You're right in principle but not in practice, as you yourself point out in your final paragraph.
How are users supposed to know which ads are honest, and which ads are crappy products spun as great? And if crappy products far outnumber quality ones (case in point, how much of the content on the web do you think is garbage?), how does advertising achieve what you claim in your second paragraph?
And even for those non-crappy products, how much incentive is there for sellers to tell half-truths to increase sales? "Here is my great product (but I won't tell you about this other better or cheaper product that I know about, and in fact, I'm buying this ad to make sure that that upstart competitor never even has a chance! It's so nice that my established market dominance pays for my wide and deep advertising mote!)"
How are users supposed to know which ads are honest, and which ads are crappy products spun as great? And if crappy products far outnumber quality ones (case in point, how much of the content on the web do you think is garbage?), how does advertising achieve what you claim in your second paragraph?
And even for those non-crappy products, how much incentive is there for sellers to tell half-truths to increase sales? "Here is my great product (but I won't tell you about this other better or cheaper product that I know about, and in fact, I'm buying this ad to make sure that that upstart competitor never even has a chance! It's so nice that my established market dominance pays for my wide and deep advertising mote!)"
See this thread for more on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7733941
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