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You are going to have to provide sources for these claims. Freakonomics podcast did an episode on the topic of online advertising and argued largely the opposite of what you’re saying, that there is massive overspending on online advertising, and increases in sales often get misattributed to ad campaigns when they have other causes.

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/does-advertising-actually-w...

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targeted_advertising#:~:text=I...

Markets are imperfect and irrational, but you really don't think that there is a trillion dollar misunderstanding about the efficacy of the practice? Idk jack about advertising but it seems unlikely to me.

Selling homeopathic medicine is also a huge market, so big that every single pharmacy in Austria has an huge range of homeopathic medicine on display.

Just the fact that people buy ad campaigns doesn't mean that they have any effect at all.

That's fair but homepathic medicine is dwarfed by regular medicine in the industrialized world. There's no homepathic Pfizer or Bayer. I think if there was another practice that was way better than targeted advertising, targeted advertising might exist as a distant woo-woo second.

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