And you can prove this, how?

If the people making ads can be influenced by ads, why would they ever stop making them? It works for them, doesn't it?

Supposedly all these metrics like "conversions" measure the amount of people convinced by ads.

But there's also the rumor floating around that all of these metrics are just hugely inflated, that these modern ads have in truth rates so miserable that a plain old billboard in the middle of nowhere would serve advertisers better, and that therefore the "modern WWW" is built on a foundation of lies, exagerations, and fake statistics.

Choose your poison.

Conversion is a great metric if an immediate purchase your goal, but that is only rarely the correct goal. When something else is the goal it is much harder to measure.

Most ads are about a future purchase. They need to measure not did you buy now from this ad, but did all the ads you saw across all platforms (YouTube, Facebook, radio, tv, billboards) make enough of a difference in your buying habits when you finally buy. This is hard to measure, but it is more important. Most people are not buying now from an ad, they are buying in the future.

Sometimes ads are about an image. Even if you cannot afford some luxury good, they may want to advertise so that you recognize it on someone else and think "that is a rich person".

My brain still has advertising campaigns from 40+ years go in my head. That junk sticks.

which is why I said I take steps to avoid the influence, but not that I'm not influenced.