People have a tendency to view advertising as ineffective on them. "I never click ads." Mostly this is true. Most ads people see don't make them do anything. Pe

People have a tendency to view advertising as ineffective on them. "I never click ads." Mostly this is true. Most ads people see don't make them do anything. People see a lot of ads though. Meanwhile, it's a marketing cliche that "half the budget is wasted, but we don't know which." It's also true that google or FB provided analytics, using default settings often grossly overestimate ad effectiveness. All true. A journalist somewhere is writing a version of this article at any given time. But... From the merchant's perspective, the existence-proofs for advertising's effectiveness are undeniable. Launch a site. No visitors. Advertise. Now there are visitors. People subscribed to something or bought something. The ROI may or may not work, but the principle isn't in question. For a blank slate, newly launched business performance marketing is easy to measure precisely and you can have a reliable ROI. For BMW, GoPro or geico insurance... the world is more complex, ROIs are more theoretical and "half the budget is wasted, give or take 50%" applies. The same was true for TV. A mattress store run ads with a crazy guy screaming "Sale!" and the next day a lot of mattresses get sold. The fact that ads made people come buy mattresses is trivially true, from the merchant's POV.