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Yes, pretty much every company first data person runs Cost-per-action (CPA) analysis to estimate how many sales can be attributable to ads vs. other ways of rai

by bertil 5y ago

Yes, pretty much every company first data person runs Cost-per-action (CPA) analysis to estimate how many sales can be attributable to ads vs. other ways of raising your brand. It’s an imperfect science (just use the word “attribution” to trigger shivers in any data person) but it’s very clear that targeted platforms offer dramatically cheaper leads for almost every product. That’s why the hostility to ads feels misplaced: it works, it helps company to whom you want to give money to find you and people like you. It’s just that condescension from _some_ people in Ad platform and a press that insistently favours the worst people mean that people like me who argued for more user-friendly interfaces (ban certain content, prevent repeated ads) were routinely overruled.

WJW 5y ago
> it helps company to whom you want to give money to find you You mean, the companies who want me to give them money. I'm sure there are a few companies out there whose product I actually want and don't mind paying for, but their number is absolutely dwarfed by the number of companies that seek to induce FOMO/status anxiety/etc in order to get me to buy things I don't need and would not want if not for advertising.
- throwaway2048 5y ago
  every advertising platform wants to pretend they are delivering useful products that people would otherwise be unaware of, but almost exclusively deliver what you have identified.
- foerbert 5y ago
  Yup. I find it amazing the quoted myth lives on. It doesn't even make sense. How many problems do most people have that can be solved with an existing product they are unaware of? The numbers can't be very high. How do you explain well-known brands advertising the same product for decades on end? Surely Coke and Pepsi aren't suddenly enlightening many people to the existence of their drinks. How about ads that get shown to the known-same individual time and time again after mere minutes? (See Hulu, at least back in the day, not sure what it's like now.) The whole line about ads being mere consumer education is ridiculous and doesn't even stand up to a cursory thought.
JohnFen 5y ago
> That’s why the hostility to ads feels misplaced I have no hostility to ads themselves. I have a huge amount of hostility to the spying that comes with them.

by bertil 5y ago

WJW 5y ago

> it helps company to whom you want to give money to find you You mean, the companies who want me to give them money. I'm sure there are a few companies out there whose product I actually want and don't mind paying for, but their number is absolutely dwarfed by the number of companies that seek to induce FOMO/status anxiety/etc in order to get me to buy things I don't need and would not want if not for advertising.

throwaway2048 5y ago
every advertising platform wants to pretend they are delivering useful products that people would otherwise be unaware of, but almost exclusively deliver what you have identified.
foerbert 5y ago
Yup. I find it amazing the quoted myth lives on. It doesn't even make sense. How many problems do most people have that can be solved with an existing product they are unaware of? The numbers can't be very high. How do you explain well-known brands advertising the same product for decades on end? Surely Coke and Pepsi aren't suddenly enlightening many people to the existence of their drinks. How about ads that get shown to the known-same individual time and time again after mere minutes? (See Hulu, at least back in the day, not sure what it's like now.) The whole line about ads being mere consumer education is ridiculous and doesn't even stand up to a cursory thought.

JohnFen 5y ago

> That’s why the hostility to ads feels misplaced I have no hostility to ads themselves. I have a huge amount of hostility to the spying that comes with them.