The Obsolescence of Advertising in the Information Age (2018) [pdf]
&quot;Today, consumers can get more product information by reading  &quot;add to cart&quot; pages on Amazon, or online product reviews on any number of platforms, than they can get from viewing advertisements on bill-boards or television, or through the advertising links  placed by Facebook in its feeds and Google at points all across the web.&quot;<p>This creates its own set of problems. Companies looking to sell directly to consumers through their own website lose a powerful way of promoting their product to consumers giving entrenched retailers more power and more control over what is sold to consumers.<p>Does Amazon, Walmart, Target, etc. not promote certain types of products over other, either subtly or overtly? What constitutes advertising?<p>I don&#x27;t think anyone likes misleading or intrusive advertising, but to say that advertising is obsolete is either incredibly naive or put forth in intellectual bad faith.