This has not been true for me. I have discovered interesting things in Facebook ads that I would not have discovered and bought otherwise. (They were obscure Kickstarter projects)
Advertising is psychological manipulation at its worst, and we'd all be much better off without it.
Hyperbole is unbecoming.
Off the top of my head I'd say grooming someone for sexual abuse is a significantly worse form of psychological manipulation. I speak from having experienced both, and only one has had a catastrophic effect on my life.
I've never had this experience, between Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Every "targeted" ad I've been exposed to has either been for something I already have, or for something that's insufficient to my needs.
Because of this, and because I dislike the invasiveness and anti-privacy of modern advertising, I started keeping a log of all of the ads I can remember. Then before I make a purchase, I lookup the product on that list and pick a different company to buy from. If you, as a company, use invasive advertising, I will not be your customer.
What do you mean irrelevant data? I am much better at choosing a product that suits my needs than Google and friends are. The only irrelevant data is the one provided by the ad companies.
> the company that paid for the advertisement likely won’t even miss your sale.
If that's true, then why do you think they advertised to me? Why would they possibly choose to advertise to people who they weren't interested in selling to?
This would all be ok if the tradeoff was a strong signal to the seller that advertising has a negative impact on sales, but I’m positing that the impact of that one sale is negligible and well within the noise threshold of an extremely noisy process. For all you know, if the seller notices at all, they might conclude that they didn’t advertise to you enough.
However I’m totally ignoring any utility you might gain from a principled approach and if it works for you, then more power to you.
Very true, I've considered this many times. What it comes down to is that I value companies that prioritize investing in their product rather than their advertising, so on the whole I'm more likely to get what I want if I stay away from products advertised to me.
> This would all be ok if the tradeoff was a strong signal to the seller that advertising has a negative impact on sales, but I’m positing that the impact of that one sale is negligible and well within the noise threshold of an extremely noisy process. For all you know, if the seller notices at all, they might conclude that they didn’t advertise to you enough.
This argument kind of ignores the whole underpinning of economics. Let's consider a different situation and apply your argument. Let's say a company sells a toothbrush that doesn't clear plaque away very well. Over time, as I use this toothbrush, I'll find that I'm getting cavities on my back teeth. So I stop buying that brand of toothbrush. Under your argument, my doing that would be a weak signal, because it's just one sale lost for X dollars spent on advertising. The seller doesn't notice, and keeps on pumping out toothbrushes, and lots of people get lots of cavities. I know this is not analogous to the situation you're talking about, but it's still a plausible situation, and if your argument is correct, it should be correct across most situations it's applicable to.
And thanks, I do enjoy your confirmation of my power.
But overall risk of getting persuaded to buy worthless products or scammy "investments" seems to not be worth discovering real gems.
Overall I would prefer both scams and genuine offers to be as far as away from my interests as possible.
Obviously, I would prefer actually useful offers to be close to my interests and to have no scams/worthless trash/malware/porno in my ads, but it appears to not be an available option.