So, there are a lot of reasons to think ads might not work, and a lot of reasons to think surely market forces would punish companies who spend $$ on ads that d

So, there are a lot of reasons to think ads might not work, and a lot of reasons to think surely market forces would punish companies who spend $$ on ads that don't work. Which to believe? Well, reality check: do the ads you get shown, work? For me, almost never. It's either: 1) the thing I was google searching for anyway, or 2) the thing I bought online yesterday, which I therefore definitely don't want and won't want for a long time. This even happened with things like cars and house air conditioners, where someone who's recently made a purchase is the LEAST likely to want it. I can think of a lot of reasons for ad-supported companies (which includes news journalists) to want to claim that ads work better than they do. I can think of reasons why executives want to believe ads will save them, when they won't, because actually improving your product is much harder than spending VC money on ads.