The author made an excellent point in TFA:

If you do your SEO right and use advertising to build up some brand recognition, you reach the point where your web site appears on the first page of search results alongside your paid ad for your web site.

However, Google has designed their search results to encourage clicking on the ads, so many users who actually find you with search will click the ad you are paying for instead of the search result for your site.

The author presents empirical evidence that not paying for ads doesn't reduce traffic, because users will click the site in the search results, instead of clicking the ad.

That is very much a point, and one that can save people a lot of money if they test it and find their site adn advertising have the same dynamics.

Until your competitors start buying ads under your name. And you have to buy ads back to counter-attack. And Google laughs all the way to the bank.

Do you mean your competitors buying ads for their product, but using your product's name as keywords?

Or do you literally mean your competitors buying ads that deceive the public into thinking they're clicking on your ad which will lead to your site, but it actually goes to their site?

Those are two very different scenarios.

The fighting is most fierce near communization, those edge cases where a brand name is becoming a common name for the item (think Kleenex).

I suspect it's not actually as bad as people may think (if someone searches "Dominos" are they looking for any pizza place, or that particular one), but it does happen.

Both can be done.

First one is more common. Second one depends on your industry and who your competitor is (sleaziness)

Is there a smart counter attack to this?

Branded search terms cost way more for competitors for reasons I can't be bothered getting into, most likely they are losing money by doing it. You can counter it by bidding yourself - which on branded search terms is usually dirt cheap. But ultimately, the only real counter is delivering a better service.

Place ads for their brand that links to a negative review about them?

Try to drum up public outrage to get them to stop? Maybe if they use your trademark there's cause to sue? Otherwise good luck.

People hate advertising and upvote anything that implies it is useless.

Whilst most of HN is employed by advertising companies and their offshoots ...

I did not read this as suggesting advertising is useless, the author says outright that it can help build up a critical mass of brand recognition.

But the author's point is that once you reach that critical mass, advertising may begin to cannibalize your organic search results because users click on your ad instead of clicking on your site in the search results.

I own a copy of "Ogilvy on Advertising" I bought in the 1980s. In it, David Ogilvy basically says, "test, test, test." That's the message here. Test. The advertising you're doing could be useless.

I'm not sure I agree that when you reach a certain point, ALL advertising is useless. Maybe when you reach the point where most of your advertising has no ROI and is cannibalizing your organic SEO, you need to change your spend and try to find ways to get your ads onto search results that don't feature your site.

If you find that works, you can then adjust your SEO and see if you can make that advertising go to zero ROI too. Lather, rinse, repeat.

'Whilst most of HN is employed by advertising companies and their offshoots ...'

If a man knowingly supports a cause that is against his financial interest, thats worth paying attention to

It's not useless, it's predatory, deceiving, and outright hostile. I literally have to screen my entire network to avoid being tracked by it within my own home. I don't answer phone calls because of it. I have to screen media for my children so they're not manipulated by it.

Sounds like you're heavily manipulated by it already.

I think you're intentionally being flippant at my expense, but it's impossible to live in society and avoid advertising's influence.

Facebook and Twitter will adjust who you see content from to increase your likelihood of interacting with advertisement. As more and more social interaction happens online, this can influence who your friends are if you're not careful.

I see no reason to deride someone trying to wrest back some control.

His point is right at the top:

I was spending time optimising the 'bid' in automated advertising system, trying to get the best bang for buck.

Why was I doing it? Everyone else seemed to be doing it.

This was a terrible reason to do it.

Ya but a better lesson would be to do what has ROI. Ads work great, but you have to measure them, and you don't pay for traffic you get for free (such as your brand name).

Discussing the pointlessness of fields like marketing and advertising is catnip on HN.

I think society has been somewhat brainwashed into the importance of online marketing. I like scientific approaches that refute that. For example, I don’t think that people should be following their dentists and plumbers on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

> I like scientific approaches that refute that.

No doubt, but this is as far away from scientific as it can get.

"I stopped advertising. My sales rose at the same time. Advertising doesn't work" is basically the thesis, but his only "evidence" is an unreasoned assumption that the two things are casually linked instead of just correlated by the timing.

Agreed. I was being somewhat tangential to the article at hand and responding more to the catnip comparison. I can only recall a few articles that were particularly well-reasoned.

I think it's hard for people to appreciate just how much human behavior is driven by those fields.

What do you mean there's no point? No point in ads - yeah. No point in article - they stated that ads are not universally working. Sometimes you don't need groundbreaking results to make an interesting article.

Er... sure there is. There's a whole 'lessons learned' section with a list of points.

Sure there is. A healthy business' best assets are its customers, and happy customers will tell their friends about your business when it comes up appropriately. Word of mouth is worth far more than web advertising ever will be.

I agree, the post itself is borderline useless, but hopefully it will spawn an interesting discussion here.

People don't read anymore

That title thought