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you're not the target. advertisements work. the people managing ads are very meticulous about their spend vs. return. if you are seeing an ad of something for a

you're not the target. advertisements work. the people managing ads are very meticulous about their spend vs. return. if you are seeing an ad of something for any noticeable duration of time, that means it works. by that I mean they get positive return from showing the world their ad. if it generates negative returns, it will be pulled pretty quickly. they are humans just like you and me, we don't like losing money. also one should always be skeptical about the extent they believe they are not influenced by ads. that runs pretty deep. you say you instinctively don't trust it. but when the time comes to buy something, you won't automatically steer yourself towards a product that you have never heard before just because you have not seen an ad for it. having some names in your mind, even them showing up when you do research creates influence.

fhd2 2y ago
From my ad industry insights, that's only partly true. What you mentioned last is called brand advertising IIRC, which is not conversion oriented, but aimed at exposing you to a brand (like, a car manufacturer) so that at some point _later_ in your life, you contribute to a decision to buy from them. Now, huge companies do run focus groups and such to ensure their brand advertising has the right (psychological) effects. But it is inherently difficult to measure. And I've seen many mid-sized companies not do that at all, they run these ads based on what they believe might work. Mind you, this is experience from 4 years ago, but I did find the ad industry, as obsessed with tracking as it is, to be surprisingly gut-driven. For a lot of it, it's hard to tell if it works. I do fully agree that for people who know what they're doing, advertising absolutely works, in ways that are sometimes unintuitive to consumers.
- iamacyborg 2y ago
  > From my ad industry insights, that's only partly true. What you mentioned last is called brand advertising IIRC, which is not conversion oriented, but aimed at exposing you to a brand (like, a car manufacturer) so that at some point _later_ in your life, you contribute to a decision to buy from them. Top of funnel advertising is definitely conversion oriented, just on a longer timescale.
  - fhd2 2y ago
    Fair, conversions are the ultimate goal. What I meant by conversion-oriented (possibly not the correct term) is ads where you measure their success based on sales, signups etc, as opposed to focusing on the number of impressions (views).
matheusmoreira 2y ago
> if you are seeing an ad of something for any noticeable duration of time, that means it works It means my uBlock Origin failed. I will not be returning to that site as a result.
- HenryBemis 2y ago
  You can always 'enter element picker mode'. With a little practice/knowledge you can block that element/frame/etc. forever. And/or add a layer with Privacy Badger and block altogether most of the sus domains. Another 'trick' I employ (always with Firefox) is that I open links not to a "New Tab", but instead I use "Open in Reader View" add-on, so I "Open in Reader View" (it does exactly what it says on the tin), so I only get the clean text and the relevant images. That works for almost every website.
- saul-paterson 2y ago
  You should go and report that to whoever maintains your block list. The information on where to report ads is at the top of the file, and you can find the file itself in ublock origin's settings. Better yet, create a rule and submit it along with the issue, although people who maintain lists for long periods of time tend to be much better at it and might not find your attempt useful. I do it anyway to show some respect, they deserve it.
  - matheusmoreira 2y ago
    Good tip, I'll try and do that in the future. Is there a best practice for developing rules that match randomized class names? There's a web app I use daily at work with obnoxious upselling banners that always come back if the page is refreshed and it's the only place I've run into this annoyance so far.
dgb23 2y ago
Advertisement obviously works. But the premise or mechanism is not as clean and simple as you laid out. Marketing, whether they are external firms or internal teams, have their own incentives, just like anyone else. But… Personally I like good marketing and I‘m drawn to services and products who do so. For example tech and games sometimes do very good marketing by providing educational resources, transparency through blogs/vlogs etc. Some products are focused on a high quality, sustainable niche, and they do very pronounced, sometimes humorous over the top ads. I „mistrust“ marketing if it wants to sell cheap crap in a disingenuous way. But I‘m glad to see ads for interesting, quality products.
lupusreal 2y ago
I only worked in ad tech briefly and many years ago, but what I saw there was a game being played between the people who make/distribute ads and the companies that buy them. The game is to convince the people buying ads that ads have value, even when they don't.
- riiii 2y ago
  That rings with what Uber said, that they'd been scammed $100 million. https://veracitytrustnetwork.com/blog/digital-marketing/uber-ad-fraud/ https://veracitytrustnetwork.com/blog/digital-marketing/uber...
  - Sander_Marechal 2y ago
    I am convinced that the bulk of online advertising money spent is just wasted. All it does is steal clicks and attributions for conversions that would have happened anyway.
    - riiii 2y ago
      I've been on the internet since before it was all about ads and clocks. I've never intentionally clicked on an ad. It's either been an accidental drive by click or deception.
    - saul-paterson 2y ago
      It's not wasted, it pays for the two out of three major web browsers we currently have, along with Go and many other things.
- dragonsky 2y ago
  I suppose raises the question, is the spending of mega bucks on advertising (regardless of effectiveness) a net benefit for society? As commenters have already raised, we'd have no Google, Facebook, Twitter (sorry 'X') or many other entities and the products they create without the money spent on advertising. Is this all just happening because people are too scared to look under the curtain and find that it's all just a sham? We had advertising long before the internet came along, and from my personal memory most of the most aggressive advertising was for things that were either useless (magic snake oil remedies) or actually dangerous (tobacco products), not to mention all the "as seen on TV" junk that was "promoted" on morning television. Is what we have now is more intrusive? It used to be that you could duck to the toilet during the adds on TV or flip the page in the newspaper or magazine, but now they are taking our cpu cycles, making web pages unreadable and that is not to mention the more intrusive ways of really getting in our heads. I'd argue that we've always had (even if just the shop keeper recommending a product) and always will have advertising. There have always been products that are not needed or wanted by the majority, and advertising is the way that the producer of that product gets their product sold. I would be nice if there were not so much dodgy practice involved.
tormeh 2y ago
They are very much not meticulous about ROI. The thing to understand about the ad industry is that it's incredibly adversarial. Companies need ads to raise brand awareness and make people aware of new products. So far, so well-aligned. From there on it goes downwards. A company's marketing department is in an adversarial relationship with the rest of the company, aiming to increase the ad budget at all costs. The ad agency often just gets a pot of money from the department, and instructions to spend it all, no matter how unproductive. Because if the marketing department doesn't spend their budget, it might shrink. ROI is often not a consideration at all. And if the marketing department actually do care about ROI, then the ad agency certainly doesn't. Then you have the websites themselves, with their clickfarms and general fraud, and the ad exchanges that empower them. The whole business is teeming with waste and fraud, but it's a necessary evil so it stays.
sidewndr46 2y ago
This is the same myths that everyone in advertising propagates. Such a belief purports that the effect of all advertising is measurable. It clearly is not. For example, someone sees your ad and decides your company is reprehensible. They were not a customer and they decide to never interact with your company. It's not possible to measure this. Anyone claiming it is holds what amounts to a religious belief. The "generates negative returns" is the next myth in this. Whether or not advertising generates positive returns is not relevant. You can't measure the return of advertising in the first place. Even if you could measure it, you should be comparing it to the opportunity cost of not doing something more productive with that money. Which you also can't measure. No one rationally proposes that someone spends a hundred dollars on advertising to generate $100.10 in revenue is somehow a good use of money.
- progforlyfe 2y ago
  pretty sure YouTube ads are directly trackable though -- if someone clicks it and funnels through to a checkout process and pays, they have a direct report of how much they spent on the ad versus how much they made directly from that ad. YouTube in-video sponsorships are a different beast admittedly; however there is still some basic tracking through use of promo codes (Use code JOHN15 for 15% off). They can see a report of how much they spent on ads that mention JOHN15 and how many sales included that promo code -- if sales vs ad spend are significantly positive, it becomes simple math to determine how much more to spend on ads, or to discontinue them. I suppose your point though was that it's not possible to track the negative sentiment generated by the ads (people who get annoyed and decide to avoid your company at all costs). That is true, but companies who rather go down the path of something trackable than an unknown shot in the dark.
  - sidewndr46 2y ago
    You're spot on with "go down the path of something trackable". The next step is they assume everything they tracked represents all data for all possible outcomes. It can't.
- blargey 2y ago
  > For example, someone sees your ad and decides your company is reprehensible. They were not a customer and they decide to never interact with your company. I can't immediately come up with a scenario in which all of the following is true: 1) The ad-viewer is repulsed by the ad 2) The ad is repulsive for reasons unrelated to your product/company's actual characteristics (otherwise they weren't a potential customer anyway) 3) This accounts for a significant portion of ad viewership (otherwise it's not relevant) 4) There is no social/media backlash (that would make the issue visible) 5) There is a significant positive ROI anyway (that's the only motive to continue that advertising campaign, which is required to sustain both negative and positive effects of the ad)
nj5rq 2y ago
> you won't automatically steer yourself towards a product that you have never heard before just because you have not seen an ad for it. having some names in your mind, even them showing up when you do research creates influence This is 100% percent true. I thought about exactly this, and it's the first time I hear someone say it, I am glad. I try to keep away from advertisements, but it's just not really possible, you get influenced by even what your friends or family say.
tivert 2y ago
> you're not the target. advertisements work. the people managing ads are very meticulous about their spend vs. return. if you are seeing an ad of something for any noticeable duration of time, that means it works. This sounds like reasoning from an assumption of supreme competence (e.g. "there's no bubble, because if there was all those saavy Wall Street traders would have popped it by now;" or more commonly "if Apple does a thing, that must be the best thing, because Apple only does the best things." Advertisement does work to a degree, in aggregate, but "if you see an ad then it must be an ad that works," is going too far.

fhd2 2y ago

From my ad industry insights, that's only partly true. What you mentioned last is called brand advertising IIRC, which is not conversion oriented, but aimed at exposing you to a brand (like, a car manufacturer) so that at some point _later_ in your life, you contribute to a decision to buy from them. Now, huge companies do run focus groups and such to ensure their brand advertising has the right (psychological) effects. But it is inherently difficult to measure. And I've seen many mid-sized companies not do that at all, they run these ads based on what they believe might work. Mind you, this is experience from 4 years ago, but I did find the ad industry, as obsessed with tracking as it is, to be surprisingly gut-driven. For a lot of it, it's hard to tell if it works. I do fully agree that for people who know what they're doing, advertising absolutely works, in ways that are sometimes unintuitive to consumers.

iamacyborg 2y ago
> From my ad industry insights, that's only partly true. What you mentioned last is called brand advertising IIRC, which is not conversion oriented, but aimed at exposing you to a brand (like, a car manufacturer) so that at some point _later_ in your life, you contribute to a decision to buy from them. Top of funnel advertising is definitely conversion oriented, just on a longer timescale.
- fhd2 2y ago
  Fair, conversions are the ultimate goal. What I meant by conversion-oriented (possibly not the correct term) is ads where you measure their success based on sales, signups etc, as opposed to focusing on the number of impressions (views).

matheusmoreira 2y ago

> if you are seeing an ad of something for any noticeable duration of time, that means it works It means my uBlock Origin failed. I will not be returning to that site as a result.

HenryBemis 2y ago
You can always 'enter element picker mode'. With a little practice/knowledge you can block that element/frame/etc. forever. And/or add a layer with Privacy Badger and block altogether most of the sus domains. Another 'trick' I employ (always with Firefox) is that I open links not to a "New Tab", but instead I use "Open in Reader View" add-on, so I "Open in Reader View" (it does exactly what it says on the tin), so I only get the clean text and the relevant images. That works for almost every website.
saul-paterson 2y ago
You should go and report that to whoever maintains your block list. The information on where to report ads is at the top of the file, and you can find the file itself in ublock origin's settings. Better yet, create a rule and submit it along with the issue, although people who maintain lists for long periods of time tend to be much better at it and might not find your attempt useful. I do it anyway to show some respect, they deserve it.
- matheusmoreira 2y ago
  Good tip, I'll try and do that in the future. Is there a best practice for developing rules that match randomized class names? There's a web app I use daily at work with obnoxious upselling banners that always come back if the page is refreshed and it's the only place I've run into this annoyance so far.

dgb23 2y ago

Advertisement obviously works. But the premise or mechanism is not as clean and simple as you laid out. Marketing, whether they are external firms or internal teams, have their own incentives, just like anyone else. But… Personally I like good marketing and I‘m drawn to services and products who do so. For example tech and games sometimes do very good marketing by providing educational resources, transparency through blogs/vlogs etc. Some products are focused on a high quality, sustainable niche, and they do very pronounced, sometimes humorous over the top ads. I „mistrust“ marketing if it wants to sell cheap crap in a disingenuous way. But I‘m glad to see ads for interesting, quality products.

lupusreal 2y ago

I only worked in ad tech briefly and many years ago, but what I saw there was a game being played between the people who make/distribute ads and the companies that buy them. The game is to convince the people buying ads that ads have value, even when they don't.

riiii 2y ago
That rings with what Uber said, that they'd been scammed $100 million. https://veracitytrustnetwork.com/blog/digital-marketing/uber-ad-fraud/ https://veracitytrustnetwork.com/blog/digital-marketing/uber...
- Sander_Marechal 2y ago
  I am convinced that the bulk of online advertising money spent is just wasted. All it does is steal clicks and attributions for conversions that would have happened anyway.
  - riiii 2y ago
    I've been on the internet since before it was all about ads and clocks. I've never intentionally clicked on an ad. It's either been an accidental drive by click or deception.
  - saul-paterson 2y ago
    It's not wasted, it pays for the two out of three major web browsers we currently have, along with Go and many other things.
dragonsky 2y ago
I suppose raises the question, is the spending of mega bucks on advertising (regardless of effectiveness) a net benefit for society? As commenters have already raised, we'd have no Google, Facebook, Twitter (sorry 'X') or many other entities and the products they create without the money spent on advertising. Is this all just happening because people are too scared to look under the curtain and find that it's all just a sham? We had advertising long before the internet came along, and from my personal memory most of the most aggressive advertising was for things that were either useless (magic snake oil remedies) or actually dangerous (tobacco products), not to mention all the "as seen on TV" junk that was "promoted" on morning television. Is what we have now is more intrusive? It used to be that you could duck to the toilet during the adds on TV or flip the page in the newspaper or magazine, but now they are taking our cpu cycles, making web pages unreadable and that is not to mention the more intrusive ways of really getting in our heads. I'd argue that we've always had (even if just the shop keeper recommending a product) and always will have advertising. There have always been products that are not needed or wanted by the majority, and advertising is the way that the producer of that product gets their product sold. I would be nice if there were not so much dodgy practice involved.

tormeh 2y ago

They are very much not meticulous about ROI. The thing to understand about the ad industry is that it's incredibly adversarial. Companies need ads to raise brand awareness and make people aware of new products. So far, so well-aligned. From there on it goes downwards. A company's marketing department is in an adversarial relationship with the rest of the company, aiming to increase the ad budget at all costs. The ad agency often just gets a pot of money from the department, and instructions to spend it all, no matter how unproductive. Because if the marketing department doesn't spend their budget, it might shrink. ROI is often not a consideration at all. And if the marketing department actually do care about ROI, then the ad agency certainly doesn't. Then you have the websites themselves, with their clickfarms and general fraud, and the ad exchanges that empower them. The whole business is teeming with waste and fraud, but it's a necessary evil so it stays.

sidewndr46 2y ago

This is the same myths that everyone in advertising propagates. Such a belief purports that the effect of all advertising is measurable. It clearly is not. For example, someone sees your ad and decides your company is reprehensible. They were not a customer and they decide to never interact with your company. It's not possible to measure this. Anyone claiming it is holds what amounts to a religious belief. The "generates negative returns" is the next myth in this. Whether or not advertising generates positive returns is not relevant. You can't measure the return of advertising in the first place. Even if you could measure it, you should be comparing it to the opportunity cost of not doing something more productive with that money. Which you also can't measure. No one rationally proposes that someone spends a hundred dollars on advertising to generate $100.10 in revenue is somehow a good use of money.

progforlyfe 2y ago
pretty sure YouTube ads are directly trackable though -- if someone clicks it and funnels through to a checkout process and pays, they have a direct report of how much they spent on the ad versus how much they made directly from that ad. YouTube in-video sponsorships are a different beast admittedly; however there is still some basic tracking through use of promo codes (Use code JOHN15 for 15% off). They can see a report of how much they spent on ads that mention JOHN15 and how many sales included that promo code -- if sales vs ad spend are significantly positive, it becomes simple math to determine how much more to spend on ads, or to discontinue them. I suppose your point though was that it's not possible to track the negative sentiment generated by the ads (people who get annoyed and decide to avoid your company at all costs). That is true, but companies who rather go down the path of something trackable than an unknown shot in the dark.
- sidewndr46 2y ago
  You're spot on with "go down the path of something trackable". The next step is they assume everything they tracked represents all data for all possible outcomes. It can't.
blargey 2y ago
> For example, someone sees your ad and decides your company is reprehensible. They were not a customer and they decide to never interact with your company. I can't immediately come up with a scenario in which all of the following is true: 1) The ad-viewer is repulsed by the ad 2) The ad is repulsive for reasons unrelated to your product/company's actual characteristics (otherwise they weren't a potential customer anyway) 3) This accounts for a significant portion of ad viewership (otherwise it's not relevant) 4) There is no social/media backlash (that would make the issue visible) 5) There is a significant positive ROI anyway (that's the only motive to continue that advertising campaign, which is required to sustain both negative and positive effects of the ad)

nj5rq 2y ago

> you won't automatically steer yourself towards a product that you have never heard before just because you have not seen an ad for it. having some names in your mind, even them showing up when you do research creates influence This is 100% percent true. I thought about exactly this, and it's the first time I hear someone say it, I am glad. I try to keep away from advertisements, but it's just not really possible, you get influenced by even what your friends or family say.

tivert 2y ago

> you're not the target. advertisements work. the people managing ads are very meticulous about their spend vs. return. if you are seeing an ad of something for any noticeable duration of time, that means it works. This sounds like reasoning from an assumption of supreme competence (e.g. "there's no bubble, because if there was all those saavy Wall Street traders would have popped it by now;" or more commonly "if Apple does a thing, that must be the best thing, because Apple only does the best things." Advertisement does work to a degree, in aggregate, but "if you see an ad then it must be an ad that works," is going too far.