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Rational companies wouldn't be paying for ads and minting multi-billionaires in the process if the results did not surpass the costs. The dominance of online advertising over print/television/physical is largely due to metrics and ROI visibility provided by tracking.

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They aren't paying for ads, they're paying for access to the tracking data. There's like 20 primary companies that show up in "targeted" ads, that's not by mistake. They're hip to the what the system actually provides (tracking) and are all in.

Companies, like people, aren’t rational.

And yet companies grow and profit from advertising and it's the default method of monetization on the internet.

Sayings it's not rational is not an argument against whether it works.

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