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Few people think they know others that have made purchase decisions based on online ads, yet here we have a hundred billion dollar worldwide online ad industry.

• theli0nheart 10y ago
  You're putting words in my mouth. I said I didn't know anyone who's made a purchasing decision because of an ad on Twitter. Online ads as a larger entity—that's a completely different story. The vast majority of the online advertising spend which you speak of goes to PPC search, not the 2016 equivalent of banner ads.
• mschuster91 10y ago
  > yet here we have a hundred billion dollar worldwide online ad industry. ... which is plagued with spam and fraud. Victims are both the advertisers (who pay for ad slots that are viewed/clicked by bots) and the consumers (who suffer from malware ads, un-usable websites because there are 30+ trackers, ad brokers etc. on one single site, and higher product prices because the vendors have to pay for ads). The only ones who profits are the countless middle men - ad brokers and "big data analysis/retargeting" companies which kill user privacy on a global scale while providing next to zero value. We should, once and for all, simply massively regulate advertising and re-think about how we as a society fund the services currently funded by ads. Especially in media, where "real" journalism had to step back in favor of ever more clickbait crap...