> Coming from a relatively hardened mindset, it is startling to understand how impressionable people must be for modern advertising to be worth the cost.

There's a lot of question as to how much advertising is actually worth the cost, at least in terms of actual sales. I suspect that many companies could scale back their spending on marketing substantially and never notice any difference in sales.

Advertising does more than push sales though, it also manipulates consumer perspectives and our culture. It sets expectations. It tries to make you feel inadequate, insecure, and unfulfilled. It modifies how we act and the ways we express ourselves. It changes how we see ourselves and the world. Maybe that is what's really worth the money.

It's like that on YouTube today. Every single company that buys in-video advertisements ("sponsors") on YouTube has turned out to be a scam in one way or another. Every single one. The VPNs are probably the least bad, since they deliver the service as promised, they're just overselling how much you need the service, but at least it's not very expensive. Well that and the meal ingredient delivery, which is just overpriced.

Established Titles doesn't make you a lord. Honey doesn't save you money. Brilliant doesn't help you learn things. Betterhelp doesn't connect you with real therapists. I forgot the others.

We're talking about entertainment products. What do you think it would be like to be the only Star Trek fan in 80s Mongolia? I think it would be pretty sad. Yes, the show would still be the same, still be as good, but you have no one to share it with. They simply don't get it.

So even the most hardcore nerds adapt their tastes to what other people like. It's not so hard, because hey, there are other good TV shows, there's other reasonable entertainment. It's hard to say objectively that a Star Trek convention is better than a Mongolian Chess tournament anyway.

But when advertising comes into the picture... It's not that you necessarily think the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the best thing ever. It's that you know everyone will be talking about it, everyone will be referencing it, so if you can find at least decently entertaining you should maybe prioritize getting into that over getting into Danish underground comics from the 90s.

Yeah in my family seeing a TV advertisement was a warning that they spent a lot of the money on advertising and not as much on the product itself.

From a similar mindset: Some kinds of expensive promotional signals (like a smartphone showroom with wasted floor-space) become a bad sign, especially if the company/product already has wide brand-name recognition.

If the company can afford to throw money at Frivolous Thing X, the money has to come from somewhere, which implies it comes from consumers who aren't actually getting a good deal on the product or service.

If the company is paying for ads, it's being paid off by higher margins.

I just don't buy things that have adverts I find annoying.

I did some web development work for an advertising guy about 20-odd years ago and he found my position on it baffling.

"But advertising works on everyone!" he cried, "everyone remembers their favourite adverts! Why do you buy oh for example the washing powder you buy?"

Well, I buy Persil, because it's what my mum buys, and I like how it smells. I tried other washing powders, but I didn't like how they smelled so much, and there are two brands I won't buy because they have annoying shouty adverts.

He just didn't get it at all.

The secret that most people in business don’t want to admit is that the vast majority of internet/media advertising is not worth the cost.

They are throwing many different strategies out there through many different avenues and banking one the one that just happens to pull in a new chunk of buyers. It’s like lower-stakes gambling.

My father told me: “If they are advertising it you don’t need it”

Everyone is influenced by advertising even if it’s third hand: “oh I like that (thing) where did you get it, oh (person) saw an ad and bought one and I tried it too”

But I agree that if you inculcate a default position of rejecting things that are advertised you can avoid being pulled into wasting your energy on unnecessary things

> Seeing an ad on television practically guaranteed that we wouldn't be wasting our money on whatever it depicted.

One doesn't need to be frugal or come from such environment, its more about basic human decency and mental hygiene. You try to manipulate me to buy your product, normalize its existence etc? Ok will make sure to avoid that, there is a lot of competition. Too pushy and seeing it everywhere? it means you over-invested on marketing manipulation and product has probably seen some dramatic cost-cutting to make it all together still financially viable. In any case, customer lost.

uBlock origin with Firefox on internet, including (especially!!!) on phone. Ads simply don't exist in my world under normal circumstances, not on general web, nor on youtube. When something bad happens and I see internet or youtube without those protections, its properly nauseating and outright insulting to me.

But - I've seen people en masse already conditioned to accept this, they watch it all, some of them even take hints for their shopping habits. When questioned, they don't see anything wrong, don't care about manipulation. Sometimes I feel like an alien. Luckily my wife sees it the same, I'll go to great lengths to protect my young kids from this cancerous soul garbage. 'Better' parents from our circles see it similarly, for now at least.

Just playing devil's advocate:

If I've bought a BBQ and hamburger-adjacent equipment, I probably prefer my hamburgers home-made.

I might view the ad after 7 PM, as that's when I get home from work, and still decide to go there the next day during my commute.

Engaging with burger-related activity might also mean that I run a competing joint, so advertising to me is pointless (unless you want me to buy that one time just to check my competition).

I work in ads targeting

> Google is doing McDonalds a disservice as their advertiser by showing you the ad (and won't be doing the user any useful service either).

yes this is right and why the parent is totally off base

> That said, these algorithms are simple presumably because they work "well enough".

This is totally wrong. Ads targeting "algorithms" are some of the most complicated systems on earth. First of all, it is completely done by machine learning models now not simple algorithms, and within companies who are doing ads targeting well (ie, Google, Meta, Tiktok, and if you want to go down the list to the less competent companies then you can include X and Reddit and others) there is massive internal pressure and competition to get any edge by either improving models or other parts of the ads targeting stack. The top dogs as in Tiktok, Google Search, and Meta have been posting 10+% yoy ads revenue numbers for many years now with a much smaller increase or even flatlining user counts. It's all due to improvements in the ads stack making them more effective and more useful for advertisers (and they and the article in the post would say users as well but HN mostly doesn't subscribe to this viewpoint) driving more total ads spend and a growing economy.

>That said, these algorithms are simple presumably because they work "well enough".

Agreed wholeheartedly, and this is an important point: advertisers don't really lose much by showing you ads you don't want, so it's unlikely the system would ever become ultra-precise.

Even if McDonalds could tell Google not to show the ad to vegetarians, they have no way to verify Google isn't.

I don't really see how you could solve this problem with a sufficiently complex algorithm. Which ads are shown still depends on how much the vendor is willing to spend on marketing. I may have zero interest in Ford cars, but if Ford is the one spending the big bucks in the "car" category I'll see a lot of Ford ads.

What people seem to be looking for is not targeted advertising but targeted recommendations - where vendor "spend" can't skew the results to show you crap you don't want. But that's a product the consumer and not the vendor would have to pay for, by definition. Unfortunately consumers don't have deep enough pockets to make this kind of thing lucrative over just selling ads.

I agree with part of this. I don't know what Instagram is doing, but their ads are remarkably well targeted. The rest of the internet needs to do whatever they are doing.

> I'm sure they are also super useful for the small businesses making the products I buy, because they can build awareness much more cost-effectively than other mechanisms.

Why would Meta not raise their costs of advertising until it was the most efficient by the smallest margin?

The few times I ever used Instagram, it knew me where I went to university (a different country) and then recommended I take a cybersecurity course. That was rather scary because it shouldn't have that information.

> Meta is trying to get me to buy bespoke Icelandic wool socks, artisan gummy edibles, and hand made ceramic table ware.

Doesn't it make more sense that these things just advertise better on Instagram? These are all things people like to show off on that platform.

> It's almost like rather than identify who I am, they identified the social niche stereotype I identify with, and then pull ads from that reservoir.

So... you're a typical user of Instagram? I'm not following how this alone isn't the largest signal of all.