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Comment by pidg | Hacker News Reader

> [We'll] show you more relevant ads if you have an account with them. For example, you might see an ad from a company you already work with, rather than one from someone you've never heard of.

I'm not sure WhatsApp understand why people advertise.

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I'm not sure you understand the modern advertising landscape... Reminding customers of your brand and products through retargeting is very big business

That works for regular purchases, but not for every company. I recently bought a car and did extensive research prior to the purchase. Basically from the day I bought the car (and stopped searching) they started showing me ads. It's 2 months ago and I still see barely anything else. Doesn't seem very effective..

That's an attribution problem rather than a retargeting one. A long period of research prior to car purchasing is well documented[1] - the problem you have here is the conversion hasn't been connected to the retargeting. If they had an efficient way of saying "Excellent - after 10 weeks of research dx034 has actually bought the Audi" they could switch you off. Until that's noted, or you drop out of the 'this is the longest period people are likely to shop for' bucket, you're going to see the ads.

[1] https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/research-studies/zmot-auto-s...

In that case it would lessen the chance of a competitor gaining access to your eyeballs, not a bad bargain in some cases.

Does anyone who likes markets actually think this makes for a better market?

It's kinda hard to get a conversion from a single ad for anything more than an impulse product.

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