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Comment by nopriorarrests | Hacker News Reader

You can probably do it, but your competitor who do target users will end up with $30 CPA and you will get $300 (or worse). So, unless you are ok with x10 user aquisition cost, you will quickly stop doing it.

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To say nothing about the fraud. If you can't link clicks to buys, you will quickly find yourself paying for bot clicks

/u/cj specifically lamented the lack of pay-for-time, not pay-per-click. Of course you have to track to accurately reward on a pay-per-click basis - that's why pay-per-click is a shitty model.

Automatic ads might be x10 cheaper, but x1000 less effective. Who knows your audience best, you or the automatic algorithms ? And automatic ads are easier to block, game and cheat.

>Automatic ads might be x10 cheaper, but x1000 less effective.

what are you talking about?

Lets say you are running SaaS for Azure admins. Do you want to buy the top banner on slashdot.com for the whole month, no targetings at all, for 50K/month, or you only want to show yor ad if user was interested in at least 2 stories with azure tag, for 5K/month?

Automatic (aka highly targeted) ads are more effective, not x1000 less.

I just love the automatic / highly targeted ads that I get for products I have already bought. It doesn't matter if it is a low end consumer product or high end hardware I get a lot of ads for things I have already purchased right after buying them.

Without any knowledge of the industry, it seems obvious to me that you can have one ad that goes to 99% people who don't want a product, and another ad that goes to 90%, and the latter is ten times as effective, even if it's annoying most people who see it.

I wonder why more people don't try to do this, and use that fact for marketing - as in, "we actually have a semblance of a moral compass, please shop with us".

Because it does not work. The cost is paid by customer, and he is looking for cheaper service/product.

And your competitor can always claim that 10% of client aqusition cost is donated to fight climate change... and then you stand no chance ;)

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