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Comment by anopol | Hacker News Reader

This take misunderstands how effective online advertising works. Effective advertising targets people who are likely to want the product or service already. The idea that ads can change people's minds to get them to buy something they don't want is so wrong. You would waste so much money trying to change peoples' minds. This isn't like Inception. In all my (and people I've read and worked with) experience, you have a chance at profitable ROI when you run ads targeting people likely to want what you're already selling, and just try to make them consider your product or service. You'd be guaranteeing negative ROI trying to change minds.

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I disagree. Take the fashion industry for example. There is zero reason to replace clothing as quickly as we tend to. Almost all of the demand is produced by ads. Or take cars, very few people need cars of the size that they end up buying. But ads suggest that they might want to pull a trailer through rough terrain, or that bigger is more prestigious.

You might not be able to change an individual's choices by very much, but all these tiny nudges in aggregate push society more and more towards unsustainable levels of consumption, without improving happiness.

> But ads suggest that they might want to pull a trailer through rough terrain,

Most cars I see around on the roads are family sedans and not trucks. Some are SUVs but those are not for hauling trailers - those are for hauling groceries and kids to the soccer games. So I don't think the trailer one works very well :)

And actually if you take about prestigious, two-person convertible looks much cooler than your standard family-size SUV/minivan. But people that buy the latter usually buy it not because they want to be cool, see above.

There is zero reason to replace clothing as quickly as we tend to. Almost all of the demand is produced by ads. Or take cars, very few people need cars of the size that they end up buying. But ads suggest that they might want to pull a trailer through rough terrain, or that bigger is more prestigious.

I think the problem here is not the ads but that people are gullible. If those people can afford to buy a car which can pull a trailer when they don't need to its not because of advertising, it's because consumption makes them happy.

Aren't we waking up to the fact that consumption doesn't make people happy though? In fact advertising now actively seeks to make us feel unhappy in our current situation, promising whatever it is the advert is selling as the key to being able to achieve happiness. You might feel happy for a short while after buying that thing, but the problem is that there are always more adverts seeking to make you feel unfulfilled than things you can buy.

> There is zero reason to replace clothing as quickly as we tend to.

That's irrelevant to the topic of ads.

Clothing is of cultural and societal importance for individuals in a group and we've become rich enough to afford to essentially buy items of clothing as we please.

This runs quite deep in human society. Look at every human groups on the planet even the most isolated and 'primitive'. People wear symbols and try to make themselves more attractive.

Clothing ads are just a 'symptom'. Our behaviour runs much deeper than that.

What if people already have enough pointless junk?

My problem is not that I want to see ads that are more "relevant", it's that I don't want to see ads. I don't care what you're selling. If my problem that you're trying to solve is really that important, I'd be actively searching for a solution, not waiting to be enlightened by a targeted advert.

Adtech evangelists seem to think that my biggest problem is a burning surplus of cash that I'm just desperate to get rid of. If only I could find more products to buy so I could be liberated from the pain of having money in the bank! Er, no thanks. I'll put my spare cash towards saving for a house and retirement and the occasional luxury; save your bullshit for the people who don't know how to install Adblock.

(The other way I use my spare cash on is to pay directly for content, because almost everything that's wrong with the Internet and modern media is the fault of the current ad-driven paradigm, and only future I want to live in is one where ads are dead.)

> Effective advertising targets people who are likely to want the product or service already.

The whole point of advertising is getting conversions: convincing people who previously weren't going to buy your product that they should buy your product.

Some of the people that are converted just didn't know about your product, some had forgotten about it, some thought a competitors product was better, etc. So there is a sense in which the vast majority of people you convert aren't people who specifically "don't want" your product. And you're definitely right that this isn't Inception-tier infiltration of the mind. But at the same time, the conversions you are trying to get are the people who don't want your product yet, but just need a tiny push to want it.

I saw a pretty good low end CNC machine in an ad and there is a 0% chance I would have found out about it through any other means because the presence of the company is basically 0. I still didn't buy it.

There are well-known and documented PR campaigns designed exactly for the purpose of changing minds. Of course, this is big money, and the vast majority of individual ads are of the type you mention.

But it's quite likely that the majority, or at least plurality, of ad spending goes to the changing minds kind of campaign. This is especially visible in the massive popularity of lifestyle marketing campaigns, that seek to create a particular image making a product (or even type of product) more desirable. Think of the Coca Cola Christmas, "green" cars, hyper-technologized "smart" fridges/washing machines, fashion brands, Apple's success a few years ago in convincing people to change their phone each year etc.

You also shouldn't forget the disgusting world of children's advertising, where often the goal is to convince children to nag their parents or friends about an item - often by explicitly showing this type of behavior, which works wonders with small children especially.

> Effective advertising targets people who are likely to want the product or service already.

Yes and no.

The problem with digital advertising is that the only part that's easy to measure is what's happening at the bottom of the funnel. Which means that a disproportionate amount of effort and attention gets spent on those campaigns.

There's a whole layer of awareness advertising which, while it's not about influencing behaviour, is certainly about building consumer awareness of a brand or product to later build purchase intent.

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