The cost of digital advertising cannot be justified by its effectiveness (or rather lack there of). We’ve collectively spent hundreds of billions of dollars creating the infrastructure for invasive hyper targeted ads that do not get better results than simple billboards and terrestrial TV ads even now. We’ve created a global economy of marketing, media, advertising and sales solely reliant on technofeudalist overlords who’ve provided very little actual improvement of anything.
Most people in the field don’t even ask themselves this question. They all have an incentive in believing it works.
There’s a book about it though: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374538651/subprimeattentioncrisis
Yeah it’s a good book. It’s a cycle that this issue surfaces every couple of years where someone does a study, finds that the numbers they’re given don’t match their own analysis and the ad tech platform does some PR to paper over the story.
Most people selling ads are just like the real estate agents in The Big Short. The media people make their money via rebate from the platforms by guaranteeing a certain volume of spend so they have no incentive to be putting hard questions to the platforms and the client is reliant on seeing the data which is provided by the platform with no third parties able to provide any level of transparency.
Money goes into Google, Amazon and Meta’s black boxes which spit out numbers. The agency people copy and paste the figures into a presentation and everyone congratulates each other for a job well done.
Maybe if those invasive highly targeted ads were the least bit accurate I would buy some shit from them. Instead half the time I can’t find the product I want without wading through a sea of crap even when I give them a search with specific parameters.
(Buy Washing Machine)
“Hello, I see you bought a washing machine. Would you like to buy a few more?” - Internet Ads
For me it’s been “I see you bought this specific laser engraver. Would you be interested in buying that exact model?”
No. I already bought it, and it’s not a consumable. If I decided I needed a new laser a week into ownership, it wouldn’t be because I was thrilled with that exact model.
It works occasionally. My late grandmother loves cardinals and I was advertised a card with a big red paper pop out cardinal. I paid $30 for that card, and grandma loved it.
Yep and in order for these companies to grow they must continue to increase the volume of ads being shown, which only makes them less effective, which they try and counter by making them ever more invasive.
And that’s where this article comes in.
Imagine if an alternate timeline is already being produced in the virtual world. The one we will all be strapped into until the death of our core energy cell.
