Just because it doesn't make a person consciously stand up and say, "I want a Snickers" does not mean the ad didn't work.
Like, honestly, are there people here suggesting viral ads don't work? Or don't understand the point of Coke or Mercedes Benz ads are for? Coke establishes themselves as the defacto soda. There is no other soda, or if they are, wish they were coke.
MB ads among other things reinforce to MB owners the wisdom and luxury of their brand. To own an MB is to be part of a club, one that is advertised across the media spectrum. If MB didn't advertise at all, they would either become another commodity brand, or have to be so luxury that only word of mouth is necessary (Bently, etc).
Now, maybe that's what cortesoft is saying "get you to waste money" but if it got you to waste money on their product, it worked.
My point was that advertising's purpose (from a consumer point of view) is for the ADVERTISER to waste money, to signal that they have confidence that their product is good enough to recover the cost of wasting money on advertising.
Personally, I think it's less about luxury and more about value signalling. Having a Mercedes says that you're comfortable financially, and they're "dignified". I'm not saying it's true, but it's what their marketing generally implies. Luxury is generally just a dog whistle for value signalling merchandise.
Ferrari does different value signalling. They imply wealth because of the cars performance, and they're generally a much more obvious signal. They're usually a bold color like red in the ads, and the body styles are distinctive. You could miss a Mercedes in a group of sedans; you're not going to miss the Ferrari.
The private club brand, to me, is Rolls Royce. I would guess because I never see ads (and rarely see them in person), so my only references are pop culture where they're associated with the ultra wealthy.
I was recently in the market for a new mattress, so went to a mattress store and tried some out. Even though Tempur Pedic is all the rage with their insane ad spending, I was not all that impressed, and found a considerably cheaper mattress that felt much higher quality.
Now, this may all be sales mumbo-jumbo, but the sales rep noted that a lot of people come there only interested in Tempur Pedic mattresses, which he regards as "literally a piece of foam, total crap mattresses." They sell at such a high price point because they advertise so much, while the mattress I found came from a no-name brand that doesn't advertise at all, and was therefore cheaper.
So I guess in some markets, advertising does work. I've never heard of someone telling me how much they loved a mattress unless it's a Sleep Number or a Tempur Pedic, and those advertise by far the most.
One could argue that Tempur-Pedic has to sell at a higher price point to make up for the money they spend on advertising.
With Uber it would be so easy to penalize drivers who cancel because they don’t like where I’m going, but I’m still wasting 30 minutes quite often, because Uber spends that money on ads and UI rewrites instead of improving the core experience.
There is a really good essay about this that I re-read quite often: https://zgp.org/targeted-advertising-considered-harmful/