Optimistically: determine exactly what products they are looking for but aren't yet aware of,

Realistically: determine what high-margin products you could possible convince them of, and show those products in as intrusive a manner possible

The Internet seems to have made us all aware that the depths of human dishonesty and unethicality have no bottom.

If marketers had that power, that's not how they'd use it. Instead, what they'd do is deploy a powerful analytic system to determine what your touch points are, in order to learn how to more effectively manipulate you to make you want whatever it is they happen to be selling.

Or, to use currently fashionable marketer-speak, they'd use it to move you through the funnel more efficiently.

At the macro level, it's maximising needs met, but at the micro level this is done by both initiating and implanting desires that otherwise aren't present or necessary, and by creating problems/pain points (which then, as a second order effect, create a need, which is met by the product).

In economic terms, advertisers aim to maximise locally measured utility, but they do this by externalising the costs of the dis-utility they deliberately create.

Like the proverbial glass salesman, garbage man, or mafia, they provide a theoretical good, but they've found business booms if they can generate their own demand by throwing rocks through windows, trashing the town, or partaking in their own crime to sell their protection services.

In our instance, the town is our own psychological and social state, and while we don't account for these externalities andnegatives, they will keep actively damaging us because its in their interest and locally optimal from their pint of view...

Advertisers are putting customers in touch with marketers for products. Marketers are trying to convince those customers to buy the product. If the advertiser somehow magically knew a priori that nothing a marketer could say would change a given customer's mind, it's in everyone's best interest to not waste any resources on that customer.

> Advertisers are putting customers in touch with marketers for products. Marketers are trying to convince those customers to buy the product. If the advertiser somehow magically knew a priori that nothing a marketer could say would change a given customer's mind, it's in everyone's best interest to not waste any resources on that customer.

I agree with the point, but not the rationale. The difference between advertising and marketing is simply a syllogistic fallacy.

All fat men are men, all men are human, therefore all humans are fat men.

All advertising is paid media, all paid media is marketing, therefore all marketing is advertising.

Marketing is a superset of actions that contains elements of direct advertising, paid influence (PR, influencers, "brand ambassadors", employee advocacy...), product development and market research, events and announcements, sales, and distribution.

I'm a marketer - my main job at the moment is advertising (which I hate, but am stuck), but it's not the only element to the role of a marketer.

You might conflate all of the above under "advertising", but even if you think it should all be burned to the ground, it's still helpful to segment is so you can choose the order in which you set it alight.

secondly, if we take your definition (and call me crazy but if everyone in a conversation is using a certain definition I generally find it more amenable to participating in a conversation to adopt that definition), you've got it completely backwards.

Marketers use advertisers to get marketing into peoples heads. Advertisers exist to make money by meeting the needs and desires of marketers. Consumers are not, as a general rule, paying to see ads.

The idea that advertisers exist to try 'deduce peoples wants and then met them' and they're the ones just 'using marketing because they haven't found a better way' is so..., and I try to keep things civil here on Hacker news but can think of no other way to convey this thought..., naively stupid that it's borderline offensive and disrespectful to the people on the other side of the conversation.