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Hard drive is a great example. And it shows that advertising is completely backwards. It starts with a seller, who wants to sell this hard drive, no matter what, and then pays to find a buyer. Targeted advertising is a false promise that if the date of birth, sexual orientation, political preference, and the favourite color of everyone are known, the advertiser can somehow find buyers for a smaller fee. Indeed, most of the hard drive buyers are older than 20 and like women. There's a correlation to exploit. This business model is completely backwards in the digital age. What is possible now, instead of profiling people, Google/Facebook/Amazon could have been profiling products, sellers, their supply chains, organize information, build knowledge graph, and rather than profit from a seller pushing their message, they could have took a commission for finding just the right hard drive for everyone, no matter what color they like. The point is profiling sellers and their products is a harder problem than scamming and nudging unsuspecting users. We all know how great Amazon search is. Targeted advertising on the other hand is just the same as print era advertising but cheaper. |