Advertising is obsolete – here’s why it’s time to end it

By CPI | August 21, 2018

Posted by The Conversation

By Ramsi Woodcock

Since it first became clear that Russian agents spent thousands of dollars a month on political advertising on social media in the runup to the 2016 presidential election, Americans have been asking how the powerful advertising infrastructure run by Google and Facebook could have been thrown open to foreign agents.

But fewer have stopped to ask whether there is a good reason for this infrastructure to exist at all. Why, exactly, is it a good thing for Facebook and Google to be selling advertising to anyone, let alone Russian agents?

The obvious answer seems to be so that legitimate advertisers, meaning the likes of Coca-Cola and General Motors, can inform consumers about the products they offer.

But herein lies the paradox of all advertising in the information age, online or otherwise. If there is one thing that the internet has made it easy for consumers to access without the help of advertising, it is information – and especially information about products.

As I argue in a recent article in the Yale Law Journal, if the only justification for advertising is that it informs, then advertising is now seriously obsolete. Not only that, it could even count as anti-competitive conduct in violation of the antitrust laws – as the Federal Trade Commission once believed.

Advertising as information

Imagine a world wiped clean of advertising of all kinds – from the sponsored links at the top of the Google search results page and the banner ads on your favorite websites or mobile apps to the sponsored posts in your Facebook feed and the TV commercials and billboards in the offline world.

Would you still be able to find all the information you could ever want about products in this alternative world?

Advertising is obsolete – here’s why it’s time to end it

Advertising as information

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