I propose people promote their products on their website and at their place of business. I don't want anyone trying to sell me things. If I need something I go and research it to figure out what my options are and which one I want.
I genuinely believe the world would be a better place with severely limited advertising because a lot of really terrible things are driven by ad revenue: social media and 24 hour news are my go to examples. Sure, broadcast television and radio would also die, but at this point I don't think we're losing much. And sure, content creators would lose out on ad revenue, but the vast majority already make very little in ad revenue and have found other ways to get funding.
The underlying problem is that businesses that rely on ad revenue are incentivized to hold people's attention as long as they can while showing as many ads as they can. Producing a quality product takes a back seat to misleading, emotionally charged, and addictive content that's designed to maximize engagement.
1. Offer free, tangible value in some form (articles, videos, tools, resources, etc) 2. Do number one to such a degree, that you and maybe others feel like you should be charging for what you're doing/providing 3. When you find something that hits (and its gaining a decent amount of attention) find a way to charge for a fuller, larger, more expansive version of it (better features, an in-depth class, 1-on-1 coaching, a white glove service) 4. Repeat and scale
This is very much a birds-eye-view, takes a lot of time, and varies greatly between B2C and B2B/physical products vs services. But the general idea remains the same.
The reason so much advertising feels slimy is because in many cases, it is. It's a company buying your attention and offering very little (or often nothing) in exchange for that attention.
If you do this enough it will "work" to some degree, but it's largely a volume game.
But if you're willing to invest the time, and deliver value both through free means and eventually paid; it's nearly always a much better long term strategy.
But that's not how the vast majority of advertising is done. Most advertising is manipulative, deceitful, obnoxious, difficult to avoid, and ubiquitous. It's often injected into inappropriate and unwelcome places. Modern advertising also involves a great deal of spying, which is (in my view) entirely unethical and unacceptable. That spying is what makes me consider ad companies as actively harmful blights on society.
I hate that sort of advertising. It just happens to be the most common sort of advertising.
There is a ton of ad fraud. Zuck denies it.
Spending might just be "because the other guy does it". I noticed on sports talk radio (where I hold the clicker constantly, or have my thumb on the mute button in the auto) that one "solve all your tax problems" firm showed up after another bought half the ad time ... the guy is nonstop, and ERC is a matter older and deader than Caesar's will. It's as if the guy spends a fortune just to listen to himself, but I don't have numbers. And the same for "sell your home today" (lowballers) and "fix your droopy wang" clinics.
About the only ad I willingly read or posted was in the days of singles flyers. I did advertise myself and won a wife. But competition was limited by space. (Who remembers paper ads?) Later, we visited a bookstore/cafe and found a newspaper with an ad for a sysadmin, which landed me a long term (for the tech industry) job. And that's it.
I really don't mind ads for new products. I'm an infovore, and that's why I frequent Hacker News. Its just that ads are deliberately out of context, discouraging fair comparison, and I often go to (hopefully) unbiased comparison sites. And I suffered through a lot of Consumer Reports mags at the library where I totally disagreed with their criteria for ranking products.
As far as tailoring ads (surveillance capitalism) goes, it seems to be either.
A. This is so damn irrelevant, but that's a feature, not a bug, or
B. This is too damn relevant. I feel like there's a camera on me 24 by 7. or
C. This is a bad joke. I search for a used camera lens and DDG tells me about a nearby (geolocated) brew pub. I don't always use a VPN.
Clicks and "quantity over quality" are in fact what destroyed the internet, IMO.
Ads were the cause.
And for someone else's well-worded opinion:
Advertising is a poison that demeans even love – and we're hooked on it, by George Monbiot (2011) [0]
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/24/advert...
P.S. Way before that, I read about "ad men".(from Vance Packard), I vaguely recall. Saw ads on TV for Geritol, and watched the (rigged) $64,000 question. If memory serves.