Take it back

One of my favorite parts of the internet is how it has sped up and put some life back into word of mouth. One cool youtube video will get you a far better return on investment than all the billboards in the world. I think this a good thing. I like to think that the internet is helping us be ultimate consumers and let the market dictate who makes it and who doesn't. I realize two things about that statment: 1) it should work that way without the internet and 2) crafty advertising can keep a company afloat, even with an inferior product...at least for a little while.

I kind of hate advertising. It's incredibly disingenious. You'll notice we don't have any on our site.

And no, this is not because no one reads it and we wouldn't make any money.

Now, as someone who's job requires him to spend a decent amount of money on ads, I understand why they exist. I have a pretty decent grasp on when they're useful and when they're a waste of money (most of the time).

But they rule the goddamn world. How many websites thrive solely on the revenue they get from ads? I mean, that's both cool and it sucks immensely. Freerice wouldn't exist without ads. So that's great.

But it just hammers the point home that they're hard to run from. And the more of them that exist, the less impact they have.

So, I have a two part idea: 1) some good soul come up with a list of ad free sites on the internet. Start with us and Fire Joe Morgan and this one. Though I guess all of these have ads for blogger or wordpress. Fuck.

And 2) we start to reevaluate how effective ads really are. I know companies spend billions of dollars on them and somewhere someone did the math and realized it's probably worth it, but I'm telling you it isn't. If you've got a good product or service and usable effing website and can get that product to the right people, you'll never have to buy another ad again. I promise. Get people talking about that shit on Yelp and you're solid.