17 ms·

Everything advertised on social media is overpriced junk

276 points by headalgorithm 3y ago

yubiox 3y ago
Once you buy one piece of crap from an ad, don't you learn not to do it again? Are there enough new suckers every day to keep this going forever?
- narag 3y ago
  No. Yes. Also, there's a psychological effect around shopping and it's worse for online shopping. I know people that are daily scanning a handful of online shops for "offers" of "collectibles" and pay hundreds of euros a month for things they don't need.
foobarbecue 3y ago
s/is overpriced junk/costs 10% more on average and may be lower quality/g I've been very happy with some purchases from companies I found out about on Facebook. Cognitive Surplus, for example. Love their stuff. Is 10% of their price due to their choice of advertizing platform? Shrug. Having said that, a lot of it IS overpriced junk, or outright scams. I had some cool-looking shoes show up on my feed for "50% off" a price that was more than twice the amazon.com price. I bought an espresso machine from a facebook ad that turned out to be an elaborate scam. I'm only really objecting to the use of the word "everything" here -- that makes this title false.
- plugin-baby 3y ago
  > I bought an espresso machine from a facebook ad that turned out to be an elaborate scam. More about this, please!
  - foobarbecue 3y ago
    Here it is: https://www.facebook.com/BaristaService365/posts/102586945194221 https://www.facebook.com/BaristaService365/posts/10258694519... I clicked the link and went to the website, which at the time went to sarisell.com , a professional-looking storefront (they move to a new domain and update the ad every week or two). I thought there was a pretty good chance it was a scam since this is an $800 machine supposedly selling for $300, but I figured I would be reimbursed if it was, so gave it a go. Here's the elaborate part: they took my money and sent me a delivery tracking link at sodopro.com which appeared to be a delivery service like DHL. The link went to a map that showed the product travelling very slowly from Europe, and it would change every few days. Eventually the location disappeared and the status just stayed at "on the way" or something. I filed a claim with my credit card and got the charge removed.
    - soared 3y ago
      If it makes you feel better, I got scammed the same way but in Walmart.com. Bought an espresso machine that was a little too good to be true - the purchase wen through like a normal Walmart.com order. They sent a tracking link through fedex/other - but it was delivered a to a different address in my city. Called up fedex, turns out the company never intended to ship something to me and they shipped an empty (weight wise) box to a warehouse to trick Walmart. At least after a few days of effort Walmart did refund me and said they were investigating the vendor.
    - antiterra 3y ago
      It might not be the case here, but lot of these are drop ship outfits that don’t do any kind of stock check and are susceptible to whatever the actual manufacturer in China is up to. I learned about it buying a moon lamp and it taking over 6 months. When it arrived it was a lopsided 3d printed thing (isn’t that relatively expensive at any kind of scale?) I also discovered a lot of these drop shipping outlets are the product of get-rich-quick passive income courses that give you a Shopify template to copy. It being passive income is an impulse for allocating zero budget for customer support.
      - foobarbecue 3y ago
        Interesting; that could be what was going on here, although at the price I kind of doubt it. I bought one of those floating moon lamps from a facebook ad too and it came quickly and was pretty great! Guess I got lucky. Mine is not lopsided, but it's definitely a decent 3D print, looks like low-quality stereolithography or maybe some kind of jetting. It hovers about an inch over the base and spins slowly. Great conversation piece; everyone thinks it looks impossible.
        robocat 3y ago
        I hadn’t seen an advert, so for anyone else wondering what a floating moon lamp is: https://chrisstarkhagen.com/blog/floating-moon-lamp https://chrisstarkhagen.com/blog/floating-moon-lamp
afitnerd 3y ago
This is a really great summary (with reference links) of the problem. As an anecdotal experience that supports this: I’ve ordered products from Instagram ads exactly twice, with the same experience in each case: a higher quality, lower price alternative was available elsewhere. And, in both cases, the products shipped from overseas and took weeks to arrive.
mjr00 3y ago
To the headline-only readers, be aware this article is largely not about advertising making products more expensive, but instead mostly lamenting ad-tech, terrible modern search, and proposing privacy regulations. IMO, the cat is mostly out of the bag at this point. I don't think there will ever be regulation meaningful enough to "untarget" advertising to the degree that privacy advocates might hope. At best you'll be able to regulate some of the more egregious abuses, like phone apps surreptitiously listening to conversations to pick up keywords for advertising, or installed apps sending your phone's location data while in the background. It's simply too easy to track usage data these days to expect advertisers to not fingerprint visitors, especially when almost all visitors to major websites are logged into Google and Facebook. Regulation will continue to be mostly toothless like GDPR, which as far as I can tell has been a largely bureaucratic way to extract extra money from Google/Meta/Amazon in the EU by fining them for unclear cookie consent banners and privacy statements. Which, to be clear, is a good thing, but extremely ineffective at doing anything about the actual invasive tracking they do.
- stareatgoats 3y ago
  Props for the heads-up to "headline-only readers". > a largely bureaucratic way to extract extra money from Google/Meta/Amazon in the EU This can not be overstated. The EU should concentrate on creating things of value of their own, like privacy first services, not constantly prioritizing leeching off innovation and progress in other countries. Speaking as a concerned European here, with plenty of criticism of the way the potential for liberating human knowledge and interaction using the fantastic technology at our disposal has largely been corrupted by FAANG et al and ad tech.
  - jfk13 3y ago
    Just curious: do you regard the Google/Meta/Amazon advertising machines as "innovation and progress"? Or in any sense "things of value"?
    - stareatgoats 3y ago
      The issue is not dichotomic. There is value in enabling advertisements for products and services, the problem is in the unfettered overreach: the grotesque amassing of personal information and the near unchecked marketing of products that are (or close to) scams. Case in point: the cryptocurrency scams that littered Facebook as late as a few months ago (I don't think they have ceased but I was kicked out then, maybe because I habitually reported these scams to no effect - except being bombarded with even more of them ...).
VeninVidiaVicii 3y ago
> Passing a federal privacy law would end surveillance advertising at the stroke of a pen Unlikely—breaking the laws would likely just become a business cost, and make everything even more expensive for everyone.
- pibechorro 3y ago
  This. People like slapping laws on issues when the outcome is usually higher costs in the form of never shrinking burocrazys, little to no actual enforcement (unless you are rich or connected) and the red tape involved in compliance will likely make it worse. The answer is by adopting different behavior on our end. Add blockers avoiding services litterer in ads (its why i no longer use Instagram, google search, etc)
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    > The answer is by adopting different behavior on our end. This tactic has not succeeded even once since written records began. Did snake oil salesmen disappear because we ran out of gullible people? Give me one example when this approach succeeded, without any corresponding legislation
    - Clubber 3y ago
      >Give me one example when this approach succeeded, without any corresponding legislation I think he's describing when the market dethrones an entrenched player without legislation. This happens quite often. Cable companies come to mind. Kodak, Novell, Sun Microsystems, etc. Like he said, regulation today serves the wealthiest companies, because startups, the ones that do the dethroning, have extra costs that are more difficult to afford. I believe it fits in the Barrier to Entry category. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/barrierstoentry.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/barrierstoentry.asp If you want real regulation, you need to look to the anti-trust laws, but our current politicians don't have the stomach for that. Today's regulation really tends to serve the already entrenched, because the entrenched usually write the regulation.
deleted 3y ago
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spicyjpeg 3y ago
I consider this phenomenon part of what I like to call the "Amazon syndrome", even though Amazon is far from being the only culprit. As China started flooding the rest of the world with cheap but decent products mass-produced in a random factory in Shenzhen, people turned away from brands they used to trust and towards no-name options from the likes of "Kxbnheb" or "Ypknwoj" in order to save a buck. Eventually the big brands themselves had to lower the quality of their products to be able to compete with the generic products, which benefit greatly from economies of scale by virtue of being manufactured by multiple companies in massive quantities. Meanwhile, targeted ads deployed at a large scale with flexible pricing models made it possible for not-so-reputable outfits to get their name in front of millions of people's eyes. While only huge companies with a good track record could get past the ad vetting team of a newspaper or TV channel, anybody and their dog can start a Facebook ad campaign for almost no money and then keep paying as the number of impressions scales up. If on one hand this democratized prestigious ad spots that used to be available exclusively to brands everyone already knows, on the other hand it also allowed random dropshipper nobodies to establish a presence as a "niche shop" of some sort and then end up selling you rebranded Chinese no-name products you might as well have bought directly from AliExpress for half the price with free shipping (or straight up scamming you). As much as the HN bubble likes to see a level playing field where all companies are treated equally, I think it's good to have gatekeepers in the advertising industry. But, I get it, the tech giants are all about quantity-over-quality and Facebook's ad revenue would drop to basically nothing (by their standards) if they started vetting each ad campaign manually, so here we are.
- dazc 3y ago
  'Eventually the big brands themselves had to lower the quality of their products to be able to compete with the generic products...' I remember some brands lowering the quality of their product long before all of these random Chinese copycats sprung up. Maybe this is why they were able to get a foothold because people like myself began to think that some cheap copies were actually better than the genuine article. My pet grievance being branded footwear which has mostly become cheap garbage with a premium price tag.
  - 3y ago
liminal 3y ago
Anecdotally I get great targeted ads on Instagram: beautiful, interesting products that appeal to my needs and sensibilities. Unfortunately they are all very overpriced and I don't trust the vendors, so I won't buy the products.
flappyeagle 3y ago
My feeling throughout reading the article is best summed up as "Y U mad bro?" He harps on an "anti-woke" razor company that tries to market themselves as an alternative to Gillette and Harry's — the big point is "they spend 800k/month on marketing, so it drives up the cost of the razors". Does he know how much Gillette spends (saved you a search: 600M/year)? How do they fund that I wonder? He cites a study that says contextual ads and targeted ads perform at about the same efficiency. Why is this remotely interesting? Ads are a liquid market. If one channel was much better than another, it would be arbitraged away. His stated thesis is this: > Targeted advertising is incredibly expensive, and incredibly lucrative – for the ad-tech platforms that sit between creative workers and media companies on one side, and audiences on the other It couldn't be more wrong. Ads are incredibly cheap. It's why you see so many of them. It's why little companies targeting narrow niches can afford to buy them.
- cushychicken 3y ago
  I suspect targeted ads are a part of the phenomenon the article is talking about. Since targeted ads got so cheap, tiny little businesses could buy super targeted social media ads for less money than they could selling their products wholesale at a store. Net result is that they can flood social media with targeted ads for some geoarbitraged thing that tiny startup found on AliExpress decided to sell DTC, and end run around consumer wholesaling and all rigamarole involved there. The barrier to entry for that is super low. All you really need to be good at then is matchmaking some real niche product you found on Alibaba to a real niche consumer need. Net result: lower prices, greater net profit for the company, tons of new entries to the game of social media enabled DTC.
  - fxtentacle 3y ago
    Your argument breaks down as soon as there are economies of scale. Gillette can probably buy the same quality as Jeremy's at a better price, because they order larger bulk shipments. That means the new niche DTC companies will most likely be a worse value to consumers than the established big brands. Also, the article links to a study which found DTC to be 10% more expensive than traditional retail.
dimgl 3y ago
I bought a Manscaped electric razor after seeing it on a social media ad. It was one of the worst products I've ever used, and it proceeded to cut me significantly worse than other electric razors.
- criddell 3y ago
  Did you return it?
  - grugagag 3y ago
    Even if they did so it’s likely that a large percentage never bother to do so which keep the game going for a lot longer than it logically should
  - c1sc0 3y ago
    Don’t you know most returned products simply get destroyed?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - criddell 3y ago
      I don’t think most is destroyed. I would think something like an electric razor that’s returned should be destroyed though.
    - flaviut 3y ago
      I don't see that being a problem--they sold junk, and rightfully their profits will decrease because that junk was returned. They wouldn't have this problem if they sold quality products.
nlh 3y ago
I hate to be one of those "you lost me at the second paragraph" kind of guys, but....you lost me at the second paragraph: > stuff that's pushed to you via targeted ads costs an average of 10 percent more, > and it significantly more likely to come from a vendor with a poor rating > from the Better Business Bureau. The BBB is pay for play organization whose ratings mean little more than "they paid their membership dues" or "they responded to complaints quickly". You can get a million complaints, but if you reply quickly to consumers you keep your A+ rating. You can also get zero complaints but cancel your BBB membership and Ohhhhhh what a shame you've got an F rating.
- NotYourLawyer 3y ago
  The rest of the article is way better, and not really about this.
- bdowling 3y ago
  The author seems to have referenced BBB as a generic for a firm that rates businesses (ala using Kleenex for tissues or Xerox for photocopies). It’s unfortunate that the most well-known firm of that type is a pay to play scam.
idopmstuff 3y ago
The combination of the author's clearly simmering rage (arguably even reaching a boil at some points in this post) and some fundamentally incorrect assertions make this tough for me to take seriously. Not far into the piece, we get: > The point is that Jeremy's has to spend $800K/month to reach its customers, which means that it either has to accept $800K less in profits, or make it up by charging more and/or skimping on quality. ...what? Acquiring new customers for a business via advertising means less profits or lower quality? How does that follow? I own an ecommerce business, and Facebook/Instagram ads are my main avenue of new customer acquisition (though to be clear I'm not in the ballpark of $800k/year). My products are somewhat seasonal, so I can only really profitably advertise from about April-September. The rest of the time, I'm just continuing to sell to existing customers. During the April-September window, I make much more money, because I am selling to my existing customers and also selling to new customers via profitable advertising. The quality of my product does not decline during the time that I am advertising. My prices don't change during that period, either. My company makes decidedly more money because I'm able to advertise. It doesn't cost me to lose profits; it causes me to gain them. Yes, if you look at my books, you'll see that advertising is a big red number, but if that's where you end your analysis, you just don't have a basic concept of how advertising works. For all of the author's complains about "enshittification" (cute the first time, but beaten equine carcass style by the end) of products, this kind of targeted advertising is an enormous boon for small businesses that sell good products. I can't afford a TV ad campaign, and even if I could, I couldn't measure it enough for it to be useful, given that I'm trying to keep things tight and well-understood financially. He complains about "ad-tech intermediaries scooping up 50% or more of every advertising dollar," but there is a reason for that! They are delivering a service that is valuable for businesses in an immediate and measurable way. The amount of market share the ad-tech companies get is proportional to the quality of the service they provide to advertisers relative to other media. Now to be clear, I agree with much of what the author takes issue with in terms of data collection and the like. There are lots of privacy issues with Facebook, Google, etc. that should be taken seriously, and people should clearly understand what it is they're sharing and how it's used. But even with that in mind, the author is conflating his frustration with adtech and concern about privacy issues with the idea that they aren't delivering tremendous value to small businesses like mine, and that's just incorrect.
deleted 3y ago
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xrd 3y ago
I've got three kids. We have so much crap all around the house. We buy the junk that is constantly advertised to us. We purchase from Walmart which mostly sells crap too. If we stopped for a minute and got off the social media train of consumption, and bought only high quality things, but a lot less of them, we would have a much better life and no clutter. But we don't.
- wpietri 3y ago
  I appreciate you commenting from in the thick of it. Do you have theories on why?
- omginternets 3y ago
  Impulse purchases? As someone who is as immune to advertising as one gets, I find your post intriguing, and I feel like asking what is probably a naive question: can’t you just not buy the stuff? Where does that break down?
  - mrweasel 3y ago
    Because kids. It's easy enough to say "don't buy it", but the family members buy the juke, the kid comes home bawling his eyes out because everyone else has product X, and it's only $Y, so you get it, because it's been a long week, and it's really only Wednesday and you can't really deal with something valued at only $19.95 right now and just maybe it will buy you 20 minutes of peace so you can cook dinner.
    - narag 3y ago
      Because kids. Not that I can't understand, but that's terrible neglect. Saying no is difficult but it's the parents' duty, same as many other difficult things.
      - mrweasel 3y ago
        If you never say no, sure. I'd be rather surprised though if most parents haven't just said: "Screw it, get the cheap plastic car, I really don't have time for a 30 minute session of combined anger and crying right now". Personally I also sometimes make the "mistake" of letting my kid pick a toy, snack, t-shirt, and forgetting that she'll pick cheap colorful junk every single time.
taeric 3y ago
Seeing this blamed on Amazon and the like is... Awkward. Have folks never seen dollar stores? Or paid attention to most mall stores? Been to a local market? This is nothing new. Nor is lamenting the decline of quality.
- coffeebeqn 3y ago
  It’s happening on every e-commerce platform because it’s profitable. Etsy and Walmart for example have the exact same random cheaply manufactured Chinese goods on there
  - taeric 3y ago
    No need for the "e." By and large, it happens everywhere. You can try to blame capitalism, but that feels like a trap. My view is that "high quality" is largely an illusion. And you start changing your view of it as you get older.
    - alex7734 3y ago
      > My view is that "high quality" is largely an illusion. And you start changing your view of it as you get older. I disagree. I'd argue your view of it is changing because you can't find high quality stuff anymore, but it used to exist. My parents have an immersion blender that is nearly indestructible. It has been working for almost 30 years now and the damn thing never dies. Nowadays if you go to any blender from any brand on Amazon the first comment you see is "I used it to blend some ice and it broke on the first day".
      - taeric 3y ago
        I can find high quality just fine, for the most part. It just doesn't mean the same thing. As an example, check out what most kitchens use, if you want a quality blender. And be willing to pay for it. And don't be shocked to find they have several so that they can spread the use out. My view is seeing my friends and family fall into the trap that one quality thing will last forever. It has never worked that way. All things need maintenance. And all things that last do so in the ship of Theseus style. Now, do we also have a problem of fully disposable things? Probably. Single vendor items will be worse at this. But I'm not convinced from evidence that it is actually worse today. So many of the "made to last" things were not used for their lifetime. Such that that is its own form of waste.
VLM 3y ago
If an advertising platform doesn't work well, it can only support extremely high profit margin luxury goods because cutthroat commodities can't afford ads that don't work. The real story is social media marketing is ineffective, not that the products are trash. Its kind of like what's advertised in spam.
- dehrmann 3y ago
  I hadn't really thought about that. Advertisers on social media are basically only competing for impressions, while on search they compete on keyword and impression, so there's room for both high and low-margin businesses since they're segmented by keyword.
- delusional 3y ago
  > The real story is social media marketing is ineffective, not that the products are trash. You'd need to evidence that claim a lot before you could write a compelling post about it. I'd totally be down for a detailed post that goes into the numbers and comparative effectiveness of different ad spends though. That could be quite interesting for understanding the direction of the web going forward. If Social media marketing is useless then large segments of the current web and current economy is going to end abruptly.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
stickfigure 3y ago
Corollary: Everything written in a bloviating, call-to-outrage tone is meaningless junk.
kyletns 3y ago
FTFY: "Everything advertised is overpriced" When you buy a product that's been advertised, you also have to pay for the ad that was served to you. Ban ads!
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ericpauley 3y ago
  I’m astounded how many people blindly buy name-brand advertised crap. The advertising has gone so deep that many just default to buying name brand of everything under the assumption it will be better. I do the exact opposite: store brand everything unless there’s a compelling reason.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  > FTFY: "Everything advertised is overpriced" That's not very helpful as advice because basically everything is advertised.
itissid 3y ago
The best purchases(the ones I am quite grateful for) I have made, ever, are the following brands/products: 1. LLBean. Running aparell, shoes, bedcovers. 2. Apple. I still have 2012 mac books that work well after a few repairs. M1s are good. 3. Peugot pepper mill. 4. American Apparel T Shirts. 5. FoamByMail top line Luxe maximum firmness foam mattress(Queen) costing a few hundred $ (after trial and errors and $$$$ down the drain on scammy mattresses before) 6. MS One note. 7. A grandfathered T-Mobile plan that gives me upto 6 lines for 120$ max(but I use 2 lines for 90$) and 6 GB of high speed data per line. 8. Camelback hydration backpacks. 9. Watering cones from Blumat (Have lasted 8+ years of use through 1-2 weeks of vacation) https://www.blumat.com/en https://www.blumat.com/en 10. Benq 1080p projector(~1 hour a week of watch time since 2014), we don't use a tv. I list these because they have lasted me a lifetime time and the most use and/or money saved over time. There is a bunch of old stuff like watches and stereo systems my mom has from Japan that are still good and working from the 1970's and 80s
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Thank you for these recommendations.
paulpauper 3y ago
Jeremy's Razors spends a fucking fortune on ads. According to Facebook's Ad Library, the company spent $800,000 on FB ads in March, targeting fathers of school-age kids who like Hershey's, ultimate fighting, hunting or Johnny Cash: This is why Meta stock has been such a great investment since 2012 iPO and will continue to be, same for Alphabet. Multiply this by thousands of companies. Insane earnings, and very high profit margins. Very consistent too. No shortage of brands, advertisers. CPCs (cost per clicks) are super-expensive and increase with inflation too, and especially for mobile US users, which is the most desired demographic. You cannot think of a better company when it comes to printing money.
woobar 3y ago
What kind of social media ads are people getting that fits this narrative? I've counted first 10 ads on my FB feed (and I had to scroll for a while) 1 Four Seasons Hotels 2 Terra Kaffe - had to google them, $1300 Espresso Machine 3 iPhone case, according to ad reviewed by Wirecutter and MacWorld 4 Monos Carry-On Suitcase that looked like any other suitcase 5 ClubMed 6 Philips Sonicare toothbrush 7 Volvo XC90 Hybrid 8 WSJ subscription 9 LaunchDarkly - feature flags SaaS 10 Sotheby's Finest Scotch auctions I guess 3 and 4 could be an overhyped junk, but not everything.
- technion 3y ago
  I'll add a data point to your search, here's my results of scrolling Facebook ads. This ignores the "suggested" posts from places like daily mail, which really, are also an ad. This list of ads looks really poor for anything claiming to be targeted. 1 the barbie movie 2 join the us military (I'm australian, and probably too old) 3 KFC 4 jb hifi. This definitely doesn't fit the narrative, this ad offers Apple hardware for less than the Apple store, something they've been threatened over before 5 nrma. A classic case of advertising to someone who has already purchased everything they sell 6 something entirely in a language I can't read. Well done Facebook. 7 vote for some Texas politician if you love God( Australian....) 8 something in Arabic 9 a presumably hacked account where a Persian rug gallery promotes an onlyfans account 10 nrma again Nothing on this list strikes me as overpriced or otherwise supporting this narrative, but damn the targeting is terrible and I'd hate to be paying for this stuff to get shown to me
  - woobar 3y ago
    Interesting. In my case the targeting is not as bad. I.e. at least I can buy advertised products. Nothing like joining foreign army.
dirtyid 3y ago
I remember reading marketting was 50% of many mattress in box brands when they were being pitched on podcasts. So I decided to buy a Zinus off Amazon for ~50% cost and it's held up better than my friends named brands. Gambled that they were founded in the 80s in South Korea so at least had slightly more experience dealing with durability of goods that's suppose to last 10+ years than marketting team with a number to a foam factory.
sdfghswe 3y ago
TLDR: someone on the internet has just learned that advertising exists.
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
> Specifically, stuff that's pushed to you via targeted ads costs an average of 10 percent more, and it significantly more likely to come from a vendor with a poor rating from the Better Business Bureau. So, in other words, the venue that is being paid to present the advertisement makes money. The advertiser makes money, too. What's your point?
SethMurphy 3y ago
My hypothesis, in many consumer cases such as razors, is newer brands are concentrating on growth, not profit, therefore a better deal is often had than buying the established brands. Meaning, as a consumer brand loyalty is expensive over time as new companies are competing with free (VC) money to fund your purchase and build metrics for eventual sale to older brand.
ndeast 3y ago
My default assumption is that if a product is using targeted (or really any digital ads) that it is garbage. I don't think I have ever seen a product advertised on social media that wasn't a drop shipped Chinese rebrand or just a straight up scam. For a while now when ever a thing in my daily life needs replacement (or I have a need for a new thing) I spend a good amount of time researching those products to find the often hidden gem buy it for life alternative. Wirecutter, Consumer reports, sometimes delving deep into hobbyist territory to find out what the true eccentrics are using and valuing. I'll do this with everything from new sponges, pots and pans, gym bags, audio equipment, umbrellas, luggage, boots, whatever. Although often times yes these options have a higher upfront cost, sometimes the better product costs the same or only marginally more, its just not as well advertised.. I think its probably some sick consumerist enjoyment, but I really do love investing in BIFL products. You have to replace them far less frequently, the experience of using a well made product is often far superior, and I get a lot of satisfaction out of taking care of and maintaining things rather than treating everything as disposable. Especially the seemingly menial things you use and interact with on a daily basis I love the feeling of upgrading my "kit". I'm not saying that an $80 indestructible stainless steel dish rack changed my life, but after a long day - cleaning up after dinner, being able to fit my entire kitchen into a super sturdy rack that doesn't topple over, and is banked to drain into my sink instead of spilling onto my counter top and then onto the floor every single night really makes a difference.
- jeremyjh 3y ago
  You should write it all up and then later cash in as a professional influencer.
- guepe 3y ago
  Do you happen to have a summary of your findings somewhere ? I'm all to improve my sponges, umbrellas, etc... !
  - smugma 3y ago
    Not the OP but my $80 Yamasaki Japanese dish rack is great.
lamontcg 3y ago
It isn't just social media or digital ads, the TV ads full of tactical flashlights and stuff like that are crap as well.
jhoechtl 3y ago
Overpriced of course. Everything which pays the additional marketing costs is at least paying these additional costs.
t0bia_s 3y ago
Just use any kind of adblocker (uBlock, NextDNS) and ads don't bother you anymore. I honestly never ever bought anything just beacuse of seeing ad. It simply never worked on me. Or targeting was just terrible. What frustrates me more is absence of quality of reviews of products that I think of buying. Usualy there are bunch of generic reviews that was clearly writen for money (cold be called ad) or without deep knowledge or using that product at all. Youtubers usually repeat same phrases and numbers that says absolutely nothing about quality or usability of promoted product.
- z3t4 3y ago
  I recently paid 10$ to access a site that reviewed keyboards. It for example let me listen to the typing sounds. I think a niche rewiev site can be a lucrative buisness.
  - hyperdimension 3y ago
    > rewiev Did the keyboard review site skip the most important test? ;)
  - t0bia_s 3y ago
    Link? Does it test what happen if liquid splits on it? If F buttons work by default without Fn? How resistent is paint on buttons?
    - z3t4 3y ago
      https://www.rtings.com/keyboard/ https://www.rtings.com/keyboard/
- UltimateEdge 3y ago
  This is unrelated to the article, but you presumably see ads outdoors? I hate it how the most interesting things to look at on the subway are advertisements. I should try to purposefully not look at them. I have a book with me a lot of the time but I find it difficult to concentrate on reading (or anything, for that matter) when I'm not somewhere quiet.
zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
I mostly get ads for Sweetwater, Reverb, and Guitar Center. I'm fine with this
DuckFeathers 3y ago
> Targeted advertising is incredibly expensive No it's not. For example, you are paying $7 million for a Superbowl ad and assuming 100 million viewers, you are getting 14 impressions for a dollar for your old spice after shave lotion. You could have gotten 100 impressions per dollar from people who actually shave had you used YouTube ads. So, targeting is and will always be cheaper... so you're over-paying for products which use non-targeted ads.

276 points by headalgorithm 3y ago

Once you buy one piece of crap from an ad, don't you learn not to do it again? Are there enough new suckers every day to keep this going forever?

narag 3y ago
No. Yes. Also, there's a psychological effect around shopping and it's worse for online shopping. I know people that are daily scanning a handful of online shops for "offers" of "collectibles" and pay hundreds of euros a month for things they don't need.

foobarbecue 3y ago

s/is overpriced junk/costs 10% more on average and may be lower quality/g I've been very happy with some purchases from companies I found out about on Facebook. Cognitive Surplus, for example. Love their stuff. Is 10% of their price due to their choice of advertizing platform? Shrug. Having said that, a lot of it IS overpriced junk, or outright scams. I had some cool-looking shoes show up on my feed for "50% off" a price that was more than twice the amazon.com price. I bought an espresso machine from a facebook ad that turned out to be an elaborate scam. I'm only really objecting to the use of the word "everything" here -- that makes this title false.

plugin-baby 3y ago
> I bought an espresso machine from a facebook ad that turned out to be an elaborate scam. More about this, please!
- foobarbecue 3y ago
  Here it is: https://www.facebook.com/BaristaService365/posts/102586945194221 https://www.facebook.com/BaristaService365/posts/10258694519... I clicked the link and went to the website, which at the time went to sarisell.com , a professional-looking storefront (they move to a new domain and update the ad every week or two). I thought there was a pretty good chance it was a scam since this is an $800 machine supposedly selling for $300, but I figured I would be reimbursed if it was, so gave it a go. Here's the elaborate part: they took my money and sent me a delivery tracking link at sodopro.com which appeared to be a delivery service like DHL. The link went to a map that showed the product travelling very slowly from Europe, and it would change every few days. Eventually the location disappeared and the status just stayed at "on the way" or something. I filed a claim with my credit card and got the charge removed.
  - soared 3y ago
    If it makes you feel better, I got scammed the same way but in Walmart.com. Bought an espresso machine that was a little too good to be true - the purchase wen through like a normal Walmart.com order. They sent a tracking link through fedex/other - but it was delivered a to a different address in my city. Called up fedex, turns out the company never intended to ship something to me and they shipped an empty (weight wise) box to a warehouse to trick Walmart. At least after a few days of effort Walmart did refund me and said they were investigating the vendor.
  - antiterra 3y ago
    It might not be the case here, but lot of these are drop ship outfits that don’t do any kind of stock check and are susceptible to whatever the actual manufacturer in China is up to. I learned about it buying a moon lamp and it taking over 6 months. When it arrived it was a lopsided 3d printed thing (isn’t that relatively expensive at any kind of scale?) I also discovered a lot of these drop shipping outlets are the product of get-rich-quick passive income courses that give you a Shopify template to copy. It being passive income is an impulse for allocating zero budget for customer support.
    - foobarbecue 3y ago
      Interesting; that could be what was going on here, although at the price I kind of doubt it. I bought one of those floating moon lamps from a facebook ad too and it came quickly and was pretty great! Guess I got lucky. Mine is not lopsided, but it's definitely a decent 3D print, looks like low-quality stereolithography or maybe some kind of jetting. It hovers about an inch over the base and spins slowly. Great conversation piece; everyone thinks it looks impossible.
      - robocat 3y ago
        I hadn’t seen an advert, so for anyone else wondering what a floating moon lamp is: https://chrisstarkhagen.com/blog/floating-moon-lamp https://chrisstarkhagen.com/blog/floating-moon-lamp

afitnerd 3y ago

This is a really great summary (with reference links) of the problem. As an anecdotal experience that supports this: I’ve ordered products from Instagram ads exactly twice, with the same experience in each case: a higher quality, lower price alternative was available elsewhere. And, in both cases, the products shipped from overseas and took weeks to arrive.

mjr00 3y ago

To the headline-only readers, be aware this article is largely not about advertising making products more expensive, but instead mostly lamenting ad-tech, terrible modern search, and proposing privacy regulations. IMO, the cat is mostly out of the bag at this point. I don't think there will ever be regulation meaningful enough to "untarget" advertising to the degree that privacy advocates might hope. At best you'll be able to regulate some of the more egregious abuses, like phone apps surreptitiously listening to conversations to pick up keywords for advertising, or installed apps sending your phone's location data while in the background. It's simply too easy to track usage data these days to expect advertisers to not fingerprint visitors, especially when almost all visitors to major websites are logged into Google and Facebook. Regulation will continue to be mostly toothless like GDPR, which as far as I can tell has been a largely bureaucratic way to extract extra money from Google/Meta/Amazon in the EU by fining them for unclear cookie consent banners and privacy statements. Which, to be clear, is a good thing, but extremely ineffective at doing anything about the actual invasive tracking they do.

stareatgoats 3y ago
Props for the heads-up to "headline-only readers". > a largely bureaucratic way to extract extra money from Google/Meta/Amazon in the EU This can not be overstated. The EU should concentrate on creating things of value of their own, like privacy first services, not constantly prioritizing leeching off innovation and progress in other countries. Speaking as a concerned European here, with plenty of criticism of the way the potential for liberating human knowledge and interaction using the fantastic technology at our disposal has largely been corrupted by FAANG et al and ad tech.
- jfk13 3y ago
  Just curious: do you regard the Google/Meta/Amazon advertising machines as "innovation and progress"? Or in any sense "things of value"?
  - stareatgoats 3y ago
    The issue is not dichotomic. There is value in enabling advertisements for products and services, the problem is in the unfettered overreach: the grotesque amassing of personal information and the near unchecked marketing of products that are (or close to) scams. Case in point: the cryptocurrency scams that littered Facebook as late as a few months ago (I don't think they have ceased but I was kicked out then, maybe because I habitually reported these scams to no effect - except being bombarded with even more of them ...).

VeninVidiaVicii 3y ago

> Passing a federal privacy law would end surveillance advertising at the stroke of a pen Unlikely—breaking the laws would likely just become a business cost, and make everything even more expensive for everyone.

pibechorro 3y ago
This. People like slapping laws on issues when the outcome is usually higher costs in the form of never shrinking burocrazys, little to no actual enforcement (unless you are rich or connected) and the red tape involved in compliance will likely make it worse. The answer is by adopting different behavior on our end. Add blockers avoiding services litterer in ads (its why i no longer use Instagram, google search, etc)
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  > The answer is by adopting different behavior on our end. This tactic has not succeeded even once since written records began. Did snake oil salesmen disappear because we ran out of gullible people? Give me one example when this approach succeeded, without any corresponding legislation
  - Clubber 3y ago
    >Give me one example when this approach succeeded, without any corresponding legislation I think he's describing when the market dethrones an entrenched player without legislation. This happens quite often. Cable companies come to mind. Kodak, Novell, Sun Microsystems, etc. Like he said, regulation today serves the wealthiest companies, because startups, the ones that do the dethroning, have extra costs that are more difficult to afford. I believe it fits in the Barrier to Entry category. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/barrierstoentry.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/barrierstoentry.asp If you want real regulation, you need to look to the anti-trust laws, but our current politicians don't have the stomach for that. Today's regulation really tends to serve the already entrenched, because the entrenched usually write the regulation.

deleted 3y ago

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spicyjpeg 3y ago

I consider this phenomenon part of what I like to call the "Amazon syndrome", even though Amazon is far from being the only culprit. As China started flooding the rest of the world with cheap but decent products mass-produced in a random factory in Shenzhen, people turned away from brands they used to trust and towards no-name options from the likes of "Kxbnheb" or "Ypknwoj" in order to save a buck. Eventually the big brands themselves had to lower the quality of their products to be able to compete with the generic products, which benefit greatly from economies of scale by virtue of being manufactured by multiple companies in massive quantities. Meanwhile, targeted ads deployed at a large scale with flexible pricing models made it possible for not-so-reputable outfits to get their name in front of millions of people's eyes. While only huge companies with a good track record could get past the ad vetting team of a newspaper or TV channel, anybody and their dog can start a Facebook ad campaign for almost no money and then keep paying as the number of impressions scales up. If on one hand this democratized prestigious ad spots that used to be available exclusively to brands everyone already knows, on the other hand it also allowed random dropshipper nobodies to establish a presence as a "niche shop" of some sort and then end up selling you rebranded Chinese no-name products you might as well have bought directly from AliExpress for half the price with free shipping (or straight up scamming you). As much as the HN bubble likes to see a level playing field where all companies are treated equally, I think it's good to have gatekeepers in the advertising industry. But, I get it, the tech giants are all about quantity-over-quality and Facebook's ad revenue would drop to basically nothing (by their standards) if they started vetting each ad campaign manually, so here we are.

dazc 3y ago
'Eventually the big brands themselves had to lower the quality of their products to be able to compete with the generic products...' I remember some brands lowering the quality of their product long before all of these random Chinese copycats sprung up. Maybe this is why they were able to get a foothold because people like myself began to think that some cheap copies were actually better than the genuine article. My pet grievance being branded footwear which has mostly become cheap garbage with a premium price tag.
- 3y ago

liminal 3y ago

Anecdotally I get great targeted ads on Instagram: beautiful, interesting products that appeal to my needs and sensibilities. Unfortunately they are all very overpriced and I don't trust the vendors, so I won't buy the products.

flappyeagle 3y ago

My feeling throughout reading the article is best summed up as "Y U mad bro?" He harps on an "anti-woke" razor company that tries to market themselves as an alternative to Gillette and Harry's — the big point is "they spend 800k/month on marketing, so it drives up the cost of the razors". Does he know how much Gillette spends (saved you a search: 600M/year)? How do they fund that I wonder? He cites a study that says contextual ads and targeted ads perform at about the same efficiency. Why is this remotely interesting? Ads are a liquid market. If one channel was much better than another, it would be arbitraged away. His stated thesis is this: > Targeted advertising is incredibly expensive, and incredibly lucrative – for the ad-tech platforms that sit between creative workers and media companies on one side, and audiences on the other It couldn't be more wrong. Ads are incredibly cheap. It's why you see so many of them. It's why little companies targeting narrow niches can afford to buy them.

cushychicken 3y ago
I suspect targeted ads are a part of the phenomenon the article is talking about. Since targeted ads got so cheap, tiny little businesses could buy super targeted social media ads for less money than they could selling their products wholesale at a store. Net result is that they can flood social media with targeted ads for some geoarbitraged thing that tiny startup found on AliExpress decided to sell DTC, and end run around consumer wholesaling and all rigamarole involved there. The barrier to entry for that is super low. All you really need to be good at then is matchmaking some real niche product you found on Alibaba to a real niche consumer need. Net result: lower prices, greater net profit for the company, tons of new entries to the game of social media enabled DTC.
- fxtentacle 3y ago
  Your argument breaks down as soon as there are economies of scale. Gillette can probably buy the same quality as Jeremy's at a better price, because they order larger bulk shipments. That means the new niche DTC companies will most likely be a worse value to consumers than the established big brands. Also, the article links to a study which found DTC to be 10% more expensive than traditional retail.

dimgl 3y ago

I bought a Manscaped electric razor after seeing it on a social media ad. It was one of the worst products I've ever used, and it proceeded to cut me significantly worse than other electric razors.

criddell 3y ago
Did you return it?
- grugagag 3y ago
  Even if they did so it’s likely that a large percentage never bother to do so which keep the game going for a lot longer than it logically should
- c1sc0 3y ago
  Don’t you know most returned products simply get destroyed?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - criddell 3y ago
    I don’t think most is destroyed. I would think something like an electric razor that’s returned should be destroyed though.
  - flaviut 3y ago
    I don't see that being a problem--they sold junk, and rightfully their profits will decrease because that junk was returned. They wouldn't have this problem if they sold quality products.

nlh 3y ago

I hate to be one of those "you lost me at the second paragraph" kind of guys, but....you lost me at the second paragraph: > stuff that's pushed to you via targeted ads costs an average of 10 percent more, > and it significantly more likely to come from a vendor with a poor rating > from the Better Business Bureau. The BBB is pay for play organization whose ratings mean little more than "they paid their membership dues" or "they responded to complaints quickly". You can get a million complaints, but if you reply quickly to consumers you keep your A+ rating. You can also get zero complaints but cancel your BBB membership and Ohhhhhh what a shame you've got an F rating.

NotYourLawyer 3y ago
The rest of the article is way better, and not really about this.
bdowling 3y ago
The author seems to have referenced BBB as a generic for a firm that rates businesses (ala using Kleenex for tissues or Xerox for photocopies). It’s unfortunate that the most well-known firm of that type is a pay to play scam.

idopmstuff 3y ago

The combination of the author's clearly simmering rage (arguably even reaching a boil at some points in this post) and some fundamentally incorrect assertions make this tough for me to take seriously. Not far into the piece, we get: > The point is that Jeremy's has to spend $800K/month to reach its customers, which means that it either has to accept $800K less in profits, or make it up by charging more and/or skimping on quality. ...what? Acquiring new customers for a business via advertising means less profits or lower quality? How does that follow? I own an ecommerce business, and Facebook/Instagram ads are my main avenue of new customer acquisition (though to be clear I'm not in the ballpark of $800k/year). My products are somewhat seasonal, so I can only really profitably advertise from about April-September. The rest of the time, I'm just continuing to sell to existing customers. During the April-September window, I make much more money, because I am selling to my existing customers and also selling to new customers via profitable advertising. The quality of my product does not decline during the time that I am advertising. My prices don't change during that period, either. My company makes decidedly more money because I'm able to advertise. It doesn't cost me to lose profits; it causes me to gain them. Yes, if you look at my books, you'll see that advertising is a big red number, but if that's where you end your analysis, you just don't have a basic concept of how advertising works. For all of the author's complains about "enshittification" (cute the first time, but beaten equine carcass style by the end) of products, this kind of targeted advertising is an enormous boon for small businesses that sell good products. I can't afford a TV ad campaign, and even if I could, I couldn't measure it enough for it to be useful, given that I'm trying to keep things tight and well-understood financially. He complains about "ad-tech intermediaries scooping up 50% or more of every advertising dollar," but there is a reason for that! They are delivering a service that is valuable for businesses in an immediate and measurable way. The amount of market share the ad-tech companies get is proportional to the quality of the service they provide to advertisers relative to other media. Now to be clear, I agree with much of what the author takes issue with in terms of data collection and the like. There are lots of privacy issues with Facebook, Google, etc. that should be taken seriously, and people should clearly understand what it is they're sharing and how it's used. But even with that in mind, the author is conflating his frustration with adtech and concern about privacy issues with the idea that they aren't delivering tremendous value to small businesses like mine, and that's just incorrect.

deleted 3y ago

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xrd 3y ago

I've got three kids. We have so much crap all around the house. We buy the junk that is constantly advertised to us. We purchase from Walmart which mostly sells crap too. If we stopped for a minute and got off the social media train of consumption, and bought only high quality things, but a lot less of them, we would have a much better life and no clutter. But we don't.

wpietri 3y ago
I appreciate you commenting from in the thick of it. Do you have theories on why?
omginternets 3y ago
Impulse purchases? As someone who is as immune to advertising as one gets, I find your post intriguing, and I feel like asking what is probably a naive question: can’t you just not buy the stuff? Where does that break down?
- mrweasel 3y ago
  Because kids. It's easy enough to say "don't buy it", but the family members buy the juke, the kid comes home bawling his eyes out because everyone else has product X, and it's only $Y, so you get it, because it's been a long week, and it's really only Wednesday and you can't really deal with something valued at only $19.95 right now and just maybe it will buy you 20 minutes of peace so you can cook dinner.
  - narag 3y ago
    Because kids. Not that I can't understand, but that's terrible neglect. Saying no is difficult but it's the parents' duty, same as many other difficult things.
    - mrweasel 3y ago
      If you never say no, sure. I'd be rather surprised though if most parents haven't just said: "Screw it, get the cheap plastic car, I really don't have time for a 30 minute session of combined anger and crying right now". Personally I also sometimes make the "mistake" of letting my kid pick a toy, snack, t-shirt, and forgetting that she'll pick cheap colorful junk every single time.

taeric 3y ago

Seeing this blamed on Amazon and the like is... Awkward. Have folks never seen dollar stores? Or paid attention to most mall stores? Been to a local market? This is nothing new. Nor is lamenting the decline of quality.

coffeebeqn 3y ago
It’s happening on every e-commerce platform because it’s profitable. Etsy and Walmart for example have the exact same random cheaply manufactured Chinese goods on there
- taeric 3y ago
  No need for the "e." By and large, it happens everywhere. You can try to blame capitalism, but that feels like a trap. My view is that "high quality" is largely an illusion. And you start changing your view of it as you get older.
  - alex7734 3y ago
    > My view is that "high quality" is largely an illusion. And you start changing your view of it as you get older. I disagree. I'd argue your view of it is changing because you can't find high quality stuff anymore, but it used to exist. My parents have an immersion blender that is nearly indestructible. It has been working for almost 30 years now and the damn thing never dies. Nowadays if you go to any blender from any brand on Amazon the first comment you see is "I used it to blend some ice and it broke on the first day".
    - taeric 3y ago
      I can find high quality just fine, for the most part. It just doesn't mean the same thing. As an example, check out what most kitchens use, if you want a quality blender. And be willing to pay for it. And don't be shocked to find they have several so that they can spread the use out. My view is seeing my friends and family fall into the trap that one quality thing will last forever. It has never worked that way. All things need maintenance. And all things that last do so in the ship of Theseus style. Now, do we also have a problem of fully disposable things? Probably. Single vendor items will be worse at this. But I'm not convinced from evidence that it is actually worse today. So many of the "made to last" things were not used for their lifetime. Such that that is its own form of waste.

VLM 3y ago

If an advertising platform doesn't work well, it can only support extremely high profit margin luxury goods because cutthroat commodities can't afford ads that don't work. The real story is social media marketing is ineffective, not that the products are trash. Its kind of like what's advertised in spam.

dehrmann 3y ago
I hadn't really thought about that. Advertisers on social media are basically only competing for impressions, while on search they compete on keyword and impression, so there's room for both high and low-margin businesses since they're segmented by keyword.
delusional 3y ago
> The real story is social media marketing is ineffective, not that the products are trash. You'd need to evidence that claim a lot before you could write a compelling post about it. I'd totally be down for a detailed post that goes into the numbers and comparative effectiveness of different ad spends though. That could be quite interesting for understanding the direction of the web going forward. If Social media marketing is useless then large segments of the current web and current economy is going to end abruptly.
deleted 3y ago
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stickfigure 3y ago

Corollary: Everything written in a bloviating, call-to-outrage tone is meaningless junk.

kyletns 3y ago

FTFY: "Everything advertised is overpriced" When you buy a product that's been advertised, you also have to pay for the ad that was served to you. Ban ads!

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ericpauley 3y ago
I’m astounded how many people blindly buy name-brand advertised crap. The advertising has gone so deep that many just default to buying name brand of everything under the assumption it will be better. I do the exact opposite: store brand everything unless there’s a compelling reason.
Dylan16807 3y ago
> FTFY: "Everything advertised is overpriced" That's not very helpful as advice because basically everything is advertised.

itissid 3y ago

The best purchases(the ones I am quite grateful for) I have made, ever, are the following brands/products: 1. LLBean. Running aparell, shoes, bedcovers. 2. Apple. I still have 2012 mac books that work well after a few repairs. M1s are good. 3. Peugot pepper mill. 4. American Apparel T Shirts. 5. FoamByMail top line Luxe maximum firmness foam mattress(Queen) costing a few hundred $ (after trial and errors and $$$$ down the drain on scammy mattresses before) 6. MS One note. 7. A grandfathered T-Mobile plan that gives me upto 6 lines for 120$ max(but I use 2 lines for 90$) and 6 GB of high speed data per line. 8. Camelback hydration backpacks. 9. Watering cones from Blumat (Have lasted 8+ years of use through 1-2 weeks of vacation) https://www.blumat.com/en https://www.blumat.com/en 10. Benq 1080p projector(~1 hour a week of watch time since 2014), we don't use a tv. I list these because they have lasted me a lifetime time and the most use and/or money saved over time. There is a bunch of old stuff like watches and stereo systems my mom has from Japan that are still good and working from the 1970's and 80s

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Thank you for these recommendations.

paulpauper 3y ago

Jeremy's Razors spends a fucking fortune on ads. According to Facebook's Ad Library, the company spent $800,000 on FB ads in March, targeting fathers of school-age kids who like Hershey's, ultimate fighting, hunting or Johnny Cash: This is why Meta stock has been such a great investment since 2012 iPO and will continue to be, same for Alphabet. Multiply this by thousands of companies. Insane earnings, and very high profit margins. Very consistent too. No shortage of brands, advertisers. CPCs (cost per clicks) are super-expensive and increase with inflation too, and especially for mobile US users, which is the most desired demographic. You cannot think of a better company when it comes to printing money.

woobar 3y ago

What kind of social media ads are people getting that fits this narrative? I've counted first 10 ads on my FB feed (and I had to scroll for a while) 1 Four Seasons Hotels 2 Terra Kaffe - had to google them, $1300 Espresso Machine 3 iPhone case, according to ad reviewed by Wirecutter and MacWorld 4 Monos Carry-On Suitcase that looked like any other suitcase 5 ClubMed 6 Philips Sonicare toothbrush 7 Volvo XC90 Hybrid 8 WSJ subscription 9 LaunchDarkly - feature flags SaaS 10 Sotheby's Finest Scotch auctions I guess 3 and 4 could be an overhyped junk, but not everything.

technion 3y ago
I'll add a data point to your search, here's my results of scrolling Facebook ads. This ignores the "suggested" posts from places like daily mail, which really, are also an ad. This list of ads looks really poor for anything claiming to be targeted. 1 the barbie movie 2 join the us military (I'm australian, and probably too old) 3 KFC 4 jb hifi. This definitely doesn't fit the narrative, this ad offers Apple hardware for less than the Apple store, something they've been threatened over before 5 nrma. A classic case of advertising to someone who has already purchased everything they sell 6 something entirely in a language I can't read. Well done Facebook. 7 vote for some Texas politician if you love God( Australian....) 8 something in Arabic 9 a presumably hacked account where a Persian rug gallery promotes an onlyfans account 10 nrma again Nothing on this list strikes me as overpriced or otherwise supporting this narrative, but damn the targeting is terrible and I'd hate to be paying for this stuff to get shown to me
- woobar 3y ago
  Interesting. In my case the targeting is not as bad. I.e. at least I can buy advertised products. Nothing like joining foreign army.

dirtyid 3y ago

I remember reading marketting was 50% of many mattress in box brands when they were being pitched on podcasts. So I decided to buy a Zinus off Amazon for ~50% cost and it's held up better than my friends named brands. Gambled that they were founded in the 80s in South Korea so at least had slightly more experience dealing with durability of goods that's suppose to last 10+ years than marketting team with a number to a foam factory.

sdfghswe 3y ago

TLDR: someone on the internet has just learned that advertising exists.

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

> Specifically, stuff that's pushed to you via targeted ads costs an average of 10 percent more, and it significantly more likely to come from a vendor with a poor rating from the Better Business Bureau. So, in other words, the venue that is being paid to present the advertisement makes money. The advertiser makes money, too. What's your point?

SethMurphy 3y ago

My hypothesis, in many consumer cases such as razors, is newer brands are concentrating on growth, not profit, therefore a better deal is often had than buying the established brands. Meaning, as a consumer brand loyalty is expensive over time as new companies are competing with free (VC) money to fund your purchase and build metrics for eventual sale to older brand.

ndeast 3y ago

My default assumption is that if a product is using targeted (or really any digital ads) that it is garbage. I don't think I have ever seen a product advertised on social media that wasn't a drop shipped Chinese rebrand or just a straight up scam. For a while now when ever a thing in my daily life needs replacement (or I have a need for a new thing) I spend a good amount of time researching those products to find the often hidden gem buy it for life alternative. Wirecutter, Consumer reports, sometimes delving deep into hobbyist territory to find out what the true eccentrics are using and valuing. I'll do this with everything from new sponges, pots and pans, gym bags, audio equipment, umbrellas, luggage, boots, whatever. Although often times yes these options have a higher upfront cost, sometimes the better product costs the same or only marginally more, its just not as well advertised.. I think its probably some sick consumerist enjoyment, but I really do love investing in BIFL products. You have to replace them far less frequently, the experience of using a well made product is often far superior, and I get a lot of satisfaction out of taking care of and maintaining things rather than treating everything as disposable. Especially the seemingly menial things you use and interact with on a daily basis I love the feeling of upgrading my "kit". I'm not saying that an $80 indestructible stainless steel dish rack changed my life, but after a long day - cleaning up after dinner, being able to fit my entire kitchen into a super sturdy rack that doesn't topple over, and is banked to drain into my sink instead of spilling onto my counter top and then onto the floor every single night really makes a difference.

jeremyjh 3y ago
You should write it all up and then later cash in as a professional influencer.
guepe 3y ago
Do you happen to have a summary of your findings somewhere ? I'm all to improve my sponges, umbrellas, etc... !
- smugma 3y ago
  Not the OP but my $80 Yamasaki Japanese dish rack is great.

lamontcg 3y ago

It isn't just social media or digital ads, the TV ads full of tactical flashlights and stuff like that are crap as well.

jhoechtl 3y ago

Overpriced of course. Everything which pays the additional marketing costs is at least paying these additional costs.

t0bia_s 3y ago

Just use any kind of adblocker (uBlock, NextDNS) and ads don't bother you anymore. I honestly never ever bought anything just beacuse of seeing ad. It simply never worked on me. Or targeting was just terrible. What frustrates me more is absence of quality of reviews of products that I think of buying. Usualy there are bunch of generic reviews that was clearly writen for money (cold be called ad) or without deep knowledge or using that product at all. Youtubers usually repeat same phrases and numbers that says absolutely nothing about quality or usability of promoted product.

z3t4 3y ago
I recently paid 10$ to access a site that reviewed keyboards. It for example let me listen to the typing sounds. I think a niche rewiev site can be a lucrative buisness.
- hyperdimension 3y ago
  > rewiev Did the keyboard review site skip the most important test? ;)
- t0bia_s 3y ago
  Link? Does it test what happen if liquid splits on it? If F buttons work by default without Fn? How resistent is paint on buttons?
  - z3t4 3y ago
    https://www.rtings.com/keyboard/ https://www.rtings.com/keyboard/
UltimateEdge 3y ago
This is unrelated to the article, but you presumably see ads outdoors? I hate it how the most interesting things to look at on the subway are advertisements. I should try to purposefully not look at them. I have a book with me a lot of the time but I find it difficult to concentrate on reading (or anything, for that matter) when I'm not somewhere quiet.

zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago

I mostly get ads for Sweetwater, Reverb, and Guitar Center. I'm fine with this

DuckFeathers 3y ago

> Targeted advertising is incredibly expensive No it's not. For example, you are paying $7 million for a Superbowl ad and assuming 100 million viewers, you are getting 14 impressions for a dollar for your old spice after shave lotion. You could have gotten 100 impressions per dollar from people who actually shave had you used YouTube ads. So, targeting is and will always be cheaper... so you're over-paying for products which use non-targeted ads.