You're conflating direct response with awareness marketing, which are both valid. It is a concept of information theory for imperfect markets. In a perfect mar

You're conflating direct response with awareness marketing, which are both valid. It is a concept of information theory for imperfect markets. In a perfect market, the consumer and seller know everything about each other and every other product and service that they could conceivably ever want. Since we live with imperfect markets, consumers do not have all the information about everything on the market. Sellers will pay money to communicate to consumers about their brand, product, service, etc. A percentage of consumers will be aware of this seller the next time they research or consider making a purchase decision. The perfect ad is only shown the consumers that it is relevant to. Search/display ads are still not perfect, but they're closer to this than previous mediums of communication.