[shostack]

As someone who manages digital media for a living and has done so with very large sums of money with measurable revenue attached to that spend, I'd invite you to share what makes your experience so concrete as to enable you to attempt to discredit an entire industry with a wave of your hand.

I'll be the first to say that measuring the incremental impact of advertising is often very challenging for a variety of technical and business reasons. That does not mean it doesn't work.

[Papirola]

there's a difference between correlation and causation, and if you can't measure/explain a direct cause-effect relationship then for technically oriented people your proposition loses credibility.

[shostack]

But that's my point. Often times you CAN very easily measure direct cause-effect relationships between ads and revenue. When you get into brand advertising territory it gets a bit murkier because of the data and modeling involved, but you can definitely determine this in many cases.

Where it doesn't work is when you have inexperienced people spending an amount insufficient to properly measure results, not implementing conversion tracking properly, using poor targeting, etc. Of course that's going to fail.

And I'll note that there are VERY technically-oriented people in the industry who seem to have no problem feeling confident that advertising works for them.

My problem is simply with people who have had a few bad experiences writing off an entire industry. All I'm asking is for a bit more evidence for such a sweeping accusation, which I think is more than a fair ask.

[dboreham]

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks"