The idea feels like sci-fi because you’re so used to it, imagining ads gone feels like asking to outlaw gravity. But humanity had been free of current forms of advertising for 99.9% of its existence. Word-of-mouth and community networks worked just fine. First-party websites and online communities would now improve on that.
The traditional argument pro-advertising—that it provides consumers with necessary information—hasn’t been valid for decades.
I think regulation is better than abolishing it.
With most initiatives that have been made in good faith to avoid bad actors, it will usually hit the little guy the hardest.
In my country, for example, you can apply for grants for your business for developing your business. Great right? Wrong. The bureaucracy is so crazy that small businesses, whom this grant was aimed towards, cannot feasibly take the grant. It is too expensive for them to go through all the steps to get the money for the developmental aspect of the business that they would lose money as a business and not be able to recoup their losses. The grant money are so small and aren’t allowed to be used to run the business at all that it simply isn’t worth it to even try. You would essentially have to work for free for days or weeks in some cases to get this tiny portion that will now sink your company instead of developing it.
However, a big business with many employees and time and money to spare, could easily apply for the grant and get it without a sweat, despite them not needing it at all.
That is how I’d see a potential ban of ads affect the market. The big businesses who got to benefit from ads and marketing in the past will continue to do well because people know them while any and all new start ups and smaller businesses would drown and go bankrupt due to them not being allowed to make people aware of their business.
It is a bit too utopic for my taste to suggest a ban. But regulation would be a good thing in my opinion.
Conglomerates spend oodles of money on advertising to maintain their brands as well. They have to. Ban on advertising would dramatically shift the balance of power. More innovating and better products can come to market without needing as much capital. You’d still have channels to review and inform about new products, which would now be a (more) fair competition.
So this could be interpreted as ban big advertising from ads?
I think ultimately tightening of ad standards is likely the middle ground. I for one am sick of the blatant bulletin. As an industrial chemist even the freakin chemical companies do it. Like buddy, I’m a chemist, I need to know what it is to use it properly. I have now started running a campaign where if they don’t cough up the deets, I (in consultancies) don’t recommend the use of their products.