So you are contending that customers are informed of anything with ad targeting?
I worked in the online ad targeting/ad network industry for half a decade and strongly disagree with that premise.
The shadiest of products (penis enlargement, work from home, etc) are advertised with specifically "stupid" ads, because by eliminating the people who would never buy such a bad product in the first place they improve their CTR, screen before the click. That's the far end of the spectrum, but the premise is generally true for all advertising.
Informing your customers and competing on value is an inefficient method of advertising, it's much more profitable to find another, less rational, purchase trigger to exploit. There are many to choose from but traditionally this was still quite difficult and very risky. Now, with detailed analytics and advanced data processing you can just try them all and have the system cluster and optimize each approach.
"Relevant" ad targeting is sold as a method to display ads that will likely appeal to targets but an enormous part of it is screening those users who are informed enough to know that your product is not a wise purchasing decision.
And all of this lives in an auction model, so you either adapt to the more efficient methods or you get outbid on your keywords.
Comments
So you are contending that customers are informed of anything with ad targeting?
I worked in the online ad targeting/ad network industry for half a decade and strongly disagree with that premise.
The shadiest of products (penis enlargement, work from home, etc) are advertised with specifically "stupid" ads, because by eliminating the people who would never buy such a bad product in the first place they improve their CTR, screen before the click. That's the far end of the spectrum, but the premise is generally true for all advertising.
Informing your customers and competing on value is an inefficient method of advertising, it's much more profitable to find another, less rational, purchase trigger to exploit. There are many to choose from but traditionally this was still quite difficult and very risky. Now, with detailed analytics and advanced data processing you can just try them all and have the system cluster and optimize each approach.
"Relevant" ad targeting is sold as a method to display ads that will likely appeal to targets but an enormous part of it is screening those users who are informed enough to know that your product is not a wise purchasing decision.
And all of this lives in an auction model, so you either adapt to the more efficient methods or you get outbid on your keywords.