I think the mechanism of advertising is more fundamental than that, I think it's intimately hooked into the same path as spaced repetition. I feel Marketing is

I think the mechanism of advertising is more fundamental than that, I think it's intimately hooked into the same path as spaced repetition. I feel Marketing isn't so much crafted to compete with other signals on any merits but rather crafted to compete with recall. Once a message hooks into an effective spaced repetition pattern it doesn't matter which is the 'better' product; because you'll search first for the one you recall the easiest. At which point it's an entirely different marketing team who tries to make the sale. My opinion is that some companies craft messages to carry additional product metadata not because it's a necessary component of advertising but because they think it makes it simpler to recall. I think this is evidenced by more than a handful of marketing campaigns that don't explain their product at all in any meaningful way and yet still enjoy immense popularity. All that to say I think the worries alluded to by fragmede are justifiable, since the mechanism of impact could involve so little personal agency.