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Comment by canpan | Hacker News Reader

Ads target a specific sub group. And I think many HNlers are not part of that group. My guess is that ads online target people with more impulsive buying.

Even if you showed me the perfect ad, I probably would not buy it. Because if I need it, I probably already bought it, and if I don't need it, I won't buy it. So there is not much money being made, ergo we get shown ads for the other type of person.

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More or less everybody thinks the way that you do here. Nobody thinks ads work on them, yet companies spend trillions of dollars advertising. One side is right, one side is wrong. Advertising is a particularly insidious industry.

Also, I think a lot of people don't really understand how advertising works. For instance one of the most famous, and effective, ads was Apple's 1984 ad. [1] The goal of advertising isn't necessarily to make you impulsively go click 'buy now', but rather to subconsciously instill certain motivations, drives, and associations within you. That's a 60 second add, ran at Superbowl pricing levels (to say nothing of the rest of cast being directed by Ridley Scott and more), where only about 3 seconds of it has anything directly to do with what's being sold.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I

> My guess is that ads online target people with more impulsive buying.

There's a dial between ad relevancy and ad yield. Gambling ads are probably high-yield because of high LTV, so advertisers will spend more, even if impressions don't generate many clicks.

Whether or not it works on you, you are not them, and there are millions of people on whom gambling advertising works really well.

I don't understand why people comment "I am not the target audience" so often. No, you're not, but the target audience definitely exists.

You're here, engaged, talking about it. You would never consider it now, but the idea is in your head, and if your circumstances change, they want it to remain there as a possibility. You can ignore it when it appears, but their goal is to make sure you never forget. Enough people become that desperate every day, and they don't want to miss the opportunity to extract from that population.

You may think the ads dont work on people like you, but often data shows otherwise.

People say this all the time, but I would like to see the data. And I mean specifically regarding the claim, "no one is immune to consumerist advertising," not "consumerist advertising is effective."

It's probably more "enough people are affected by consumerist advertising that it's effective"

The data appears to be wrong. I buy a lot of stuff and services, but very little of it is even advertised.

As Jeff Bezos says, "when the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right."

https://lexfridman.com/jeff-bezos-transcript/#chapter6_amazo...

I am sure ads can work on me, and the HN crowd, if I was targeted. But there are much easier targets that generate more income. So companies spend more on gambling etc ads, where they can make more money.

> I am sure ads can work on me, and the HN crowd, if I was targeted.

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Oh, ads work alright on people like me. People like me who despise ads. People like me who go out of their way to avoid ads. People like me who, when confronted with ads which somehow manage to make it to our ears for a few seconds before we manage to skip them or rip off the headphones - the only ads which I'm still confronted with are "dynamic ad insertion" specimens in netcasts, often at DOUBLE THE VOLUME - will remember the brand or company and actively avoid giving them our business.

Yes, ads work, maybe not in the way the advertiser thinks but they work alright.

I can confidently guarantee that the traditional TV advertisement has no effect on me. Astroturfing definately has an effect on everyone though.

You've never learned about a service or product from a TV ad?

Maybe 20 years ago? I don't watch TV and have used an adblocker for the past 15 years. There is almost no way advertisers can even reach me. I also don't buy things very often.

I don't know, if I didn't know Mullvad or GrapheneOS, and saw ad on TV, I'd probably check it out.

Or an ad about an ISP with IPv6 support, at the very least it would make me check if my current ISP finally added support, and consider options otherwise.

Or one about some new colocation service that happens to open near my location, you bet I'd check out their website and maybe even pay them a visit.

(I don't watch TV, but my point stands.)

I despise advertising too, but unfortunately we are not above their effects (which is why they are so damaging). If you look at cars or clothes or other products and recognize their brand logos or colors or designs, those ads are serving their purpose. Showing you the ad at all and stealing your attention for that moment is their goal.

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