I think by "emperor's-new-clothes situation" GP is referring to the possibility that companies are paying for advertising based on the notion that it will be ta

I think by "emperor's-new-clothes situation" GP is referring to the possibility that companies are paying for advertising based on the notion that it will be targeted using sophisticated metadata on users, but that the metadata is in fact far less sophisticated than touted. One would think that all significant ad spend by sane companies is made in the context of an empirical study demonstrating the uptick in the relevant metrics caused by (smaller) ad spend. But honestly, I share the suspicions of the GP, that western capitalism in certain areas (e.g. Bro-y advertising) is influenced more by group think and connections and unthinking continuation of established business practices, than by truly objective data-driven decision making.