Ask HN: Does targeted advertising work at all?
Mostly no, it does not. Actually there is nothing wrong with targeted advertising, products and ads are meant to target specific people in its nature. But online advertising are a scheme for tech companies to make money.<p>Adtech was created to make the buying and selling of online advertising so much more efficient. Today, about $350 billion dollars is spent on online advertising. 70%+ of it is bought programmatically. And according to the ANA and PwC, 70% of advertising dollars spent on online programmatic advertising never touch a human being. Of $200 billion in annual programmatic ad spend, $140 billion disappears in &quot;ad fees, fraud, non-viewable impressions, non-brand-safe placements, and unknown allocations&quot;.<p>See The Programmatic Poop Funnel: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i2.createsend1.com&#x2F;ei&#x2F;d&#x2F;DD&#x2F;DB6&#x2F;ACD&#x2F;030147&#x2F;csfinal&#x2F;ScreenShot2022-01-07at4.14.25PM-990000000005143c.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i2.createsend1.com&#x2F;ei&#x2F;d&#x2F;DD&#x2F;DB6&#x2F;ACD&#x2F;030147&#x2F;csfinal&#x2F;Sc...</a><p>I love reading Bob Hoffman about this subject.<p>&quot;The lovely fantasy of online advertising -- in which the same person who was frantically clicking her remote to escape from TV advertising was going to merrily click her mouse to interact with online advertising -- is going to go down as one of the great marketing delusions of all time. It has been undermined by an unfortunate fact of nature -- no one in his right mind volunteers for advertising.<p>By a factor of about a thousand to one, people who can interact with media do so to avoid advertising -- not engage with it.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bobhoffmanswebsite.com&#x2F;newsletters" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bobhoffmanswebsite.com&#x2F;newsletters</a>