As best I can tell some advertising is probably necessary; if customers don’t know about your product it genuinely doesn’t matter how good it is.
But chances are most of the programmatic ads are a waste.
But chances are most of the programmatic ads are a waste.
If customers don't know about a product they need, they can intentionally find out about it in many ways. Using search engines, magazines, reviews, ratings, or directly asking in an online community. Or they can stumble upon it by chance, in real life, in a video or in a news feed.
I believe it is much more respectful of human dignity to let people ask about what they need instead of manipulating them with ads.
I wonder if there is some theory on clickthrough rate on ads you have seen versus never seen versus companies you know or don't know.
The ROI on these seems to be pretty high, so the bid prices are higher than a lot of other ads you might see. Especially for larger dollar items (if you look at cars, you're going to see way more car ads than normal for about 3-6 months, regardless of if you bought a car or just stopped looking ... the ad networks don't know if you converted).
Compare that to where I bought my wife’s engagement ring, who still advertises to me 6 years later. Statistically the chance of me becoming a repeat wedding jewelry buyer is low based on my demographics, while the bids on wedding jewelry ads are very high. I suspect they’re throwing a lot of their money away on those ads.