[tayo42]

Part of me thinks theres an internet ad bubble. I think its really hard to know how much value an ad provides, so it gets handwaved as being critical to success and worth tons of money. A lot of big internet companies rely on ads or provide services to companies that provide ads or make it easier to use ads.

[Nextgrid]

I wouldn't say that ads are completely ineffective (there's a significant chunk of the population that doesn't resent ads like we do, and will actually click on them even if they're aware that they're ads), but I agree that there's definitely a bubble going on.

I've seen many non-tech people search for a certain brand or product, and despite it being the first non-sponsored search result, they will instead click on the sponsored result/ad ad the top even though it's the same product.

The above causes the metrics and conversion rate to look great, so the waste of oxygen that is the marketing department can justify their salary and budget, the ad providers and all the ecosystem around it also gets paid, but at the end of the day that ad wasn't actually providing any value because the user already had the brand in mind and only clicked the ad by mistake.

[tyfon]

I work in the financial industry and even if the CAC is really high (100s of dollars) it still pales in comparison to the income we get on average from the new customers.

I don't work in marketing but even if I personally hate ads, they unfortunately work really well especially in combination with facebook/googles profile on everyone and the fact that they seem to learn who clicks a certain ad after a few days and only display it to that group.

[asdff]

I think there is just a sub population where ads are truly effective. Look at all the blatant misinformation that gets shared around sites like facebook.

Even before social media and the intrusion of internet use in our lives, people were buying enough crap off of QVC to keep that show on the air (and still are).

[bllguo]

this is outdated by something like a decade, at least. reach aside, the whole draw of internet advertising is that you can actually quantify the effect of your ads and tie them to real revenue events

I suppose it's fun to think that billions yearly are being thrown into the bonfire, but that's just not the reality