Magazines, phone books, friends, stores. You know you could go to a store (or call them on the phone!) and talk to a person. "Hello, I am trying to find a thing to help me with X."

Turns out that products that work well tend to get remembered, and ones that don't get forgotten.

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cortesoft 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Call what store? How do I know a store even exists to call it? How do I find out the store’s name and phone number? How do I find out where the store is located?

You say products that work tend to get remembered, and sure, for existing products with a market you might be right… people would continue buying those things even with no advertising.

But how did the FIRST person who bought the product find out about it? Someone has to try it once before you can even know the product works. How would a new product enter the market?

	▲	xigoi 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> Call what store? How do I know a store even exists to call it? How do I find out the store’s name and phone number? How do I find out where the store is located? Maps exist. Search engines exist. Have you been stuck in a cave the last 50 years?

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vel0city 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Magazines and phone books are often largely ad-supported. They largely wouldn't exist without some amount of advertising.

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hackable_sand 2 days ago | parent [-]

Mmmmmno?

	▲	vel0city 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Go to any bookstore and open practically any paid magazine. Count how many pages are ads. It's far from a small percentage. Some I've looked at recently were practically 1/3 to 1/2 ads. This isn't far from how things were decades ago. Yellow pages (phone books) were essentially entirely advertising. They didn't just list businesses out of the goodness of their heart, they took listing fees. This is a form of advertising!