[avidiax]

It's good to point out this possibility, but outside of an institutional purchaser, people don't buy 2 mattresses with the purchases separated by a week.

Knowing that you bought a mattress is useful for the ML to find the mattress-purchase-likely cohort. Filtering those people out just saves the advertisers money. Hence the grift.

[Manfred]

What if they bought a mattress and found out they didn't like it after one night? A lot of stores let you return them if you don't like them within a number of days. That would mean they are in the market for another one.

I'm not saying it's likely, but there are scenarios.

[_gllen]

Really 0%? It seems like some of the buyers would return their mattress and buy another. If 10% return and 90% of those buy another brand, that seems to me like an above average audience to market mattresses to.

[JumpCrisscross]

> people don't buy 2 mattresses with the purchases separated by a week

I did this. It’s because I’m incompetent. But I bought stuff for each room one at a time. Use an ad blocker, so no clue if it caught.

[multiplegeorges]

> Filtering those people out just saves the advertisers money.

Google Ads specifically has a feature to exclude targeting of customer's you've said have made purchases, ie. only target net new customers.

The platforms aren't as dumb as the post author thinks they are.

[jaclaz]

>The platforms aren't as dumb as the post author thinks they are.

Maybe the platforms are not that dumb, it is the mattress seller that doesn't properly make use of that feature, or there could be other reasons why they insist on suggesting over and over again a mattress.

The experience described has happened to everyone for any (not very often replaced) item bought online, be it a printer, a wash machine or whatever, so if the platform is not dumb, it lacks data and the sellers are dumb, in any case the final effect of this "targeted" ads is 0 added sales.

[dazc]

I think the post was being sarcastic?

People who have recently bought a mattress will see a lot of ads for mattresses.

[nobody_nowhere]

The ads are so inexpensive that just one repeat buyer pays for all the waste.

Think of it — some people have a second home. Or a short term rental. Or a guest bedroom.

[coffeebeqn]

Or they returned the mattress or the data is not perfect and they’re still shopping etc