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Comment by FriedrichN | Hacker News Reader

>if only advertisements were more relevant

Has anyone ever bought anything because they saw an ad? If anything ads cause me to not want to buy the product. I have stopped buying certain products because whenever I see them in the store I'm reminded of their stupid ads and all I feel is resentment.

Of course then people come with the whole "you pay with your attention" thing. No you don't, because if you pay, you'll still be served ads, because why the hell not right? They'll still mine your data, bother you with 'suggestions' and annoying ads.

Being a consumer sucks.

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> Has anyone ever bought anything because they saw an ad? If anything ads cause me to not want to buy the product.

It is tempting to think that. And to think these ads have no influence on you.

But since marketing costs many companies tons of money and they happily pay it, I'm more inclined to believe that it works. Especially since the correlation between marketing budget and income is something that can be directly seen by these companies.

It's like how many Youtubers say the hate doing the "Like and subscribe" thing, but they can see in the analytics that videos where they say that perform better.

Also, attention isn't payment. You pay the marketing budget when you buy the product. Only you also pay with time, your bandwidth, your CPU time, electricity, sanity and privacy.

The idea that ads help us have things for free might be the greatest marketing stunt they have ever pulled

>to think these ads have no influence on you.

Yes, it has an influence, it influences me to avoid their shitty products. My assumption is that if you have to sink 80% of your budget into ads, I assume it sucks and I'll end up paying for more ads to be directed at me. Especially if the ads are annoying on purpose to "make you remember them" I avoid their products like the plague.

>The idea that ads help us have things for free might be the greatest marketing stunt they have ever pulled.

That was sort of my point. But the real secret of marketing is that it has a very low success/conversion rate. Marketing and ads are a product sold to the companies who pay for the ads, it's a racket. Marketing companies will pretend that you'll lose money if you don't, so you'll have to spend that money on them instead.

> But the real secret of marketing is that it has a very low success/conversion rate

That's not a secret. Everybody who books advertising online knows their conversion rate. It doesn't matter whether it is low, what matters is that a dollar spent on advertising turns into more than one dollar in revenue.

> Marketing companies will pretend that you'll lose money if you don't, so you'll have to spend that money on them instead.

Many companies - especially those starting out - don't care about losing money, they care about not increasing revenue. If hiring more sales people and spending more on marketing increases revenue - and it generally does - then operating at a loss is okay. If it doesn't, maybe there's no way to salvage your product - figuring that out has value, too.

> Has anyone ever bought anything because they saw an ad?

Yes. Advertising works. It's usually not that an advertisement immediately turns into a purchase. However, once you've seen the ad, you're more likely to purchase product if you encounter it again.

> I have stopped buying certain products because whenever I see them in the store I'm reminded of their stupid ads and all I feel is resentment.

Maybe that is true, but that's because you're a curmudgeon. Most consumers are not like that. If they were, the economy would collapse under its misanthropy.

> Being a consumer sucks.

You know what sucks even more? Being a producer.

Same. I just ignore everything, and with really stupid ads (that don't even mention their product/brand, or maybe I can't see it; same result) I wonder who tf is getting paid for that.

Sometimes I make a special note to avoid the company, because 2-5 minutes of bullshit is not an ad and you deserve to fail.

But having worked in affiliate marketing, I can tell that people do buy A LOT of stuff based on ads. I was running mostly targeted campaigns with relevant products on relevant websites/forums and relevant keywords on Google/Yahoo/Bing, but even on untargeted ads work.

AdSense used to work (probably still does, I hated it from the first try), and I can't fathom who clicks on those ads and even makes a purchase.

Pre-covid, I actually benefitted from Instagram advertising (without personalization) because I got to hear about new restaurants in my area... Considering that I block every other kind of advertising and tracking through rather draconian measures, I cannot compare if something else would have been of benefit though. I'd have done the same for Instagram, but then I found some rather excellent places through it, so...

It always amazes me how little self reflection most people have.

> Has anyone ever bought anything because they saw an ad?

Ask almost any woman a few weeks after breastfeeding at night where browsing the web is one of few entertainment options. (Spoiler - yes, so many of them did)

That's an extreme "yes" case, not otherwise, sure people do. That's why companies spend money on the ads. (some of them in clueless ways wasting money)

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