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Comment by helmchenlord | Hacker News Reader

The advertisement industry moves an insane amount of money. People pay up to several dollars for a single potential customer ending up on their website(s).

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People pay up to several hundred dollars for a single customer ending up on their website, in some industries.

(Check out the pricing on Adwords for serious medical conditions some time.)

Ads for lawyers have ridiculously high prices in Adwords. Since my first job was in a firm that handled marketing for personal injury lawyers, I had an impression that adwords was really expensive and ws wondering why the ads were so ubiquitous for low revenue businesses too.

Is that it though? The whole worth of Facebook is tied to the tides of consumerism?

Jup. Most of the worth of Google is still tied to advertising, they didn't even make money off of Android until a couple of years ago.

I think people have a deeper relationship with Google than they do with Facebook. I don't believe there is strong loyalty in social media. Do you?

FB knows so much about you. You age, your likes, your friends, your location, etc. This allows for very precise targeting of ads compared with say a billboard. This combined with the amount of time it's billion plus users spend on the site.

The whole thing is built on the underlying assumption that people will remain loyal to this platform. Right?

even if they're not loyal to the platform, by showing the consumers ads it'll still make an impression for later

Imprinting by visual and social proof.

Makes me wanna say...'It's a trap.'

Advertisement platforms extend beyond single platforms. Google Ads are on every website in the Internet, and Facebook ads are on other sites too. So even if you don't have a Facebook account and never visit Facebook itself, you will see their ads and they will start following you around and start collecting data on you.

I can just picture some girl I know saying, 'that Zuckerberg is a real creep. OMG. He literally follows me everywhere.'

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