To me, it's completely pointless. I don't buy from ads. Never ever. Not on Tv, not on the web. If something is advertised on me, I tend to hate it. I start my shopping on Amazon, then look for alternatives in shops I know, then compare the prices.
Quit the phone, zap the TV, install an adblocker.
Beware, I'm not saying I'm a robot, I just distaste the ad language, and prefer comparisons. Remember the Bill Hicks sketch about ads people? That's me.
Ask HN: Does targeted advertising work at all?
11–20 of 158 posts
Re: Ask HN: Does targeted advertising work at all?
#12Yes! I have hardly any friends on Facebook and I never post, but I only use it for the ads. I learn about tons of clothes companies and sales on stuff I like.
This is the most bizarre use of Facebook I've ever heard of
Re: Ask HN: Does targeted advertising work at all?
#13Absolutely yes.
I did both academic research (recommendation engine algorithms) and industry work (leading online advertising at a large e-commerce ). I can confidently say from my background that the targeted advertising works.
In fact, it works so well that it is almost awe-inspiring to see it in real action. Any e-commerce or advertising firms, including my former team, have internal data to support this claim. For our case, the difference between a highly optimized traditional adverting vs a crude targeted advertising algo is a still factor of N in favor of the algo (N >> 1). As the algo is optimized, N grows larger.
Re: Ask HN: Does targeted advertising work at all?
#14I have ad blindness. I never see the ads. Even the floaters, I just look around them till they're gone.
I do peruse ads in my muscle car magazines, because that's why I buy those magazines.
I enjoy the ad placements in those car hotrodding TV shows, because I am interested in how to do the projects they're doing, and the stuff needed to do them.
Amazon pushes ads to my kindle, but I couldn't tell you what they were for because they don't register on my brain.
Re: Ask HN: Does targeted advertising work at all?
#15To me, it's completely pointless. I don't buy from ads. Never ever. Not on Tv, not on the web. If something is advertised on me, I tend to hate it. I start my shopping on Amazon, then look for alternatives in shops I know, then compare the prices. Quit the phone, zap the TV, install an adblocker. Beware, I'm not saying I'm a robot, I just distaste the ad language, and prefer comparisons. Remember the Bill Hicks sketc…
That’s the thing, you probably have.
There are ads that want you to buy something, and there are ads that, when you are making a choice between products, you’ll go with the brand you’re most familiar with.
Ads build that familiarity.
Re: Ask HN: Does targeted advertising work at all?
#16No post body was provided.
Re: Ask HN: Does targeted advertising work at all?
#17Yes. Brands, third parties, google, etc have all ran incremental sales lift tests, brand lift studies, customer lifetime value tests, etc and determined how successful tactics are and moved budget accordingly. There is a reason google/etc are worth billions. I’ve posted this comment before, but: 1. It’s hard to tell when someone has bought a product. You buy it at a reseller and the brand will never know. Or you buy…
> It’s hard to tell when someone has bought a product. How about, "I've literally got it in my last-day purchase history on eBay and they keep showing me the same thing and a bunch of related stuff to the item that hasn't even arrived yet, but that they've taken my money for"? ... and then eBay follows me around showing the same stuff on other sites. The thing I've purchased. From eBay. At least, they did, until I go…
A certain national bank which I shall not name had a banner on top of its app. The link opens a web page that goes to double click and then opens the bank's website. Why would a bank app take me through a double click link just to take me back to their own website? My guess is this is the same reason why eBay shows you ads for things you just bought. There are massive inefficiencies in these large organizations. I'm sure everything they do is locally optimal but not even close globally.
Re: Ask HN: Does targeted advertising work at all?
#18I think what's hard to deduce with advertising, especially for small projects or people who don't have much experience is the activation energy needed to see any results from what seem like relatively large ad spends.
To be clear, I suck at this. I've attempted to buy instagram / facebook ads and had little luck. For FaceBook ads you basically have to spend around $6k before the algorithm even starts to care about what you're doing. This is essentially because it has to first serve enough ads to figure out if people are actually clicking before actually targeting the demographic you set.
That said, as much as I hate it, I have no clue how to do social media marketing (TikTok or otherwise) and it's astonishing how much energy and time this takes. I used to joke that it'd be a better use of my time to find a college girl who likes TikTok and has a stimulant prescription to run social media for my bad side-project. (this is a joke)
However, targeted ads definitely work. I still get ads on instagram for the rapid-test clinic that just opened up across the street from my apartment. I can literally see the clinic from my window.
Re: Ask HN: Does targeted advertising work at all?
#19Yes. Brands, third parties, google, etc have all ran incremental sales lift tests, brand lift studies, customer lifetime value tests, etc and determined how successful tactics are and moved budget accordingly. There is a reason google/etc are worth billions. I’ve posted this comment before, but: 1. It’s hard to tell when someone has bought a product. You buy it at a reseller and the brand will never know. Or you buy…
It is entirely possible that large corporations measure the effectiveness of their advertising by comparing it to sales, and are confusing correlation with causation on a massive scale. They spend more on advertising, and point to sales in the same time frame, as a cause, even if reality disagrees.
There are zero incentives for anyone to figure this out and fix it within corporate structures. I'd be thankful it makes advertising easy to spot, and less effective in real life. ;-)
Imagine if you're in the middle management of Google and you realize that target ads don't work, and the results to this point are just luck. You'd want to do something like "Improve your advertising spend" by making the ads "more efficient", and selling targeted ads to people that you know have already purchased, but the advertiser doesn't.
Eventually you could advertise that your ads are measured to be more than 80% correlated with a rise in sales. (Leaving out the reversed causality).
If this IS the case... shhhhhh... don't tell anyone. It would crash Google's stock price. Nah, who am I kidding, the market stays irrational for decades. ;-)
Never attribute to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence.
Re: Ask HN: Does targeted advertising work at all?
#20Yes. Brands, third parties, google, etc have all ran incremental sales lift tests, brand lift studies, customer lifetime value tests, etc and determined how successful tactics are and moved budget accordingly. There is a reason google/etc are worth billions. I’ve posted this comment before, but: 1. It’s hard to tell when someone has bought a product. You buy it at a reseller and the brand will never know. Or you buy…
> It’s hard to tell when someone has bought a product. How about, "I've literally got it in my last-day purchase history on eBay and they keep showing me the same thing and a bunch of related stuff to the item that hasn't even arrived yet, but that they've taken my money for"? ... and then eBay follows me around showing the same stuff on other sites. The thing I've purchased. From eBay. At least, they did, until I go…
If you buy a product and you're dissatisfied, you're more likely than the average person to buy a similar product.