Hacker News Reader

Comment by rafiki6 | Hacker News Reader

Here's an inevitable comment since you make such an authoritative statement with 0 ounce of evidence to back it up. Internet Advertising is not as effective as you believe it is. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/a-dange...

Advertising works when it leaves an impression or memories on you:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/08/why-goo...

That's what makes good advertising good. The medium also matters tremendously.

Internet advertising only really works when you don't know what you're looking for to begin with, which is rarely the case as most human behavior when it comes to the internet is intentional (i.e. I search on Google for "plates", that's why Google AdWords shows me sponsored links for plates)

http://journals.ama.org/doi/abs/10.1509/jmr.11.0503?code=amm...

Moral of the story? Complicated psychological phenomena are complicated and let's not oversimplify them to fit our narrative.

View on HN

I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with. I never made a claim on effectiveness (which depends on very many factors) but only that it works on everyone and needs more regulation. Are you claiming that it doesn't work at all?

What exactly do you think "internet advertising" is? Ads also don't need to be "good" or leave a lasting memory, they just need to work. Were you really going to buy "plates"? The ads might have made you buy them sooner. Or buy a different brand. Or buy something else along with them. And why did you even start looking for plates in the first place? Why go to google at all?

Regardless you don't need to take it from me. Go ahead and buy some ads and pickup on the power yourself. It's especially interesting seeing results when you're trying to prove it doesn't work.

There's different types of advertising though. And it's not necessarily blatant advertising that's the issue.

A lot of ads are designed differently. Article form. Informative video content. A promoted Facebook post that ends up in your feed. Really any type of content that's pretending not to be an ad.

That's advertising too. And that too, influences people. About tonnes of things. Not necessarily products.

And think about it inversely too. If there's 2 groups of people posting ads: if group 1 has more money, they can effectively push group 2 out.

These too are part of the problem.

> 0 ounce of evidence to back it up

The same principle used when TV lineups are advertised on the TV network channels themselves, is what advertising capitalizes on best. Brand awareness has plenty of psychological evidence behind it. The number don't lie when you get put on the premium channels (or the Google Play recommended top 10).

Ads aren't usually effective at doing what advertisers want (more than brand awareness or opportunity hurdles), which isn't a shocker. Advertisers get sold services by other people in advertising.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com