>> Everything ads seem to do is just piss some people off.
This is an eternal sentiment. For the more analytical, there are many examples of advertising millions demonstrably doing nothing. Ha, BMW turned off their ads for a year and nothing happened. So and so blew squillions on ill conceived ad campaigns, etc. It's very easy to cherry-pick advertising stories. To bastardize the adage, "half of the advertising tree is always cherries."
And yet, advertising is one of the biggest economic forces of our time... as you say. It literally rivals oil, shipping and other traditional giants. FB & Alphabet are, as businesses, $trn advertising businesses. That's the market proof that advertising does affect your choices.
The simple proof is easily visible to anyone on the advertiser side of the advertiser-consumer relationship. You open an online business. No one shows up. You advertise. People show up. It may or may not be profitable, but the causality is plain. Even without tracking/analytics/snooping... it's a plain fact that many or most customers for many businesses or even whole sectors are attributable to ads.
Consumers only notice that ads piss them off. Advertisers only notice that ads make consumers do stuff. Both are extremely dismissive of the others' intelligence.
This is an eternal sentiment. For the more analytical, there are many examples of advertising millions demonstrably doing nothing. Ha, BMW turned off their ads for a year and nothing happened. So and so blew squillions on ill conceived ad campaigns, etc. It's very easy to cherry-pick advertising stories. To bastardize the adage, "half of the advertising tree is always cherries."
And yet, advertising is one of the biggest economic forces of our time... as you say. It literally rivals oil, shipping and other traditional giants. FB & Alphabet are, as businesses, $trn advertising businesses. That's the market proof that advertising does affect your choices.
The simple proof is easily visible to anyone on the advertiser side of the advertiser-consumer relationship. You open an online business. No one shows up. You advertise. People show up. It may or may not be profitable, but the causality is plain. Even without tracking/analytics/snooping... it's a plain fact that many or most customers for many businesses or even whole sectors are attributable to ads.
Consumers only notice that ads piss them off. Advertisers only notice that ads make consumers do stuff. Both are extremely dismissive of the others' intelligence.