this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
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Ads are effective, sadly. And why so much money is poured into them. I believe there are a few effects at play but the direct, see and ad and want to go buy it now is only one ofbhem that mostly only affects some people, or a lot of people occasionally.
I think a bigger effect is familiarity. You are far more likely to pick a product you are familiar with or have seen before over something younjave never heard of. Even if you have only ever seen it on advets and completely forgotten that you have ever seen ads for it. So even if you don't think they work on you they likely do without you realizing, at least enough of the time on enough people that make them worth while running.
Bingo. It's not about making you buy something right now, it's about brand recognition and such.
To wit, if you listen to podcasts, do a little thought experiment. Name a VPN company.
Was it "Nord VPN"? Ads work.
I think ad space sellers wildly overestimate the effectiveness of ads and google has made it far worse with targeted ads. People have gotten used to saying things like "ads work" and "brand recognition" but does anyone know the numbers? Or is this just repeating some phrases you've heard?
I don't know the numbers myself, but I'm quite skeptical.
Companies have tested this. A DIY chain ran an ad and people complained it was annoying, so they stopped running it. Their sales started to decline. Started running the ad again and sales went up.
Probably you're not the target audience and just collateral damage in the ad war, but for the population in general they work.
A DIY chain is the ad I’m most unlikely to see. The only ads I see are usually the same 5 auto makers advertising the same bland cars on a cliff or in a desert. The vast vast majority of ads don’t work and waste everyone’s time for a small bump in sales and recognition. Especially since the variety of the US market is dominated by so few billion dollar businesses. Like Walmart still advertises. Walmart. The company that owns like 40% of grocery sales in the US and can’t pay their workers a living wage. They’ll gladly stop you from watching your shows though because their marketing department needs a salary.