Should I Be Surprised?

I was contacted by the sales folks at YELP the other day - of course, they want us to advertise. After establishing the range of monthly rates ($350 to $2000 or so) (!) - she briefly described the different "levels" - what you get for what you pay for. I asked her to email the information for review and when I looked at the tiers, I noticed a rather striking difference between Tier 1 and Tier 2. Tier 1 is your basic "Targeted ads that show up when someone is searching for a business like yours in the area." That's pretty straightforward, normal advertising, nothing surprising about that. Tier 2: "Enhanced Business Profile with competitor's ad removal and photo slide show." That one stopped me dead in my tracks. Competitor's ad removal? Call me old-fashioned . . but that sounds kind of sleazy and unethical. If a store in my neighborhood was paying less to YELP, my ad would appear and theirs wouldn't? And of course the opposite - if we don't go for the more expensive advertising, whose ad would be removed? Cheap little us! Of course I know that people pay for better placement in newspapers and magazines - but they don't remove the ads of others altogether. And I know lots and lots of people use YELP to find things, but this makes me loathe to give them my money. The nature of advertising in general, the technological differences available by internet advertising, all very interesting to think about . . .