I think a big part of it is also the data are poor and people don't know how to take advantage of their walled garden. For example, uber recently added advertis

I think a big part of it is also the data are poor and people don't know how to take advantage of their walled garden. For example, uber recently added advertisements into their app. You may not know this, because they are only seen when you are riding in your ride already, but you get an ad for Tim Hortons because the car is within a half mile of one. On paper this looks good for the marketer. Why yes, we can take our captured population and send them ads to local partners who now get these customers patronizing their business. Seems like it would be a great lucrative deal for both parties, right? Of course logic says it doesn't work like that. Like I said, no one sits there looking at uber ads the entire ride. No one tells the uber driver "hey wait, I know I was trying to get where I was going but all the sudden I am surprisingly hungry, lets divert a half mile and potentially 20 minutes so I could get a $4 bacon egg and cheese." It just doesn't happen. But the dance must continue of course. Maybe the uber people responsible for this feature don't even care at all that it works, only that their shareholders think it works and their advertising partners also think it works. That is incentive enough to keep up the farce even with no supporting data because the money, in the end, is very real. After all, everyone on earth knows about coke thats sold in every store on earth, but the ads still need to be purchased because the purchase itself is a more important metric than the end result.