> people that build websites want tracking. And it works. Retargeting works, banners work.

do they? I've never once bought anything because and ad made me aware of it, or because an ad convinced me I needed it. not once.

has anyone? I'm sure someone has, but how many? I would not be surprised if studies were done that computed a purchase rate overall for all the ads people see or hear in their lives, that the number is less than one purchase per billion ads exposed.

One thing to note is that the purpose of ads might not just be to get you to directly click on it and buy something. It might also be to make you remember the brand name so the next time you think of lets say baby diapers, you remember "Huggies" because they are the most advertised ones even though there are better and cheaper alternatives.

As for how impactful the ads are - you don't need a study. Simply run an ad and you will know how many people click your ad and how many then follow up with purchasing. That's where terms like cost per acquisition (CPA), customer acquisition cost (CAC), cost per click (CPC), Cost Per Thousand (CPM) etc come into place.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cpm.asp

It's not one purchase per billion ads. You can look up google Adwords cost per acquisition by industry (WARNING - might be blocked by ad blocker):

https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/02/29/google-adwords...

Cost per acquisition on the app stores is much cheaper too.

Honestly wondering why this is getting downvoted, if it's not against the rules to wonder.

I hate targeted ads as much as anyone, and I don't buy the ad tech bs that they are vital to human survival, but I think the GP is a bit naive to think that ads have no effect on them.

There's long-standing research that people unconsciously prefer familiar things, so exposure to ads is enough even if you don't remember it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect

Of course if you would have never ever bought something, an ad is unlikely to make you change your mind. Same if you do thorough research on what to buy, you're probably not swayed by familiarity. But claiming that they have no effect is a bit naive.

EDIT: I guess GP never claimed that they have no effect, but what I'm trying to say is that ads probably have a bigger effect in people in general, and even to you personally whoever is reading this, than you'd think. Targeted ads though? I hope we can live without them.

There’s a saying in finance, the more complex a financial product is, the more money banks make on it.

I feel it quite aptly applies to advertisement industry as well. Massive amounts of complexity and red tape over getting people to buy things

> to make you remember the brand name [later, while not viewing any ad.]

maybe, but that seems so untraceable that it wouldn't be worth the effort to even think about. but, ad people definitely think differently than I do, so who knows what they think about every day.

Yes, retargeting and tracking is extremely effective.

You've fallen into what I'm gonna call the "HN fallacy".

- I would never click on an ad, therefore no one clicks on ads.

- I don't have a need for a better file syncing UX, therefore no one would ever use Dropbox.

- I don't see the point in crypto, therefore no one would ever use Coinbase.

Specifically, let's say you've seen 100,000 ads in your lifetime and literally zero have had any impact on you, much less driven you to click through and purchase immediately. It's reasonable for you to question the utility of these ads.

There are, however, entire populations of users whose behavior is vastly different from yours. They may be very willing to click through an ad to purchase.

A good marketer will only target their ads at the people most likely to purchase (i.e. not you). This puts you on a negative feedback cycle where you only get ads from companies that are spray-and-praying or too unsophisticated to target their ads more specifically.

I've been told this my entire life. People make statements like "everyone does X" and I say "really? I have literally never done X in my life and I know many people who say the exact same thing; in fact I'm not sure I've ever met anyone who does X" and the response is "yes, but you're different from everyone else. You and everyone you know are not like most people!" I find it extremely unconvincing.

> People say how they hate surveillance tech, but at the end of the day, it pays half of the bills on this website.

It seems to me that HN is a gateway to advertise a bigger platform. It's more of a win-win situation than a "you're the product" kind of thing. Also right now µBlock Origin and Privacy Badger are blocking nothing.

And with more and more content producers soured by Big Tech creating their own private subscription based websites or opening semi-private platforms I wouldn't be surprised if we will see a decline ads revenue in the coming years.

> People say how they hate surveillance tech, but at the end of the day, it pays half of the bills on this website.

HN has surveillance tech?

> Most probably, there is Google Analytics and Facebook pixel on the very site you are building right now.

Nope. I haven't used any of those since 2016. None of the apps I build for iOS have third party analytics, trackers or even ads. I solely rely on a single one time only in app purchase for monetization. Even my OCR app does all its processing locally on the device itself and none of the data leaves the device. I have a mood tracker app which obviously has a lot of intimate, confidential and private data from users - the data stays on their device and if they use iCloud syncing, then to Apple's server (despite all of Apple's flaws, they do seem to be doing much better when it comes to privacy). I have a school timetable app which also has lot of confidential data. Same thing on that app too - everything stays locally on the device or iCloud if user chooses. I DO NOT want user data. I have a site which is a resume builder which users input a lot of confidential data. Even that site never transfers any of the user data and everything is stored locally on the browser. There isn't even any ads or analytics on the site as can be confirmed by sniffing network requests. I had to spend couple extra weeks to get the PDF generation done locally in the browser instead of sending the user data to some server. This took extra time but it was worth it because I DO NOT WANT USER DATA. My Hacker News client app also has the same attention to privacy. I disclose to the user in the privacy policy that the only time the app accesses my own network is when it needs to fetch the favicon for the articles and I don't log these requests. I plan on adding notifications to that app and I will be disclosing that in the privacy policy that I will need to store the device token to be able to deliver the notifications. And the notifications will be opt-in so the user knows what data they are giving me to store. Other than that, I won't be using this for any tracking or other purposes.

Obviously I am aware I can make a lot more money if I put ads and trackers etc but I have been at a point for many years now where I would lose money and business if it means I get to starve the beast of some money. My customers appreciate my privacy policy and often email me or leave reviews appreciating the privacy policy. So there's a market for it (less money though and I am fine with that).

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hack-for-hacker-news-developer...

Privacy policy for HACK:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cb282k7rrSi4awr0HizuRciX...

Here's another example of my resume builder's privacy policy:

https://resumetopdf.com/privacypolicy.html

Here's privacy policy for my MoodWell mood tracker:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/19bIdiLwlnQxSIASNatVz8UpI...

Privacy policy for my Image Text OCR app:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f05TVHqZPnj8aM1d0b6y6u6H...

Simply saying one cares about privacy and users isn't sufficient. I think one has to really want to make less money and also have bitter feelings towards the beast to purposefully starve it if they want to care about user privacy.

> HN uses surveillance tech?

HN is fully funded by Y Combinator. The suggestion is that YC make half their money from surveillance tech, but I can’t speak as to whether that is true.

Fair point. I see what OP means now. Though that is like saying one won't use React Native or Flutter because it's made and funded by FB and Google.