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Targeted ads have been useful to me about 1 time in the last 5 years. Being generous, maybe as many as 5 times. The other 99999 ads I've had to endure have ei
by blunte 5y ago
Targeted ads have been useful to me about 1 time in the last 5 years. Being generous, maybe as many as 5 times. The other 99999 ads I've had to endure have either been for something I just do not care about, or more frustratingly for something I already own or currently pay for.
If targeted ads worked at least 25% of the time, I might even appreciate them. But they are virtually worthless. People paying to run ads are suckers, because there's no way their ads get much real, useful business. Social marketing and other approaches just must be more effective.
- Jensson 5y agoTargeted ads isn't about targeting people who are very likely to buy the product, they just target people who are slightly more likely than average to buy the product. Take the classical example "I just bought a vacuum cleaner, why do I get lots of vacuum cleaner ads?", well the reason is that people who just bought a vacuum cleaner sometimes are unhappy with the purchase and buy another one. The probability isn't high, but still higher than the probability that a random person would want to buy one. It might still feel like just noise to the person seeing the ads, but to the advertiser getting 20% higher conversion rate is huge (or whatever number they are getting).
- changoplatanero 5y agoHave you considered that the targeted ads might have worked on you without you realizing it? You might have clicked on an ad and it was such a non event for you that it never made it into your long term memory.
- Swenrekcah 5y agoI think you’re describing adverts disguised as content. They can be either context or target based, scummy in either case.
- blunte 5y agoI very much doubt that I have fallen for a ruse like this. However, with all the cookie and newsletter popups, it has happened that an object moved on screen as I was clicking, and I ended up clicking some stupid ad. I don't count that since it wasn't my intention nor my mistake.
- stronglikedan 5y agoTargeted ads have been very useful to me, but I do game the system a bit. When I start seeing targeted ads for irrelevant things, I just do some searches for things I like to look at, and shortly thereafter, all of the ads I get are for things I like to look at. It's a few minutes of effort once every couple of weeks, but I feel the results are a lot less intrusive.
- JohnFen 5y agoHow are they less intrusive? Perhaps they're more "accurate", but that's a different thing.
- 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y agoI can't help but feel that the whole advertisement and "ad targeting" business is built upon quite a few lies and a dose of misinformation to make the whole thing seem way more effective than it is.