Ads can largely work for generating an action - it's just no one really wants to admit that the CPA is probably orders of magnitude more than we all spin it to

Ads can largely work for generating an action - it's just no one really wants to admit that the CPA is probably orders of magnitude more than we all spin it to be, and in lots of cases isn't efficient, or even profitable. I deploy ad spend every day, and can see when it works - do I think spending a £1 on the online ads we use is the best use of that £1? In a lot of cases, nope (though in some, yes). But £1 on outbound marketing when your agency is spinning you a line about it generating £5 is too much for the top brass to resist. I think the entire market would be much better for ads if there weren't so many fingers in the pie - too many people are making money, and too many reputations internally are at stake for the fundamentals to be questioned. I'd like to say "fk programmatic" - we need to pull the market back into intent based advertising.