> In this case how does real-world advertising in magazines, public transport, TV, etc manages to have such a high price despite the targeting capabilities being orders of magnitude lower than online?
Some companies are willing to pay that much more for the prestige of showing up in the "real world", just like some brands might maintain unprofitable flagship stores.
Another reason is "because they have to charge that much". Which means that if fewer companies are willing to pay that much, more classic media outlets go out of business, as they can not lower prices further.
Lastly, you can't accurately measure how inefficient these forms of advertising are, whereas online advertising makes it easy to see whether ads are a net loss or not.
> Some companies are willing to pay that much more for the prestige of showing up in the "real world"
Doesn't that show a problem with online advertising if it's considered so bad that companies are willing to pay huge premiums to show up somewhere else instead?
Maybe the problem with online ads isn't the targeting or lack thereof but that the well has been poisoned by allowing even the worst possible scum and the users reached their breaking point and learned to ignore them, while the higher quality in real-world advertising is enough to even keep people paying for advertising (in the form of buying magazines)?