[deathanatos]

> Would like to talk about an extended warranty for your car?

… the people making these calls don't give a rat's ass about census data, accurate or otherwise. It's fraud, all of it. I get these all. the. time.; my current car is 25 years old, I guarantee you its warranty is not "about" to expire. I got these before I ever owned a car. They're not going to sell you an extended warranty, they're going to take the money and run. Accurate targeting doesn't matter.

Unless the census data has a column "is_sucker", but even then, I doubt it.

You could maybe alter that argument to be like "well but reputable ads then" … but, no, I doubt that too. Even with the tech we have, ads shown to eyeballs still making incredibly questionable "there is no way this has positive ROI" choices, like running the same ad twice in every commercial break. YT clearly has ~1 ad right now, that stupid game one whose name I cannot remember.

[drewzero1]

The car warranty amuses/annoys me for the same reason, I drive two cars over 25, well past 200K and both from defunct manufacturers, so I really doubt any warranty would touch them. Same thing with the "student loan forgiveness hotline"-- I haven't had any for years. I used to have a bit of fun with the "Microsoft tech support" calls, since we didn't have a Windows computer in the house.

Recently I've had a few calls that just said "I'm actually calling to inform him now," so I think the callers don't really care what the content of the call is as long as they can get you to call them back. And maybe if you're gullible enough to call them back, you're gullible enough to give them money.

[lupire]

Many of these marketers absolutely use accurate information such as public car registration, mortgages, etc.

> YT clearly has ~1 ad right now, that stupid game

No it doesn't. That's a personalized ad for you.