[pigpigs]

Advertising in my experience as an end user has been very ineffective.

The ads that I see on Facebook are very obviously based on my browsing history/cookies - I look at a mechanical keyboard on Lazada and decide to not buy it. Next I go to Facebook and get ads about a keyboard on Lazada - no discounts, exact same model. It could've shown me similar keyboards, gave me a lower price, or anything that adds value than just showing me the exact same thing I just decided not to buy.

Advertising for the sake of letting people know something exists is not particularly valuable to the end user, and most of the time they are not even able to predict correctly what people are interested in.

Has anyone actually bought something because of an advertisement?

[glandium]

There's the worse (and very common) case: you decide to buy it, and still see ads about that keyboard you just bought, in case, you know, you'd want another (and even if you did, isn't having it in front of you and liking it more efficient than an ad?).