[est31]

Not a fan of targeted ads, but which ad to show you is only half of the part. The other part is tracking conversions, aka finding out if you actually bought some item after you saw the ad.

Also, ads don't have to work for everyone. If they work for some folks, it's already profitable for the platforms. And they do work.

[fingerlocks]

I would say tracking conversions is the most important part. There’s always a lot of attention on targeting because it’s user-facing, creepy, and strikes a nerve with the HN crowd. But anyone that has spent five minutes working with their marketing people or implementing adTech would know the true story.

“Are these ads effective? Should we spend more money on them?” Without conversion data the answer is one big shrug emoji.

I don’t believe most companies in the tech industry care about tracking/fingerprinting users for the sake of collecting & reselling their data. First hand experience, I’m just not ever seeing that. They just want to know if their ads are working or not.

[est31]

> I would say tracking conversions is the most important part. There’s always a lot of attention on targeting because it’s user-facing, creepy, and strikes a nerve with the HN crowd.

It doesn't help that people try to sell conversion as something that benefits the ad viewer because if it increases sales, it must also be good for the people doing the buying or something like that. That argument of "better ads" then gets easily misunderstood as targeting but it is only indirectly about that.

[6510]

CPC scales with how well ads work. Seller and viewer benefit from working ads. It seems ad platforms benefit most from ads that don't work.

[jedberg]

Ad platforms benefit from ads working because then advertisers spend more money on the platform.