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by tardedmeme 22 days ago
Fair enough. Most advertising isn't individually posted to each address because that's expensive - they hire their own guy, who isn't a postal worker, to go around and put it in everyone's mailbox. It's like paying one cent per email to prove it isn't spam.
3 comments

At least in the states, the postman is almost assuredly doing the end delivery of the mail, and is often given a stack of advert materials to mix into the delivery for a certain delivery area. The use of a mailbox by anyone who isn't a USPS employee delivering paid mail is prohibited by law. https://about.usps.com/news/state-releases/tx/2010/tx_2010_0...
No, 99.9% of the mail I get is trash and is delivered by USPS. You can't even recycle most of it because of the paper they are printed on. It's a huge, disgusting waste of resources on multiple levels.
> It's a huge, disgusting waste of resources on multiple levels.

The companies on the ads wouldn't do it that way if they were not getting a positive ROI from it. They probably only need to get 2 maybe 3 new customers to offset the cost of mass mailings.

This isn't true. Proctor and Gamble cancelled $200m of advertising and saw no change in sales. And companies using AI are costing more money to produce worse quality stuff more slowly. Facts don't matter, only how well you can convince a CEO.
Most of my physical junk mail is from local businesses like Eye Doctors, Dentists, or Trades, not National Brands unless its a local franchisee.
I don't care if the are local or national. I don't want it, I'm not interested. Most of what I get is not local, it's credit card offers. There's also the fake missed package notices that are actually home warranty companies trying trick you into calling them.
I don't care. Its still garbage I didn't ask for that is now in my mailbox so I have to deal with it. They have plenty of other ways to advertise. Everywhere I turn in public there's more ads.
In the US it's illegal for someone who's not a postal worker to put things in your mailbox for exactly this kind of reason.
So you can't hand-deliver your letters and postcards? That's sad.