I don't think you really hate advertising as much as you say.
You get to use tons and tons of great sites without paying money, because the good people of ADVERT_CO paid for your attention.
Advertising gives you something you want, so you pay attention to something you don't want. But unless you want to pay a subscription fee to every site you use, it's not a bad deal at all.
So, they get a get money for sales? A percentage or something? Genuinely curious.
EDIT: I see you've answered this question above.
When I'm doing serious comparison shopping, I use a subscription site. I feel better about the reduced incentive to inflate recommendations.
Although the subscription site does make mistakes, it's usually in the durability side of things (they can't test a new product for three years and have the results by April).
The comparison shopping sites are quite nice once I know what I'm looking for, however.
The people of ADVERT_CO work hard to distract and confuse my attention such that I overpay for the products they push. For every ad-supported site out there, I'd be better off by directly paying them money for their service. This is basic economics, if it weren't true then ADVERT_CO would be out of business.
The concept of advertising does not require that the ad viewer "overpay" for the product of the advertiser. It only requires that in the long run, the average additional revenue for the company is greater than the average cost of the ad.
If Alice spends $1 to show an ad to Bob, who then spends $2 on $product (which has 0 marginal cost to Alice), which is so wonderful that Bob obtains $3 of value from it, everyone is a winner.
Lots of ads try to convince the viewer to spend money on something not in their best interest, but it is not inherent to the vehicle of advertising that this be so.
You assume that Alice is the sole provider of the product, which is by and large false. In practice Alice shows an ad to Bob at the $2 price point, while Claire and Darcy have the same product for $0.5. Furthermore, Alice creates an entire marketing literature designed to obfuscate the fact that Claire and Darcy products are the exact same product, at times produced by the exact same manufacturing plant. Bob doesn't have enough time to cut through the bullshit, so never learns about Claire or Darcy, and ends up overpaying $1.50, which is then split $.50 to the marketing department of Alice, $.50 to ADVERT_CO and $.50 to Alice's shareholders.
PS. The "value" that B derives from the product is not quantifiable within the orthodox economic framework, as "value" is an arbitrary number that can only be determined by a buyer meeting a seller's price in a competitive market.
Alice may well be the sole provider of the product. This is especially true in the realm of products with zero marginal costs.
Even if we assume she is not, and that a fungible product is available from other vendors, the fact that Bob has not yet purchased it, even though it offers more value to him than it is reasonable to assume that Bob may go on not knowing about it indefinitely. (If not, why hasn't he purchased it yet?)
If Alice pays for an ad, Bob buys her product and then derives more value from it than it costs, he is still better off than he was before, even if he could have bought a substitute for a lower price.
The value (or utility) Bob derives from the product may not be quantifiable precisely, but it is certainly possible to quantify in approximate terms, and this practice is very common in Economics literature. Price paid in a competitive market is not the only way to quantify utility. Indeed, some of my undergraduate economics courses were concerned very largely with how to estimate the value (or, if you like, the aggregate provided utility) of resources for which no markets exist.
It appears that we are in agreement that Bob is overpaying. The point in contention seems to be whether Bob is "better off" than he was before the purchase. I am unpersuaded by the circular argument "Bob made the purchase, therefore he is better off, otherwise he would have not made it". The whole point of ads is to confuse Bob into making the wrong decisions, and given the size of the ads industry, it's obviously working.
> But unless you want to pay a subscription fee to every site you use, it's not a bad deal at all.
Considering how little money sites get per advert view, (not even whole pennies IME,) I'd happily just pay them double the money not to advertise to me. Remove all the ads, all the associated tracking shit - keep the prices per view at double advertising sort of prices. Yeah, I'd pay. Happily.
What we really need is a way to do secure efficient micro-transactions - I don't want to be having to enter my card number every time I view a page. Or have some sort of trusted intermediary so we can tally up the pageviews and pay everyone appropriately at the end of the month. But the no-advertising model needn't be a bad thing.
You get to use tons and tons of great sites without paying money, because the good people of ADVERT_CO paid for your attention.
Advertising gives you something you want, so you pay attention to something you don't want. But unless you want to pay a subscription fee to every site you use, it's not a bad deal at all.