[skocznymroczny]

I'm confused. If this technology is so pervasive and supposedly efficient, why do I always get such terrible ads, completely irrelevant to my interests? Usually the only targeted ads I get are ads for products I was searching for to buy, but usually they show up after I bought the product, so, no, I am not going to buy a new fridge within few years anyway.

[everdrive]

This happens for the same reason a close friend or a family member gives you a terrible Christmas gift. Ostensibly they know all about you, your values, and your preferences. Despite this, it's actually hard to predict what someone really wants or desires.

Not only does this problem remain true despite the high amount of information that advertisers have, but it's compounded by the business model. They don't want you to buy just anything you'd like, they want to sell you some particular product or service which you may never like, no matter the information that's been gathered on you.

[cameronbrown]

There's a lot of wasted inventory yeah, but conversion rates are still much higher than they would've been without targeting. It looks terrible from the individual's point of view but from on high it seems to work well enough.

[dhimes]

By conversion rates, do you mean clicks or sales? The CTR industry (and by that I mean people who "optimize" landing pages and ads) count clicks- but as the person paying for it I count sales and don't care about clicks.

[dmoy]

Conversion means whatever the end company wants it to mean. If it's mass retail that probably means sales (like in dollar value or whatever). If it's something else it might mean account creation. If it's a very high touch sales thing it might mean initiating contact with a human sales person. And yes, it might mean clicking through to a specific part of the website (account creation is a subset of this).

Part of a successful as campaign has to be defining your metrics correctly. The closer to your actual end business goal, the more realistic your performance tracking is.

Etc etc

[throwawaywego]

Part:

- Confirmation bias. You remember the irrelevant ads, because they made you do a double take, they stood out as unusual.

- The terrible ads are actually effective at getting clicks from people with similar interests, but less of an aversion to ads, less ad-blindness due to depression, more willing to buy online, ...

- Especially with retargeting (what you describe with the fridge), the CTR is higher than with non-retargeted ads. But it is also one of the most visible forms of advertisement (everyone has a story similar to you, where they get followed by ads after looking at cars or fridges).

The online ad industry fuels the likes of Google and Facebook. Tremendous engineering and research effort goes into making these systems more efficient. Personalization and tracking of preferences is at the state of the art for these companies. Though not the potential best, it is close to the best possible we can do with ML right now.

[rbrtl]

Let us not forget the Endowment Effect.

I'm struggling to find my sources, but I read years ago that most advertisements for cars are not to encourage more people to buy a new car, but are actually aimed at people who already own the car. Seeing their purchase being advertised on TV increases it's relative value to them.

Ultimately they feel affirmed in their purchase, overvalue their "asset", and increase in brand loyalty.

[pbecotte]

Because the way that adtech takes credit for sales has very little to do with whether it actually influences you. So they claim to be effective at the same time as doing the stupid stuff you point out.