Against All Ads

We should get rid of advertising - here's why and how

A while ago, I got this great idea: Advertising should be banned.

The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. I searched Substack and the web and it seemed like no one has really put forward this radical proposal.

So, a couple of weeks ago I started writing. But then, I got sidetracked by work, family stuff and also writing about the Adolescence TV series.

And then, one day I opened my inbox and I saw this:

Why Advertising Should Be Banned

For a minute, I felt like Elisha Gray losing the race to the patent office. But then I realized that both me and

Abhisek Basu

are smart guys and good writers. And if we both independently came up with the same idea (doesn’t matter who did it first), maybe we’re really on to something and it’s not such a crazy thing after all.

So instead of what I originally planned, I will try to build on top of Abhisek’s post to form a more coherent argument for why advertising should be banned and how can this be achieved in practice.

(all quotes below are from Abhisek’s post)

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Advertising vs promotion

Before we get any further, let’s properly define advertising, and how it differs from promotion.

Per Wikipedia, advertising is a type of promotion. I’m not sure if there is a word for “non-advertising promotion”. So from now on, for convenience, I will just call it “promotion”.

This is because I really have nothing against promotion. But I have a lot against advertising.

Examples of promotion include:

• Product descriptions on company website

• Packaging and other forms of exposure in physical stores where products are sold

• Sales offers in online stores and marketplace platforms

• Content posted on company social media accounts

The main difference between promotion and advertising is that promotion is opt-in, but advertising is opt-out.

Typically promotional content is accessed to learn more about product X or consider buying it. This includes visiting a physical store where X is sold - a sales promo poster “Buy 1 X get 1 X free!” IN the store is still promotion, not advertising.

But advertisement is something that is forced externally:

I want to read/watch/listen to <something> now, but the platform/system is making me read/watch/listen to an ad instead!

Advertising vs promotion on social media is tricky, because with doomscrolling, you don’t really “want” to see anything in particular. But I believe it can be sorted out this way:

• Posting promotional content on company social media profile - promotion

• Having the algorithm show it to people who liked/followed/subscribed - still promotion

• Paying the platform to show it to other people who did NOT like/follow/subscribe - advertising

People hate advertising

People hate ads, but they don't hate ads enough.

Historically, when a thing was considered bad for the society by a sufficiently large part of it, some sort of social and political movement was formed in order to ban the thing, discourage it or ruin its reputation and make it seem low status. Then, an opposing group of people that support the thing would form, and the two groups would enter the possibly never-ending political debate, sometimes across centuries.

This is exactly what happened with alcohol, drugs, sodomy, abortion, euthanasia, gay sex, social media, women’s rights, coal power, nuclear power, online piracy, guns, GMO crops, porn, vaccines, smartphones, polygyny, slavery, death penalty and rock and roll. Eventually we even got political movements advocating for really dumb shit like flat Earth, young Earth creationism, defunding the police or allowing pedophilia.

Yet, even though people hate ads, there is no political movement for banning ads and no discussion about how ads are bad and harmful and whether and how should we limit or ban advertising.

If "Advertising should be banned" sounds crazy to you, still, it's probably because you've grown to accept the state of the world as is.

Even though people hate ads, they don’t consider them a bad thing we could possibly get rid of. Instead, ads are considered a permanent, immutable part of our reality, culture and economy. Most of us treat ads as something like taxes, housework, periods, bad weather, aging and death - things we fear or hate, but are nevertheless forced to accept.

I think that is false impression, resulting from years of being brainwashed by pervasive advertisement attacking us wherever we are and whatever we do.

Oh shit, the economy

It seems like most of us believe that advertising is a necessary component of our modern free market economy - a lubricant that makes everything run smoothly. If we removed it, the engines of our economy would seize.

While this might have been true at some point in the past, it is no longer the case - some of our modern digital technology replaces that function and therefore makes advertising obsolete now.

At this point, the entire advertising industry produces nothing but waste.

Some might be concerned that “advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry”, and getting rid of it would remove all of the “business value”, GDP and all of the jobs it “creates”.

This argument is missing the point, because advertising does not create any value - it’s waste.

The flaw of this argument is the same as in the parable of broken window: breaking a window or a natural disaster doesn’t help the economy by creating demand for goods and services - it’s just waste.

Even spending on advertising isn't really a choice anymore, because if your competitors are spending on ads, then you must play the same zero sum game and spend on ads as well.

This makes advertising one of those lose-lose situations where if you're not playing the game, you're on the losing side. If you play the game, you're handsomely rewarded. But everyone else using your product loses (their time, attention and money), and in a game between you losing and your customers losing - you'd choose the option where you still get to keep playing the game.

From the perspective of David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs framework, everyone working in advertising are “goons”: people hired by companies and pitted against goons from other companies.

Here, I should note that I do not support Graeber’s full thesis (that bullshit jobs are some sort of evil conspiracy of the rich and powerful deployed to make us all miserable). Instead, I agree with

f0xr

that bullshit jobs exist simply because we don’t live in a free market economy:

Why Do Bullshit Jobs Exist?

The “goons” type of bullshit jobs can be eliminated by either regulation or collective action - more on that later. However, one could also worry about what would happen if everyone currently working in advertising was fired.

First, not everyone would be fired. There would still be a need to create promotional content, some of which is the same as advertising (i.e. visual and video descriptions of product features) - the only difference is how it’s served: opt-in vs opt-out.

Others would simply find very similar work in a related creative industry. One way to describe advertising is media content creation. But the primary purpose of media is information and entertainment. People who create advertising media content can easily switch to creating media content for information and entertainment.

And with all the time and attention freed from watching ads, the demand for information and entertainment media content will surely increase.

On the other hand, the advertising industry is doomed anyway - people will loose jobs, because the entire advertising pipeline - from copywriting to creating media content - will sooner or later be fully replaced by generative AI.

So, instead of switching from wasting time, money and human resources to wasting compute and energy, it would be way better to get rid of advertising altogether.

Some might say that at least some ads provide information and/or entertainment value. Sometimes they are also sexy, which can be classified as a type of entertainment - adult entertainment.

But in each case, the proper non-advertising media content serves the purpose better. I don’t think there is a single person who prefers:

• Informative ads over reading or watching the news

• Entertaining ads over actual entertainment

• Sexy ads over thirst traps or porn¹

I remember the times where TV ads became memes, and their catchphrases made their way to the common language.

It’s possible that at least for some people, consuming blocks of short video content with mixed commercial and entertainment value served during the TV ad break was an effective and preferred way of media consumption. But the same exact experience is now provided by scrolling reels on social media platforms.

What about discovery? We didn't have highly personalized ads for a long time and discovery worked fine. Word of mouth and community platforms where people share recommendations with each other is more than enough. There is a reason why the suffix "reddit" is added to most Google searches about products - and the reason is that people are looking for opinions of other people and recommendations from them about what's best.

Customers don’t need ads to find products and services they really need.

They can use the old fashioned ways of finding products and services like word of mouth, going to real world marketplaces, browsing physical catalogs (yellow pages) or physical promotion like seeing a sign on the street.

And nowadays, they can also use the modern digital equivalents of above: social media, online marketplaces (Amazon), catalogs (Google Maps) and web search.

But what about new products and new technology?

Imagine that advertising is banned, and a new emerging technology - robot butlers - becomes available.

First, content featuring robot butlers will become popular on social media - we’re already at this step:

Concurrently, legacy media will run news reports and host talk shows and opinion essays where experts will discuss possible impact of robot butlers. This will prompt regular people to discuss robot butlers with their friends and families.

Only the wealthy will be able to afford the first generation of robot butlers. But ordinary people are interested in the lives of high status people, and they will learn about this via social media and legacy mainstream media. Having a robot butler will become a symbol of high status.

Next, as robot butlers become more affordable, lower social classes will start buying them. You will see robot butlers in TV shows. You will see them on the street, running errands for their human masters. Your friends will talk about them, and you will see robot butler memes on social media. Robot butler tests, reviews and comparisons will be available online and in legacy media.

Robot butlers will become available on online marketplaces like Amazon and in physical retail stores - either new robot stores or current consumer electronics stores.

Eventually, having a robot butler will become the normal thing to do - just like having a vacuum cleaner or a dishwasher. Only those living under a rock will not have heard about robot butlers.

All of this will happen - regardless of whether the robot butlers will be advertised or not.

The above was an example of a large scale technology that can and probably will transform our lives. But it can happen on a smaller scale as well. If a new type of power tool or musical instrument is invented, it will permeate the subcultures of blue collar workers and musicians via social media and word of mouth - provided it’s really that good. Only poor products and services need advertising to take off.

The final proof of why ads are not needed in the modern economy is looking at how advertising is banned for specific products or services, yet the business works just fine.

Here in Poland, it’s illegal to advertise alcohol², tobacco and prescription drugs. Yet, all of these industries operate just fine - anyone who wants or needs these can go and buy some any time they want, provided that they’re legally allowed to do so.

How to get rid of advertising

So far, we established that people hate ads, and also that ads are not only unnecessary in the modern economy, but they are just waste - a tax, which transfers money from the productive (providers and consumers of goods and services) to the unproductive (advertising industry).

So, how can we get rid of advertising?

This problem can be solved with both top-down and bottom-up approach.

Top-down

The top-down resolution requires building political support for the case against ads. The first step is to drive the discussion - like, share, comment on this post (and the one from Abhisek as well). Write posts that either support the cause, or are against it - any publicity is good publicity.

Once the topic of banning advertising becomes part of the public debate, political parties and officials will need to take a stance about whether they are for or against banning advertising. This will allow everyone who supports banning advertising to vote for political forces that support it. With enough support, ad-banning or limiting regulation will be passed.

Libertarians sometimes use expansion rhetorics such as: “In Special Economic Zones, business is thriving because of low taxes. Thus, we should make our entire country a Special Economic Zone”.

The same principle can be used for the case against ads: “Advertising alcohol, tobacco and prescription drugs (in Poland) is prohibited, and the business and consumers are doing just fine. Thus, we should extend the ban on advertising to cover all products and services”.

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Bottom-up

The bottom-up resolution can be achieved by convincing the economy that advertising doesn’t work and is a huge waste of effort and money.

This is a collective action problem. These are difficult to fully solve in practice, but one way everyone can contribute is to take action and spread awareness about how taking action is the right thing to do.

Also, a helpful heuristic for collective action is to think: “If everyone else did the same thing, the whole problem would be solved once and for all”.

Note that some of these actions can be overkill or not applicable for you. This is fine. This is not a list of mandatory to-do items. Think of it as a menu from which you can choose a few items that you like and also can afford.

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The first part is to stop watching ads.

Use ad blockers:

I urge you to do one thing. If you don't have AdBlock installed on your browser, download it (Search for uBlock Origin), install it, and browse the web for an hour. If you have Adblock installed, turn it off and browse the web for an hour. Both experiences should at least make the case that something is deeply wrong.

Avoid using free ad-supported media and web services:

• Avoid social media where free ad-supported mode is the only option (i.e. Facebook, Twitter).

  • Note that per

    Andrew Chen
    , the age of 1 billion active user ad supported consumer startups is already over:

    The end of the 1 billion active user ad-supported consumer startup

• If there is a paid ad-free tier available, use it (i.e. Youtube Premium).

  • Relatedly, avoid paid ad-supported subscriptions (i.e. Netflix) - choose the premium ad-free version instead.

• Prefer social media and web services where paid subscription is the default option and the base of their business model (i.e. Substack).

• Don’t watch “free” TV with ads.

  • If, for some reason, you prefer legacy TV over online streaming, watch paid channels with no ads.

  • If you really need to watch something on legacy TV with ads, turn off the TV/mute the volume/leave the room when the ads are on.

I don't think the solution is to paywall everything - as monthly / annual subscriptions (another core business model of the internet) often ends up remaining inaccessible to the majority of people, but there can be free business models that don't depend on ads. Freemium services without ads - like ChatGPT, is an excellent alternative and a real look at what this ad-less future might look like.

On contrary, I think the solution is to paywall everything (with freemium options available). Having people pay you for your products/services is the most honest business model (arguably, it’s the only honest one).

Modern online payment services provide multiple options, from microtransactions to monthly/yearly subscription plans. Paid online content has never been more accessible and available.

A minimum, compromise solution within the spectrum of possible ad-banning or limiting regulations could be to provide a “right to ad-free usage” - to mandate social media platforms and web service operators to always offer a paid ad-free subscription plan.

If everyone on a given platform (i.e. Youtube) subscribed for a paid ad-free subscription, no one would watch ads on the free version - eventually the whole free ad-supported functionality would be shut down and ads would just disappear from the platform.

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Avoid social media influencers who plug ads into their content. Influencer advertising is already mildly stigmatized - influencers need to carefully balance the amount of ads vs their regular content they followers want to see. Product/service review & recommendation type influencers additionally need to consider maintaining their credibility as unbiased experts.

But in order to end advertising, the social stigma around advertising needs to be cranked up. If you see an influencer doing advertising, be the first one to call it out. Say things like: “This is advertising.” “You’re a sellout.”.

Remember and remind everyone that in the social media influencing world, advertising is low status.

The biggest influencers don’t advertise - instead, they use their social media for self-promotion, to funnel fans into their paid content such as books, training programs, movies, music or porn - self-promotion is OK because it’s not advertising.

But the low status advertising influencers are unable to offer enough value to have people pay for any of their own products or services. So instead, they grab the lowest hanging fruit of monetization options and promote the more valuable paid offerings created or ran by others - this is advertising and it’s bad.

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The second part is to provide negative feedback to the advertising industry - make them believe that advertising doesn’t work.

Do not buy advertised products. If you see an ad and think you need to buy the advertised product, think again. Do at least a brief market analysis and compare the prices & features of similar products & services.

When in doubt, use an anti-advertising, contrarian heuristic:
Let’s say you have two similar products: one is advertised, the other one is not. You can assume that the non-advertised product should provide more value for money, since the cost of advertising is most certainly baked into the price of the advertised product.

Online advertising services collect heaps of data, which allows both businesses and advertising companies to quantify the impact and success rate of every single ad shown to every single user.

If you see an online ad and you do any of below:

• Look at the ad (stop scrolling, even for a split second)

• Click the ad

• Look at the offer

• Browse other products

• Add the product to the basket

• Create a customer account

• Buy the product

• Buy other products

• Start buying products regularly

… the system will receive feedback that the ad worked.

The more positive feedback the system receives, the more ads you will see.

You may have noticed that if you engaged with an ad (looked, clicked, reviewed the product) but didn’t buy the product, the ad will haunt you over and over again to remind you to complete your purchase. This is the system in action.

But if the system only gets negative feedback (“Our ads don’t work! No one is looking, clicking or buying anything!”), the advertising will simply stop - the business will consider it a waste of money.

So, if you see an ad on social media, don’t do any of the above - just scroll past, skip or just stop scrolling and do something useful instead (you can kill two birds with one stone by using this as a method of controlling your social media usage).

However, if you like the product from the ad, you can game the system to still review or buy it without providing the system with positive feedback:

• Instead of clicking the ad, search for the product/offer via Google.

• Buy it somewhere else - not where it was advertised before.

• Do not create a customer account and/or use fake data.

• Use privacy browsing features (incognito mode/VPN/Tor browser etc).

The goal of all of this is to disconnect the events of you watching the ad and you watching the product as much as possible.

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It’s not personal

Please note that if, by any chance, you work in advertising, I am not trying to tell you that you’re a bad or stupid person.

I see the advertising industry as something like the nuclear weapons industry. For most of our history, nuclear weapons didn’t exist. But once invented, the global superpowers had to build up their nuclear arsenal. Nuclear weapons engineers and technicians were “goons” pitted against “goons” from a rival global superpower.

On one level, all of this work was necessary and extremely important - after all, it was a matter of national security, or even preventing WWIII. But on another level, inventing, building, testing, maintaining and decommissioning all these nuclear weapons was pure waste. They didn’t provide any value - since bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no nuclear weapons were ever used in combat to this day.

If nuclear weapons never existed, all this waste wouldn’t happen, and the people, money and resources that were wasted could be used instead to deliver actual value.

Yet, we still have nuclear weapons. But it’s clear for everyone that our target should be to create a nuke-free world.

It’s also like coal power - an obsolete technology that, unfortunately, is still used due to economical, political and infrastructural constraints. Coal literally powered the industrial revolution and made many technological leaps of the last 200 years possible. But now, we don’t want the pollution and we already know how to get rid of coal - it can be replaced and it is being replaced by clean energy sources like nuclear and renewables.

Yet, in some places, coal power still needs to be used, at least for some time. But it’s clear for everyone that our target should be to create a coal-free world.

Advertising has powered our modern free market economy. But now, we don’t want it to pollute our minds and waste our time. And we really can get rid of it - modern digital technology can replace each and every function and benefit of advertising, without its drawbacks.

I think we should at least start having this conversation and taking it more seriously. The best way to do that is to suggest something which seems outright radical - That advertising should be banned, but it is only radical because you're used to slop and spam that plague us all. You're used to every site on the planet tracking you, your phones just offering you an illusion of privacy, and your data being harvested every second of the day.

Banning advertisements would instantly have very positive second order effects. It'd make it pointless to optimize algorithms for maximum engagement, and not only would that lead to a better experience across all social platforms, it'll disincentivize the production and steady shipment of mediocrity.

I think the greatest positive secondary effect it can have- is that people are going to be happier.

Unfortunately, it’s not clear for everyone that our target should be to build an ad-free world. But I really believe it should be.

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1. The only advantage of ads here is that they provide plausible deniability: “It’s just an ad, not porn/thirst trap” and also “This lingerie ad just popped up, I looked because I simply couldn’t avoid it”.

2. With the exception of beer, which can be advertised on TV and radio past 8 PM.