On simple vs manipulative advertising being different things, I think mostly it's not the intent of the business advertising to be manipulative but rather just to save money. That is it's not the end that's bad, but the means.
Take our humble 'Painter for Hire' - an honest business looking to do real valuable work for people who genuinely want to pay for that service. That's the kind of advert we all want to see, when we need it.
To the painter, and perhaps even to the customer, it's just all round better if their straightforward advert can be targeted at people who are very likely to need the service, on demand. They can spend the same and reach some multiplier X more warm leads, or spend 1/X on the same amount of warm leads. Warm leads being people who genuinely need the service and are happy to pay for it. There's no real manipulation going on at that level - both advertiser and customer are basically better off for the targeting, with respect to that genuine painting service being facilitated more efficiently and therefore likely more cheaply.
The manipulation in this case is more at the level of the advertising platform itself - i.e. how is the targeting achieved (spying, etc), and what potential negative externalities might that have.
It's an open and interesting question if the ends justify the means in cases like this. I think I err towards saying they don't, but still at the end of the day the positives are undeniable. That is all basically a long winded way to say, I don't necessarily think it's a question of simple vs manipulative ads per se, I think the more important difference for the majority of ads is naive & expensive vs manipulative & cheap ad platforms, with a lot of tradeoffs in place between the two that are really hard to balance for both advertiser and customer.
But they don't work. So many products and services are not useful. Simply not useful. On Twitter, I've started blocking every useless advertiser that decides to show me an ad... and I'm left with EXAAIR, who I'm sure is glad to target a computer software researcher with their compressed air-powered tools. There is simply too much advertising and too little space. How many advertisements, reasonably, can be sent to a person for things they legitimately want? Does that at all track with what they would see on the unfiltered web?
You're right, but that's a very customer centric viewpoint - from the point of view of the advertiser this is not so great.
This specific painter pays the ad platform to be the one that comes to you, when you're busy with all the other things on your todo list, so that you choose them and not one of the other 10 painters in your area.
It still doesn't make them bad, or manipulative. You actually want this service and not having to do the search yourself is a bonus, all things being equal (price and service level is in line with the local market etc).
> It still doesn't make them bad, or manipulative.
I don't see why not. Ads have negative externalities, for example: now everybody sees the ad (not only people in need of a painter), and also now the painter with the largest advertising budget will get more customers (not the best one), and finally the advertising costs will eventually be paid by the client (the client pays for being manipulated).
Take our humble 'Painter for Hire' - an honest business looking to do real valuable work for people who genuinely want to pay for that service. That's the kind of advert we all want to see, when we need it.
To the painter, and perhaps even to the customer, it's just all round better if their straightforward advert can be targeted at people who are very likely to need the service, on demand. They can spend the same and reach some multiplier X more warm leads, or spend 1/X on the same amount of warm leads. Warm leads being people who genuinely need the service and are happy to pay for it. There's no real manipulation going on at that level - both advertiser and customer are basically better off for the targeting, with respect to that genuine painting service being facilitated more efficiently and therefore likely more cheaply.
The manipulation in this case is more at the level of the advertising platform itself - i.e. how is the targeting achieved (spying, etc), and what potential negative externalities might that have.
It's an open and interesting question if the ends justify the means in cases like this. I think I err towards saying they don't, but still at the end of the day the positives are undeniable. That is all basically a long winded way to say, I don't necessarily think it's a question of simple vs manipulative ads per se, I think the more important difference for the majority of ads is naive & expensive vs manipulative & cheap ad platforms, with a lot of tradeoffs in place between the two that are really hard to balance for both advertiser and customer.