This is slightly off topic, but something I find myself wondering pretty regularly: if ads are pretty much universally hated by every human on earth, why do companies continue running them?

I get the obvious answer: "they work"

But do they? Do big companies have a real data-driven model to demonstrate annoying ads leading to sales?

While anecdotal, I can think of a number of specific times ads slipped through my ad blocker and I went out of my way to avoid buying anything from those companies.