What I've personally noticed is that for people like us ("special snowflakes"), the ads still work but at a subconscious level. When you are evaluating products in your "research" phase, you aren't doing a completely unbiased analysis. You have picked up brand names and products in the background as you browse the internet and when it comes to making that 50/50 call in the end, you will likely go with brands that you subconsciously trust. There's another way where ads work which I call "incessant bombarding". I would not have heard of Vrbo if they didn't have a massive campaign on Youtube where almost every video I watched for 3-4 months in 2022 had a Vrbo ad on it.