No, his argument is that he won't buy the same kitchen sink faucet, or any other kitchen sink faucet for that matter, anytime soon yet gets them advertised for month. This should also hold true for those people that "do occasionally buy things because of advertising, particularly targeted advertising".

If you comparison shop for a faucet online, it would require collusion between all faucet vendors for them to know when you finally purchased one.

I assume he bought the faucet from Amazon so Amazon knows that. You would think Amazon would sell ads based on past purchases too. Then all the kitchen utensil/product/cleaner companies could pay for an ad that is displayed after the purchase of related items, like kitchen faucets. The weight should be lower on impressions for more faucets(unless it was returned) and higher for these kinds of ads.

> the anomaly is that it "doesn't work" on him. The fact is that most people do occasionally buy things because of advertising, particularly targeted advertising.

I'm not so sure. It's quite a big claim to say online advertising is effective on "most" people. It's also quite possible that it's not, and that online advertisers are all chasing an anomalous minority population that is not yet ad-blind.