At first internet advertising was a no-brainer. Agree to host ads, get revenue to keep your site afloat, make a profit, expand. Fine. But now we’re inundated with ads to the point people are turning off. Hell, there are ads I’d be happy to see, but I never will because I’ve blocked them with a Pihole and Ublock. The vast majority of people aren’t doing that, but are they actually buying the advertised products and services?
Guess I can’t get my head around the logistics. Seems like all the money in the world is available for advertising, but are these companies actually seeing a return on that investment? Reddit’s basically bots advertising to bots, and the stock market rewards them handsomely. Nobody involved is stupid, they know this is happening, yet companies are still throwing money around. (Someone will relate this to the AI bubble, but it’s not really the same thing.)
There was a great article posted here about how 40% (?) of ad views are bots. (If someone can find it, that would be great!) The issue came up to the author because he was tasked with finding out why the advertising spend wasn’t getting expected sales. The number of clicks didn’t jive with sales results. The advertiser was seeing some ludicrous clicks vs. sales that was 1/10th of what it should be.
And companies are paying for these dismal results?! Think of a time where you were responsible for results at a company. If your spent $X on a thing, and didn’t get at least $X dollars back, you would back off that spend or your boss would pull the plug. (Sure, marketing often takes time to get a foothold, I get that.) That’s how capitalism fucking works. And for all the bitching about capitalism, the players don’t seem to be doing that thing. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
Is internet advertising a sort of bubble? Doesn’t seem to be as it just keeps going.
Advertising creates a presence. They don’t think any one ad is going to convince you to buy it, and they know that after watching the ad enough times, it’s not going to get any more convincing, but when you are in need of their services, you’ll be looking at their brand and a competitor, and odds are, if price and everything else are the same, you’ll buy the brand you recognize.
And a new ad for the thing you’ve already bought can reassure you that you’ve made the right choice. Going forward, you’re more likely to stick to that brand and for adjacent products.
IIRC that’s the whole point of luxury car commercials during half-time breaks. 99% of watchers can’t afford one, but the ad is there to remind the owners of that very fact.
Psychological safety in play ^^ humans are animals, we trust what we know, fear what we don’t. All of marketing is geared to that simple fact
Google cooks the books on ad sales and after being found out it makes a lot more sense on the actions they are doing now with their other products that ads we’re propping up.
If you think the number of people that use ad blockers is not a fraction of a percent of internet users, you’re in a bubble.
Go outside, talk to people, friends, family, especially of different generations. Even people I know that I consider much more “tech savvy” than average have no clue about ad blockers or how to begin using them.
If you think the number of people that use ad blockers is not a fraction of a percent of internet users, you’re in a bubble.
Nowhere near the majority, but also not a “fraction of a percent.”
I was about to say, even without actual data to back it up, big companies are going out of their way to try and evade and block ad-blockers, and that costs man-hours to design, so obviously it’s not a negligible number if they have decided its worth trying to pursue.
I generally post variations on this when similar questions come up:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=2025+marketing+technology+landscape&iar=images
The companies on the edges are all about marketing adtech firms to companies with money to convince them to spend it on digital marketing.
To answer your second question. Companies are expected to spend $1 trillion on advertising in 2025.
For the first question, it is pretty complex. You can break it down into some topics though and it is more manageable.
Types
Ecosystem
SEO
Criticism (good stuff starts at 10:00)
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Ads are actually pretty incredible. If no one knows your brand, all it takes is money to tell em. It’s like a short cut compared to having a good product and word of mouth.
Its essentially like a cold call, but you know the audience is at least generally interested in your topic because of targeting. All that data that is being taken and sold from you, is being sold to avertizers.
Pay Google for getting on search on Google and youtube.
Pay meta to get ads on Insta and Facebook.
If you spend $500 to sell a $3000 product, it’s a no brainer. Ita basically printing money when it works. So yeah, companies are paying when the results match. But also when they are testing the waters to see if its worth it to them.
