Has anyone ever bought anything because they saw an ad? If anything ads cause me to not want to buy the product. I have stopped buying certain products because whenever I see them in the store I'm reminded of their stupid ads and all I feel is resentment.
Of course then people come with the whole "you pay with your attention" thing. No you don't, because if you pay, you'll still be served ads, because why the hell not right? They'll still mine your data, bother you with 'suggestions' and annoying ads.
Being a consumer sucks.
It is tempting to think that. And to think these ads have no influence on you.
But since marketing costs many companies tons of money and they happily pay it, I'm more inclined to believe that it works. Especially since the correlation between marketing budget and income is something that can be directly seen by these companies.
It's like how many Youtubers say the hate doing the "Like and subscribe" thing, but they can see in the analytics that videos where they say that perform better.
Also, attention isn't payment. You pay the marketing budget when you buy the product. Only you also pay with time, your bandwidth, your CPU time, electricity, sanity and privacy.
The idea that ads help us have things for free might be the greatest marketing stunt they have ever pulled
Yes, it has an influence, it influences me to avoid their shitty products. My assumption is that if you have to sink 80% of your budget into ads, I assume it sucks and I'll end up paying for more ads to be directed at me. Especially if the ads are annoying on purpose to "make you remember them" I avoid their products like the plague.
>The idea that ads help us have things for free might be the greatest marketing stunt they have ever pulled.
That was sort of my point. But the real secret of marketing is that it has a very low success/conversion rate. Marketing and ads are a product sold to the companies who pay for the ads, it's a racket. Marketing companies will pretend that you'll lose money if you don't, so you'll have to spend that money on them instead.
That's not a secret. Everybody who books advertising online knows their conversion rate. It doesn't matter whether it is low, what matters is that a dollar spent on advertising turns into more than one dollar in revenue.
> Marketing companies will pretend that you'll lose money if you don't, so you'll have to spend that money on them instead.
Many companies - especially those starting out - don't care about losing money, they care about not increasing revenue. If hiring more sales people and spending more on marketing increases revenue - and it generally does - then operating at a loss is okay. If it doesn't, maybe there's no way to salvage your product - figuring that out has value, too.
Yes. Advertising works. It's usually not that an advertisement immediately turns into a purchase. However, once you've seen the ad, you're more likely to purchase product if you encounter it again.
> I have stopped buying certain products because whenever I see them in the store I'm reminded of their stupid ads and all I feel is resentment.
Maybe that is true, but that's because you're a curmudgeon. Most consumers are not like that. If they were, the economy would collapse under its misanthropy.
> Being a consumer sucks.
You know what sucks even more? Being a producer.
Sometimes I make a special note to avoid the company, because 2-5 minutes of bullshit is not an ad and you deserve to fail.
But having worked in affiliate marketing, I can tell that people do buy A LOT of stuff based on ads. I was running mostly targeted campaigns with relevant products on relevant websites/forums and relevant keywords on Google/Yahoo/Bing, but even on untargeted ads work.
AdSense used to work (probably still does, I hated it from the first try), and I can't fathom who clicks on those ads and even makes a purchase.
Ask almost any woman a few weeks after breastfeeding at night where browsing the web is one of few entertainment options. (Spoiler - yes, so many of them did)
That's an extreme "yes" case, not otherwise, sure people do. That's why companies spend money on the ads. (some of them in clueless ways wasting money)
honestly, yes. adverts pay for most if not all of the free content on the internet. if adverts were more targeted they would become more profitable and therefore pay for better content.
very well target ads will suggest things to you that you would genuinely like or would be useful to you but have not yet heard about.
If ads were more targeted, that doesn't necessarily increase neither the ad spend of companies, and it most definitely doesn't increase the amount of money that consumers can spend on the things that are being advertised.
Most of the time, advertising is a zero-sum game. If you take ad targeting away from everyone, everyone will just do untargeted ads (i.e. ads that are only related to the context they appear in, not related to the person seeing them), and there will be no comparative disadvantage for any particular advertiser.
Which is never. It's disingenuous to even pay homage to this idea being possible in practice, as it makes the space seem a lot less seedy than it is.
I’ve learned to love more direct advertising. Granted, I will admit that NordVPN and Raycon may not provide the best or even in some cases most honest products, but the model they are using to advertise, by having reputable creators appeal to their viewers in enjoyable ways (see, for example, the way Internet Historian uses his signature video editing style and makes the whole ordeal of an advertisement into an over-the-top joke; people end up looking forward to these ad reads) is pretty solid, and it might have more room for growth with creators seeking more direct monetization with both their fans and sponsors alike.
Compared to that, even the most relevant ads generated by some algorithm will always feel impersonal. It’s a giant machine to me.
Have you considered how the ads are improved? Websites don't use their own information to serve ads...
And any website that says "your privacy is important to us" while deliberately tricking you into accepting terms and cookies you weren't easily made aware of is a hostile adversary.
I've said before, I'd be happy to see ads that were embedded in the website's content, unchanging and baked in on the day the page was written (like print publications) as there would be no need to track and stalk me, profile me and sell my behaviour to dodgy companies around the world who are making money from me without my consent.
Do that and I'll turn my ad blocker off. Until then, let's bring on the gdpr lawsuits.
There's a r/google I sometimes peek at. One common theme there is someone complaining about the ads they get, another one asking about personalisation and the complainer confirming they have it disabled. Not getting ads for mail-in brides is nice.
Disclaimer: I work in Google but nowhere near ads.
There's been here a rather good blog post from an engineer actually working on ads on the topic. I think a couple weeks back.
[1]: well, for `sed' I'd rather expect someone trying to sell you an IDE, or to get a cut from recruiting you. But then, what do I know.
If there's one company who should know what to advertise when the user searches for "sed", that company is Google. Yes, without personalization, as the user just gave you the information you need!
If they don't they might as well roll the doors down because that's the main core business of Google.
How did advertisers knew what to put on the WSJ? on Time? on Sports Illustrated?
Has anyone ever been harmed by being tracked? I'd rather see one ad that's relevant to me and will earn the website 1 standard currency unit, than 100 ads I'll never click and will earn 0.01 SCUs
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...
And I'd argue that any time anyone bought something they weren't interested in before seeing an ad for it, they were harmed.
You're assuming that a) buying things is bad, and b) you're interested in everything that's good for you and already know every product that exists.
I'm not against seeing your occasionnal pastor/homeopath or other not-doctor that will at least take time to listen to you and rescribe placebo ater you unloaded on them (i think a shrink is more usefull and cheaper, but really i'm not in a crusade or anything, and i'm okay with sect/religion/"natural remedies" as long as it is not lithotherapy and you still get your chemo).
However pseudoscience stuff with no human component and just money is just taking advantage of fragile, suffering people. Aiming at them is as amoral as it get.
Tracking is shit because the ad industry is shit.
At least I could potentially be in a position to sue (maybe).
So I'm using ff with noscript ublock privacy badger containerization and the likes to mitigate.
It is plain crazy!
To be fair, people who prefer personalized ads do exist. Some of them are not aware this involves not only tracking but also profiling them.
I do see how someone could plausibly prefer relevant ads over irrelevant ones. But I’d be willing to bet a majority of people simply do not care and in fact would rather see neither.
Of course, this is bad news for some, but it was supposed to be bad news. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯