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> Has anyone ever bought anything because they saw an ad? If anything ads cause me to not want to buy the product. It is tempting to think that. And to think t

> Has anyone ever bought anything because they saw an ad? If anything ads cause me to not want to buy the product. It is tempting to think that. And to think these ads have no influence on you. But since marketing costs many companies tons of money and they happily pay it, I'm more inclined to believe that it works. Especially since the correlation between marketing budget and income is something that can be directly seen by these companies. It's like how many Youtubers say the hate doing the "Like and subscribe" thing, but they can see in the analytics that videos where they say that perform better. Also, attention isn't payment. You pay the marketing budget when you buy the product. Only you also pay with time, your bandwidth, your CPU time, electricity, sanity and privacy. The idea that ads help us have things for free might be the greatest marketing stunt they have ever pulled

FriedrichN 5y ago
>to think these ads have no influence on you. Yes, it has an influence, it influences me to avoid their shitty products. My assumption is that if you have to sink 80% of your budget into ads, I assume it sucks and I'll end up paying for more ads to be directed at me. Especially if the ads are annoying on purpose to "make you remember them" I avoid their products like the plague. >The idea that ads help us have things for free might be the greatest marketing stunt they have ever pulled. That was sort of my point. But the real secret of marketing is that it has a very low success/conversion rate. Marketing and ads are a product sold to the companies who pay for the ads, it's a racket. Marketing companies will pretend that you'll lose money if you don't, so you'll have to spend that money on them instead.
- incrudible 5y ago
  > But the real secret of marketing is that it has a very low success/conversion rate That's not a secret. Everybody who books advertising online knows their conversion rate. It doesn't matter whether it is low, what matters is that a dollar spent on advertising turns into more than one dollar in revenue. > Marketing companies will pretend that you'll lose money if you don't, so you'll have to spend that money on them instead. Many companies - especially those starting out - don't care about losing money, they care about not increasing revenue. If hiring more sales people and spending more on marketing increases revenue - and it generally does - then operating at a loss is okay. If it doesn't, maybe there's no way to salvage your product - figuring that out has value, too.

FriedrichN 5y ago

>to think these ads have no influence on you. Yes, it has an influence, it influences me to avoid their shitty products. My assumption is that if you have to sink 80% of your budget into ads, I assume it sucks and I'll end up paying for more ads to be directed at me. Especially if the ads are annoying on purpose to "make you remember them" I avoid their products like the plague. >The idea that ads help us have things for free might be the greatest marketing stunt they have ever pulled. That was sort of my point. But the real secret of marketing is that it has a very low success/conversion rate. Marketing and ads are a product sold to the companies who pay for the ads, it's a racket. Marketing companies will pretend that you'll lose money if you don't, so you'll have to spend that money on them instead.

incrudible 5y ago
> But the real secret of marketing is that it has a very low success/conversion rate That's not a secret. Everybody who books advertising online knows their conversion rate. It doesn't matter whether it is low, what matters is that a dollar spent on advertising turns into more than one dollar in revenue. > Marketing companies will pretend that you'll lose money if you don't, so you'll have to spend that money on them instead. Many companies - especially those starting out - don't care about losing money, they care about not increasing revenue. If hiring more sales people and spending more on marketing increases revenue - and it generally does - then operating at a loss is okay. If it doesn't, maybe there's no way to salvage your product - figuring that out has value, too.