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The effectiveness of advertising isn't to make you buy a specific product at a specific time. It's to increase the mind share of a specific product so that when you're in the market for it that's what you'll buy. (Or at the very least you'll see it as a viable option.)

This is of course, unmeasurable.

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Isn't it possible that there might be different types of advertising each with its own goals? Billboards are probably about mindshare, but what about when I search Google for a model of TV and there's all these retailers trying to sell me that model?

You're correct. I was actually going to add an edit to this effect but it was too late by the time I thought of doing it.

that's actually still about mindshare though--that's why radio ads still exist. they catch you on the way to the store.

For some of them (say, Best Buy) it definitely would be, but others (say, Bob's Local TV Shop) don't seem to advertise on the scale that would give them any chance of gaining mindshare. I acknowledge that the advertisers are trying to gain mindshare are at a significant advantage when advertising, since they can afford to bid up to the lifetime value of the customer rather than bidding up to the margin of a one-off sale.

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