> Product discovery is not why advertising is done.

Actually, it is. What do you believe is the purpose of ads? More importantly, how do you interpret the fact that any product release is based on an advertisement campaign?

Pushing to people instead of letting them pull, + having to outshout the advertisers from your fellow competitors.

Could you explain how product discovery without advertising would work?

Word of mouth. Also, pull instead of push. I could walk around the shop and discover a new product on the shelves. Or, pick up a catalog with local companies. Or, pick up a magazine dedicated to companies announcing their products in particular domain. Or these days, Google for a solution to a particular problem.

Product discovery should involve me consciously, purposefully looking for a product, not all possible products trying to come to me all the time.

> Word of mouth.

How do you win your first few mouths?

> I could walk around the shop and discover a new product on the shelves.

What is the shop owner incentive to promote your product this way before he can be sure that he will sell some of your stuff.

> Or, pick up a catalog with local companies.

Your local car manufacturer?

> pick up a magazine dedicated to companies announcing their products in particular domain.

Without ads, how would those magazines be monetized?

> Or these days, Google for a solution to a particular problem.

SEO = Marketing

> How do you win your first few mouths?

Family, friends, people living in the neighbourhood of your business. If it's any good, it'll spread. If it isn't, it doesn't deserve to spread.

> What is the shop owner incentive to promote your product this way before he can be sure that he will sell some of your stuff.

It can be either way for the shop owner; your product might turn out to be a flop, or an overnight success. Stocking shelves is an active process, an exploraition vs. exploitation problem.

> Your local car manufacturer?

Word of mouth. Regular (i.e. not rich) people don't buy cars off adverts, they buy off experiences of other car owners. This works well enough in practice already.

> Without ads, how would those magazines be monetized?

Companies would pay to be put in them, obviously. Also, without ads being prevalent everywhere, people might even be inclined to buy them. The difference is, it would be people who choose when they see ads, not the advertisers.

> SEO = Marketing

SEO == fucking up the Internet by greedily exploiting imperfections of search engine ranking algorithms. It is indeed marketing, and something I'd love to see disappear. I hate SEO, and have been on the receiving end of SEO practices (i.e. blogspam) in the past.