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What do we really know about the effectiveness of digital advertising?

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Re: What do we really know about the effectiveness of digital advertising?

#21
post #12

Maybe this is just a generational thing, but I still have never clicked on an ad. I hate ads. I don't know anyone who likes them. I don't know anyone who has intentionally clicked on them. I have literally never met anyone who places any value in advertising at all. Everyone hates it with 100% of their being. It is the garbage we all just sort of accept exposure to as some sort of fee for existing online. Who are all…

>I have literally never met anyone who places any value in advertising at all. Everyone hates it with 100% of their being. I like ads -- but only if they're relevant to my interests . There lies the problem: 99% of all ads are not relevant to my interests. For online ads, 99.99% of ads are not relevant to me. So, I use a DNS blocker to filter out ads.

> So, I use a DNS blocker to filter out ads.

If everybody used a DNS blocker to filter out ads, would online advertising exist as a business?

Re: What do we really know about the effectiveness of digital advertising?

#22
post #11

Just as Google won the search engine wars by helping people find what they are looking for, the e-commerce winners will be the companies that help people find what they want to buy (reliably and with confidence). Retail companies are blind to just what a shit-show their websites are (a lot of them even have ads in their online store). Any company that solves this problem for their sector will win it, and this is good…

Amazon more or less won didn't it? It doesn't have total domination of ecommerce but frankly it'd run into anti-trust issues if it did. No company is going to do ecommerce bigger than amazon without getting broken up so yeah... amazon.

Amazon is definitely the clear leader but both major brands and small companies could do better with a site focused to their own goods. In a lot of ways, most tech companies already do this but retail just hasn't caught on yet.

Re: What do we really know about the effectiveness of digital advertising?

#23
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I have literally never met anyone who places any value in advertising at all. Everyone hates it with 100% of their being. I like ads -- but only if they're relevant to my interests . There lies the problem: 99% of all ads are not relevant to my interests. For online ads, 99.99% of ads are not relevant to me. So, I use a DNS blocker to filter out ads.

> So, I use a DNS blocker to filter out ads. If everybody used a DNS blocker to filter out ads, would online advertising exist as a business?

Sure. The ads don't have to come from a third party.

Re: What do we really know about the effectiveness of digital advertising?

#24

Maybe this is just a generational thing, but I still have never clicked on an ad. I hate ads. I don't know anyone who likes them. I don't know anyone who has intentionally clicked on them. I have literally never met anyone who places any value in advertising at all. Everyone hates it with 100% of their being. It is the garbage we all just sort of accept exposure to as some sort of fee for existing online. Who are all…

It's an extortion racket. You need to buy Google ads to get better Google SEO.

Re: What do we really know about the effectiveness of digital advertising?

#25

Maybe this is just a generational thing, but I still have never clicked on an ad. I hate ads. I don't know anyone who likes them. I don't know anyone who has intentionally clicked on them. I have literally never met anyone who places any value in advertising at all. Everyone hates it with 100% of their being. It is the garbage we all just sort of accept exposure to as some sort of fee for existing online. Who are all…

> but I still have never clicked on an ad

Do you use Instagram and follow accounts on it? If so you're clicking on ads.

Re: What do we really know about the effectiveness of digital advertising?

#26
post #16

Maybe this is just a generational thing, but I still have never clicked on an ad. I hate ads. I don't know anyone who likes them. I don't know anyone who has intentionally clicked on them. I have literally never met anyone who places any value in advertising at all. Everyone hates it with 100% of their being. It is the garbage we all just sort of accept exposure to as some sort of fee for existing online. Who are all…

But, you like accessing content for free, correct? That content doesn't exist and then ads are layered on, the context exists BECAUSE of ads. Like, no one would produce the content without the plan to make their money back via ads. This is how mass media has worked from the get-go. Radio stations were built by advertisers for the purpose of advertising. Entire genres of popular music wouldn't have happened otherwise.…

Advertising isn't the big problem (IMHO), it's the tracking and surveillance. We give up too much for what we get back.

Re: What do we really know about the effectiveness of digital advertising?

#27
post #7

I've always wondered about those adverts for the website I'm searching for. If I type its name into Google, I'm already 100% committed to going there. Sometimes I click the advert (it generally depends how much I like the company). The other aspect of online ads that strikes me as ingenious but probably not sustainable is the way Google inflates the auction system with fake money. Anyone who's run a website will have…

There was a post about this recently. They need to buy the ad to keep their competitor from being the first result. https://www.seroundtable.com/basecamp-google-ad-28161.html

Re: What do we really know about the effectiveness of digital advertising?

#28
post #12

Maybe this is just a generational thing, but I still have never clicked on an ad. I hate ads. I don't know anyone who likes them. I don't know anyone who has intentionally clicked on them. I have literally never met anyone who places any value in advertising at all. Everyone hates it with 100% of their being. It is the garbage we all just sort of accept exposure to as some sort of fee for existing online. Who are all…

>I have literally never met anyone who places any value in advertising at all. Everyone hates it with 100% of their being. I like ads -- but only if they're relevant to my interests . There lies the problem: 99% of all ads are not relevant to my interests. For online ads, 99.99% of ads are not relevant to me. So, I use a DNS blocker to filter out ads.

If you really do like ads, there are plenty of platforms that will let you input your interests and customize your ads — Facebook, google, and I believe even Hulu will let your do so (I think there’s a 3rd party service called AdChoice or so that will do the same across smaller networks).

Something tells me that still won’t be enough to have you undo ad blocking...

Re: What do we really know about the effectiveness of digital advertising?

#29

Maybe this is just a generational thing, but I still have never clicked on an ad. I hate ads. I don't know anyone who likes them. I don't know anyone who has intentionally clicked on them. I have literally never met anyone who places any value in advertising at all. Everyone hates it with 100% of their being. It is the garbage we all just sort of accept exposure to as some sort of fee for existing online. Who are all…

It's not really generational; people have always hated advertising. They hated it in the newspapers, on buildings, on TV, before movies, inside of movies, in magazines.

I don't really see advertising in general going away short of legislation preventing it; that doesn't mean that online advertising will always be as profitable as it is now, but there's a question of "where else will people advertise?" People advertise where people are; online advertising will lose its value when people spend time elsewhere.

Re: What do we really know about the effectiveness of digital advertising?

#30
If you think about it, the very line that the smartest minds of our generation are working on making people click on things is itself marketing designed by marketers to sell the prestige/status of working for a big advertising company.

That actually is genius in its own way... but just as the quants in finance during the early booms were "the smartest guys in the room, until they weren't and you realised they all were poor implementers of undergraduate statistics and jargon during economic bubble and crash", I don't think the workers for facebook/Google are necessarily that bright.

It's depressing that our economic and social system is geared towards pushing maximum consumption, no argument there, but the smartest people on the planet already self selected out of that over the last 20 years, and what you're left with is... well... marketers and advertising dressed up as prestigious tech firms talking about how great they are.

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