Mad Men

Interesting article from Ezra No-Not-That-One Klein on giving advertising it's due:

There are a few industries and institutions we associate with the widespread accessibility of information: The news media. Search engines. Book publishing. Libraries. These days, perhaps Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia. But here’s another, and perhaps one of the most important: Advertising.

It’s not because the information contained in advertisements is so useful. The world would spin even if we didn’t know Miller High Life was “the champagne of beers.’ But advertising is the industry that allowed most of the other industries to grow. It’s the industry in whose absence the others might not exist.


One of the most mind-bending facts of our information culture is that almost every major medium of information supports itself by advertising.

Radio? Advertisers. Magazines? Advertisers. Television? Advertisers. Google? Advertisers. Facebook? Advertisers. Twitter? Advertisers. Perhaps the only major exceptions to this rule are books, which are supported by sales, and Wikipedia, which is supported largely through donations.

From an economic standpoint, most information is simply a vehicle for advertising. We see the advertising as a distraction. But so far as the media company’s bottom line goes, the advertising is the point. Without the advertising, the information wouldn’t exist. So the history of information, in the U.S. at least, is the history of platforms that could support advertising.