouth, early reviewers, etc. People then build a brand connection of "robot vacuum" == "roomba", everything else is just a fake imitation. Imagine you're a normal random consumer and not an electronics nerd. You've heard people on the morning TV news show talk about these robot vacuums and showed a Roomba. You have a friend that got one last Christmas and said their Roomba was pretty cool. You go to the store, and you see a few Roombas and some other brands you've never heard of. You're probably only going to spend a few minutes looking at the shelf. Which one are you likely to get? And in the end iRobot managed to coast on that brand connection of "robot vacuum" == "roomba" for a lot of people for nearly 20 years. It really only took until competitors were way cheaper and way better that got people to really start to switch. Their products have not been competitive for over a decade and yet they've only finally died. That power of linking a brand to a specific item or service is powerful, and its not purely push advertising and forced video ads that build it. Its somewhat the same thing for Google. Sure, they do some amount of advertising especially at top of line events, but overall it seems their direct outbound marketing is kind of low overall. They spend a bunch of defaults and continue to build the connection that to search the internet is to Google, even as they continue to inject more paid results and the quality declines. Other competitors are out there which are comparable or better, but even with them heavily advertising they fail to unseat that brand connection.

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TeMPOraL 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> For instance, suppose you run a competitor to Salesforce and you want to buy the Salesforce keyword because you provide a better product. I don't know how you would bootstrap that otherwise.

Why would you assume I'm providing a better product? Ads are predominantly needed by those providing worse products, because spending money on marketing has much better ROI than actually creating a good product.

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cramsession 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

“Users” are the only people who matter. Companies are artificial constructs and, in an ideal world, would never be prioritized over the public.

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whazor 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A big part of advertising on Google is making sure your own brand is the top result. This is essentially extortion from Google. Companies are burning money on something that should be the default result in Google.

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elevatortrim 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

In reality, even if I provide a better product than Salesforce, they will outcompete me by their ad-buying power.