• Supermariofan67@lemmy.fmhy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    1 year ago

    Why the fuck are ads even profitable? Seriously? Who actually sees an ad and thinks “I’m going to buy this product”? When I see an ad I think “fuck you” and I’m less likely to buy their product.

    • dan@upvote.au
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      You’d be surprised. Advertisers wouldn’t be running the ads if they didn’t have positive ROI (return on investment). A good ROI is usually at least 5x (that is, for every dollar the advertiser spends on ads, they make five dollars). Google’s estimates are even higher at 8x:

      we conservatively estimate that for every $1 a business spends on Google Ads, they receive $8 in profit through Google Search and Ads.

      (source: https://economicimpact.google/methodology/)

      Retargeting ads - the ones where you view a product somewhere then see ads for it on Google, Facebook, etc - are especially successful. They have a very good clickthrough rate since the product is already something the user expressed interest in.

    • Seeker of Carcosa@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      1 year ago

      They’re paying for a portion of your attention. They’re slowly building an association with their product such that when you finally get around to buying say a VPN subscription your first thought is “Nord.”

      It’s not going to affect everyone the same, for instance my thoughts on VPNs are “anything but Nord”; but they only need a fraction of users to develop a positive association with their brand.

        • 1993_toyota_camry@beehaw.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          so do 100 other options, though.

          but nord is a huge advertising spender so it’s what most people associate with ‘vpn’

          • TheBurlapBandit@beehaw.org
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            I looked through a bunch of options and Nord was the cheapest though, so it was the actual service that sold me on it not the ads. Unless something cheaper has come along since, that was ~2 years ago.

    • DarkWasp@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      They’re everywhere to the point where I wish I had an adblocker built into my eyeballs. Watching NHL there’s ads on the ice, the jerseys, the helmets, popping in from the sides, overlaying the score etc. it’s so out of control and that’s just one thing.

      Either it’s a giant pyramid scheme that keeps getting money funnelled into it or if this shit really just works. The sheer amount of money spent on it is absurd, sometimes as much as the budget of some movies to promote said movies.