I’ll concede on a point, but push back on another.

1. I’m not suggesting that advertising is completely unnecessary — just undesirable. If there’s a way for someone to sell their product without the need for advertising, they’d likely prefer that. You don’t have to be a technologist to find advertising undesirable. I’d venture to guess that most people would like to do away with advertising — if they could get away with it.

2. I agree that most products do not “sell themselves” and hence some form of marketing is needed. But, not all marketing is created equal. I’d much rather write an insightful blog article that engages potential customers than take out an ad somewhere and interrupt their day. Though these “inbound marketing” approaches may not be sufficient, they’re certainly more, um, “pleasant” than the outbound, interruption-style approaches.

3. In terms of the software industry specifically, we are in an age now where I think consumers are increasingly less influenced by advertising. Not that it doesn’t work (or can’t work), it’s just less effective over time. The good news is that a healthy software business usually has respectable margins and hence can afford to spend some money on advertising to pull in customers.

In summary: I do tend to be a bit of an idealist. And, ideally, we wouldn’t have advertising and people would just find what they need, when they need it. But, being an entrepreneur, I’m also a pragmatist. I don’t think advertising is going away anytime soon and most businesses will likely be best-served by a balance of inbound and outbound marketing techniques.

Cheers.
Dharmesh