

Does Internet Advertising Work at All? - rblion
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/a-dangerous-question-does-internet-advertising-work-at-all/372704/

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dkrich
Poorly-conceived article.

tldr: Search advertising doesn't seem to work because you don't know whether
people would have bought your products anyway, and the advertisement for the
search term "Nike" appears directly above the organic result of nike.com (thus
it's apparently a waste).

According to the article FB advertising doesn't work because you'd probably
have bought the products that are shown in the retargeted ads you constantly
see anyway.

The problem with this analysis is that it oversimplifies online advertising to
the point of making the argument completely worthless.

He's arguing all advertising is a waste of money because, apparently, some
advertising is a waste of money. It makes no mention of the quality of the ads
that are written or their placement or their budget. It basically says "my gut
tells me people probably behave in this manner because I think I behave in
this manner and some paper written by eBay seems to confirm my instincts."

