In order to sell anything, people need to know about it. Google and Meta provide a way to make this possible. If they didn't exist, you wouldn't somehow have a more affordable way to get people to know about your product. However frustrating the current situation is, it is still more accessible than needing access to the airwaves or print media to try to sell anything new.

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anyonecancode 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> In order to sell anything, people need to know about it. Google and Meta provide a way to make this possible. If they didn't exist, you wouldn't somehow have a more affordable way to get people to know about your product. However frustrating the current situation is, it is still more accessible than needing access to the airwaves or print media to try to sell anything new.

The places people can find out about your product are controlled by a very small number of companies. And those companies not only own those spaces, they also own the means of advertising on those spaces. So if you have a product you want to advertise, you're not paying to distribute your message broadly to consumers, you're paying a toll to a gatekeeper that stands between you and your potential customers.

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3rodents an hour ago | parent [-]

but that’s not really true. You’re not paying, you’re bidding. You are competing against thousands of other advertisers for eyeballs. If you are the only advertiser targeting a group of people, you will spend almost nothing to advertise. If you are targeting a group of people that everyone targets (e.g: rich people in their 30s) you will pay through the nose.

Facebook, Google etc. are the most “fair” forms of advertising. We can dislike advertising, their influence, product etc. but when you compare them to almost every other type of advertising, they’re the best for advertisers.

The reason they generate so much revenue is because they are so accessible and because they are so easy to account for. The reason LTV and CAC are so widely understood by businesses today is because of what Google, Facebook etc. offer.

	▲	pclmulqdq an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		No financial market would be able to run the way Google and Facebook run their ad markets. They are the supplier, the exchange, and the broker all at the same time. This is not a competitive market. It's a captured one where the supplier effectively gets to set their price, and the exchange and the broker incentivize and advise you to trade at that price.
	▲	93po an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Google has famously and repeatedly rigged this bidding system in anti-competitive ways and has had to pay billions in fines because of it (which I am sure were less than the amount they profited from)

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bearjaws 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's generally my thought as well, I am not implying you don't need to advertise. I just believe the industry has more or less reverted to an even worse version of what we had before (TV & Radio ads). At least before, there was ~100 networks you could sell to, now there's basically 10 if you include major networks. Of course you don't actually launch new products with TV ads, so it is more or less 2 platforms.

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anal_reactor 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The problem is that most businesses used to be local. This naturally limited competition and gave your business a chance, even if it sucked. Nowadays the competition is global.

	▲	parineum 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		People don't really care to address that most of the mom and pop businesses that went out of business because Walmart/Amazon weren't offering better products or services. They got their products through the same retail suppliers, just at higher costs and the variety of choices was much lower. They also had much less generous return policies. There's a personal touch that people opine for but I think that's rose colored glasses. I remember some local retailers where I liked the owners but more often they weren't anything special and sometimes they were downright unpleasant. The thing I like about Amazon is that I can get my shopping done quickly at home then I can go socialize with people I choose to. This is just an example if retail but I think it applies to most industries that people think have been decimated by big companies displacing local companies. The whole attitude reminds me a lot of the whole "Make America Great Again" idea. Opininig for a past that never really existed.
	▲	warkdarrior 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		This is good for consumers.

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Y_Y 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There are lots of ways to find out about products. We don't need Google or Meta to do look at a review site or ask a friend or search a directory or to solicit offers.

Adverising isn't there to push ideas into people who didn't need to know about it. Many industries would be better off without advertising (see e.g. cigarettes) because it ends up in an arms race.

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beeflet 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If google and meta didn't exist, it is possible that the advertising market could be more competitive, so the amount companies would need to spend would be lower.