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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

>Winning strategy for them might be to try and get more older users who don't care about ads so much and have lots of money

Isn't the most sought-after demographic 18-35 because they have the most disposable income? Afterwards disposable income drops off because of kids and/or retirement.

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That demographic is most sought-after by advertisers because it is the easiest to influence. The ads work better on them.

For whatever reason, maybe just because they've seen more ads, older demographics are harder to reach.

Is it actually true that online ads work better (more conversions?) on that demographic? How do you separate the confounding factor of the effect of age and income on preferences?

> For whatever reason, maybe just because they've seen more ads, older demographics are harder to reach.

Fascinating - in my experience older generations are much, much easier to beguile online.

My guess would be the Reddit demographic is much less receptive to ads than the average, say, FB user.

This is absolutely not true. Setting aside product market fit, older demos are better, ideally conservative.

Product-Market fit is of course important. No point in marketing Red Bull to older demographics; the product was not designed for them. Aside from products targeted at one demographic or the other, older audiences are more skeptical, and have seen all of the ad gambits in earlier forms before.

Imagine the person saying "don't believe everything you read in the news" Is that an older person talking to a younger one, or vice-versa?

Not by a long shot. Boomers are still the highest in spending[1]. I was a broke college student forever and somewhat broke for the years or so after (no loans I worked through college). I’m in the 30-40 range with kids and I spend much more than my twenties.

Lots of college students are spending their parents money for these kinds of things.

[1] https://resources.datadrivenmarketing.equifax.com/dyks-equif...

While older consumers do have more money to spend, most advertisers prefer to target younger consumers. The thinking is that boomers already have established brand preferences and spending patterns so it's much harder to convert them into new customers.

This is only really true for television advertising, since most of it is brand building, instead of "click here and buy now" online.

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