TLDR: I feel we, the people in the online advertising industry, have failed at our duties. We have failed to show relevant ads. People who would benefit from relevant ads don't see it, and those who have no interest get ads shoved to their faces.

Online advertising currently feels more tuned to marketing and branding than actual advertising. (Ex: Seeing the same ad 20 times is crappy advertising but good marketing/branding)

Online advertising is a powerful tool: no other medium of advertising offers more efficient tracking and analysis metrics. Unfortunately, it's also the most hard to do properly.

The biggest issue is most clients do not understand online advertising: they assume it's just like TV, in that, you have a creative that you show online to people and then hope for the best.

Online advertising is not a one way street: you can interact with the user, see how they respond and then tailor the advertising to their needs.

No other medium offers this ability.

Consultants like patio11 make a living off this knowledge (and give away this knowledge for free on their sites).

This inefficiency is currently arbitraged by two parties:

1. People who understand that clients do not understand online advertising: they offer inexpensive CPMs to agencies so that they can meet their "numbers" (like one does in the TV realm). Then they "somehow" meet these numbers, often in ways that does not help the client at all.

2. Online deal sites who know a certain store/brand is offering a great deal and create pages with deal information so that people click on the links to the product leading to the site getting kickbacks from the store/brand. Some of these sites keep the whole kickback to themselves and some split it with the users, but this is money that the store/brand paid out unnecessarily because they otherwise had failed to convert a customer directly.