No quitting your corporate job to start your own business, you’re not allowed to advertise.
2. If a “directory” is the only advertising mechanism allowed it benefits the incumbents because incumbents are the only ones who have existing brand recognition. I don’t need a directory to know about Coca-Cola or Google Maps. You would have had to ban advertising at the dawn of time for this to work.
2. Why? You wouldn't search by business name, but by need. What about "nearby bakeries" or "pop soda" only benefits the better known brands? Indexing by name isn't the only way.
And, if you were not aware, how do you think Yellow Pages made money? [1]
You go to Google, type "refrigerator" and you get two buttons
* Please show me only adds, sorted by how much they paid to Larry and Sergey
* Please show me only somewhat organic results, sorted by relevance or whatever, and discount me $1 to pay for the servers and crawers.
* not interested in right now.
Showing the same ad to the same person (or cohort of people) works. Eventually, someone in the cohort may be interested in that product/service at some point in their lfie and they are more likely to pick a brand they are familiar with. They are now familiar with that brand after having seen it everywhere all over their internet browsing, sometimes for months or years at a time.
When I want it, ill initiate a fresh search and find whatever I find, at that time. Don't want things leeching into my subconscious just because you want it to be your brand that I use later.
And how do are people informed about new products they may need or changes to existing products that they now may need? What about reminding people about things they needed, but they forgot about? There needs to be someway for companies to reach consumers that isn't initiated by the consumer.
There is already one, it's called a search engine.