I'll take the other side of that argument. Search engines should put the most relevant products at the top of the page because they are the best fit, not because someone paid for them to be there.
If all advertising disappeared tomorrow, the world would function better. Consumers would not have advertisers trying to manipulate them, and they would more rationally allocate their resources.
Advertising is a tax placed on people who have already bought a product, which made it more expensive, to manipulate other people into also buying that same product.
Without it, good products would succeed on merit / independent reviews / word of mouth.
* The one exception I can think of is possibly during the scale period of startups, helping them scale faster (artificially) than if they just followed the "be the best and it will catch on" approach.
Companies are already starting to game "independent reviews" through incentivized reviews or downright fake reviews, and word of mouth has been gamed with referral programs. Fact is, when there's money on the line, it's gonna get dirty, PPC and banner ads just happen to be the cheapest option.
I'd love to not play the advertising game, but marketing seems to be one of the most important parts of running a business, if not the most important part, and it'll get its grimy hands on anything to acquire users. I'd prefer to avoid the world where they pay people to post rave reviews in HN comments to hype products.
If all advertising disappeared tomorrow, the world would function better. Consumers would not have advertisers trying to manipulate them, and they would more rationally allocate their resources.
Advertising is a tax placed on people who have already bought a product, which made it more expensive, to manipulate other people into also buying that same product.
Without it, good products would succeed on merit / independent reviews / word of mouth.
* The one exception I can think of is possibly during the scale period of startups, helping them scale faster (artificially) than if they just followed the "be the best and it will catch on" approach.