Somewhere near the very bottom of the article is this gem. Emphasis mine. "And it wasn't because it was working for them. ... But there was one group of advert

Somewhere near the very bottom of the article is this gem. Emphasis mine. "And it wasn't because it was working for them. ... But there was one group of advertisers with a valid reason to purchase own brand name ads. Not that they were any more effective for this group, but because their competitors were "crowding them out" by buying ads that targeted the brand owner's name (so you search for "Bestbuy" but a sponsored ad for "Walmart" tops the list). This can enable Walmart to steal 20% of Bestbuy's organic search traffic" In other words, even if a lot of people figure out that digital advertising is worthless to increase sales or whatever, they might still buy it for defensive reasons .. It's a win for Google/FB either way