I think this is an important point in analyzing advertising. The core of advertising is generally not to match a user to a product that fits them well and will

I think this is an important point in analyzing advertising. The core of advertising is generally not to match a user to a product that fits them well and will be genuinely a good use of time/money. The end goal of most advertisements is to sell a product, or to change the way you view a company, regardless of how closely the company and the products matches your needs and ideals. Many of the most successful forms of advertising use a certain level of behavior modification via methods like classical conditioning. Instead of showing a fancy car, they show a fancy car and a very attractive woman, and you are more likely to associate 'want' with the car as a result of the woman. Food companies will often try to advertise to you at times and locations where you are most likely to be hungry, so that when you are hungry again, you are more likely to think about their food. I would view many of these types of advertising as parasitic, because they allow potentially inferior companies and products to out-compete potentially superior companies and products. I do not think that most people consider this consciously, but perhaps it plays into their subconscious processing of advertisements. They click on a cool looking advertisement, and find a less cool product (or maybe a product that they recognize as overpriced), and then they associate that form of advertising (banner, etc.) with a gimmick, and therefore are less likely to follow through on that advertisement format in the future. To summarize, I think that the 'shitty clickthrough rate' effect would be much less significant if advertisements were less gimmicky and more authentic, and geared towards matching the customer to the product that matches them, instead of matching the product to a potential customer.