I love targeted advertising because it is so blatantly obvious and hilariously over-optimistic.
I search for a lot of random crap with more curiosity than intent to buy. I looked up the price for several windmills , the late 19th/early 20th century style, (~$1000, by the way). For weeks or months afterwards, I saw windmill ads on a sizable fraction of the websites I visited.
To be fair, it's far more likely that I am going to by a windmill than a random ad viewer, but the probability is still staggeringly low. There had to be a hundred other products I was more likely to buy than the windmill, that would be more valuable to show me. But no! I had viewed their product and I! Must! Be! Targeted!
I really wonder what the set of products that do well from targeted ads looks like.
It does well because the probability of you buying a windmill multiplied by profit per sale is still more valuable than something non targeted like tampons (some of the advertisers get the numbers wrong but not the ones at scale.)
Interestingly, from the CPMs I've seen re-targeted/re-marketed ads perform on par or below contextually targeted ads. No one even comes close to Google for contextually targeted ad inventory (unless you are operating in a narrow niche and you are selling inventory directly, but lots of time and money to even match them.)
I search for a lot of random crap with more curiosity than intent to buy. I looked up the price for several windmills , the late 19th/early 20th century style, (~$1000, by the way). For weeks or months afterwards, I saw windmill ads on a sizable fraction of the websites I visited.
To be fair, it's far more likely that I am going to by a windmill than a random ad viewer, but the probability is still staggeringly low. There had to be a hundred other products I was more likely to buy than the windmill, that would be more valuable to show me. But no! I had viewed their product and I! Must! Be! Targeted!
I really wonder what the set of products that do well from targeted ads looks like.