[methodin]

"They used to do market research by installing double-sided mirrors in department stores then taking notes on what people looked at."

I'm not so sure we have progressed that much since then. You search for something on Google, swap to Facebook and an ad appears for that same exact thing on the sidebar - not really any different than using browsing as a determining factor for desire to purchase.

A small aspect of ads, I know but I found it such a ridiculous truth that I can't imagine the rest of their systems are actually all that smart.

[devjam]

Furthermore, they continue to serve you the ad for the same products, even after you've purchased them.

[imron]

Internet advertising sounds horrible. I marvel that so many people still put up with it.

[C4stor]

In my experience, it's because internet advertising is indeed globally horrible, but advertising on internet is often not about global effects.

To give you a perspective, efficient "performance" (the kind which wants you to buy now) advertising is a click ratio of about half a percent on ads, which vastly outperforms the basic performance one, usually having a ratio of about a tenth of a percent. Of those fractions of a percent, a fraction of a percent will actually buy...

That still means ads missed the target 995 times out of 1000, so are still globally horrible.

Nevertheless, since ads on the internet are so cheap (prices are often negotiated by 1000 ads, to make it a bit more tangible, and we're talking like 5$ per 1000 ads here), it's still sometimes worth it.

So yeah, the global experience is crap, but that's often not the point anyway.

[code_duck]

We have progressed since then to the extent that now, stores use technology to observe the behavior of every individual shopper in detail, all over the store.