I mean, it is absolutely that on occasion. I may come off as doing a whataboutism, but I mean it more like "Absolutely, we should be angry at people and technologies whose energy use exponentially outweighs the societal benefits. Here's the world's biggest offender!" But they don't actually care about energy usage, they just hate crypto and have never thought critically about targeted advertisement; all they know is it's a part of capitalism which they love so their brain starts doing flips trying to find a way to make it defensible. It's like telling a 'wont somebody please think of the children' evangelical republican all the ways in which they directly support child abuse and abusers. "I agree with you, but do you?"

Show me ads for cocaine and I will click it, brother. I was told capitalism solved all my problems by providing the material possessions I wanted in exchange for currency.

What happened with that.

I bought a new mattress last year and I swear not even a month later they were emailing me with mattress ads. Time to start my mattress collection.

They don't really need to make or sell products, they just need to create the appearance of selling products to attract investment from billionaires. They've got all the money, why would they care about the small pittance of money everyone else has?

Jon Bois imagines a world in which he bought every mattress that was advertised to him

carbon fiber bike rims... Nope I'm not stocking up on those thank you...

Friendly reminder that part of the deal of showing you adverts for what you just bought is to increase your satisfaction with the purchase. It reminds you of what you bought and (tries to) make you feel proud of your decision.

Yeah I realized that as I finished writing it

"You know what? I'll treat myself. Just one more dozen of toilet seats."

Would these people buy those items again, though, right after the initial purchase? Some products are certainly repeat buys, but appliances usually take at least half a year until they break.

I’m also amusedly infuriated when “smart” advertising takes the exact wrong pattern …..

“ I see you recently bought a part for a Toyota. You must have a Toyota. Let me sell you the same part for a Volkswagen. “

I bought a specific airfilter from home depot once (prob 15 years ago). 6 months later I went back because I needed a filter. I couldn't remember which one I bought so I popped on their website, from my phone. I found the unit I bought and got the filter that it needed from the store.

For the next 3 weeks straight, every other add on every page, on facebook, on amazon, on everywhere was the air cleaner I purchased. They must have spent at least $5 on me alone it was the only static ad I saw the entire time.

How is there proof of a sale due to an ad on a platform if the customer never interacted with the ad?

I can guarantee you that no one is going to sign an advertisement contract if they have to pay more solely because the company sold something within that timeframe.

The platform they advertise on is the one tracking the customer through the purchase, but that can't happen if the customer buys a product before they're shown an ad.

Well, that's pathetic. Imagine deriving all your pride just from having bought things. What a sad, hollow life such a person must live.

Oh I dunno, maybe stop using Amazon.

I remember reading or hearing about this too, but i forget where. Do you know?

I block ads on my computer and my phone browser (shoutout to Orion), so I only see ads on my TV (because it's an old smart TV. I know, I know, but I'm not in a financial place to ditch it and buy a new one.) I have no idea what info advertisers have on me, but by the fact that at least half my ads are for fast food, they clearly haven't picked up on the fact that I not only don't eat meat, but that I've been avoiding fast food for over 20 years. They also haven't picked up on my age or that I'm a woman, since I also get ads for Medicare scams Part D as well as for men's healthcare products. Sometimes the ads are in Spanish, which makes it even better.

It's all such a waste of time and resources, the only benefit being that my reflexes stay strong as I hit that "mute" button at the first sign of an ad break.

How is that not a literal crime?

You vastly overestimate the nuance in ad spend.

Maybe >1M man hours per year?

My Facebook ads now feature hard-core porn. I don't know what digital footprint I've created to deserve those.

I see you’ve just bought a HDMI cable, but what about second HDMI cable?

We think you’ll love it

I was a part of Amazon vine for a while. It's Amazon's program where they offer you shit for free that other companies want to give away in order to get reviews rolling in for new products.

Amazon offers around two to eight "just for you" items most days from these people, based on your order history and ad info crap they have on you.

Well I made the mistake of getting a black toner cartridge for my laser printer through vine once. That will last me like a decade.

Apparently, Amazon now thinks that I own 5000 printers of all different kinds and I'm never good on ink. Most days I would have at least 5 of my recommendations be printer ink or toner. Every single damned day it wanted me to get more ink. For months and months and months.

Let me introduce you to the dad delivers blog. He bought a dehumidifier 2 years ago and since hasn't stopped buying new ones and talking about them:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5GL2M_HNyaLy_kEQwVp0KQ

So, the scam here is from ad providers like google on anyone running ads. It's the reason that often you see ads for a product you just looked at forever: if you are shown an ad for a product, and then you buy that product, the ad provider gets a cut. If you click on the ad, that cut is higher. Now, clearly you already looked at the product without the ad, and at best it was a reminder of something you already wanted, but in the eyes of the contract, you bought that product because of the ad. That's WAY more of a sure thing than actually compiling a meaningful profile on the provider side. Now, on the opposite end, you DO have stories of storefronts sending out coupons, emails, direct to consumer ads, built on your viewing history on their site that ARE based on complex algorithms that know you better than yourself, which is how you get stories of the algorithm knowing people are pregnant before they do

I buy a lot of (Primarily used) books off Amazon (Though Ebay grows more attractive by the day.) so thankfully my recommends are filled with other books. Apparently they have a semblance of a clue there.

I assume everyone on Facebook likes some hard-core.

I got a really nice humidifier off Amazon this winter. not one of those shitty sonic ones. I almost bought the fancy German one with the wheels but my wife wouldn't let me and I'm glad cause this one is kicking ass and was much cheaper. I'm into humidifiers yet I've never gotten an ad for one.

Yup, I just bought a tank jet printer, so clearly I'm turning my apartment into the world's most inefficient print shop.

I've been recently rewatching all the X-men movies in order on Disney+.

After each one it's like "why not watch the first one again?" like it doesn't know full well I watched it a few days ago.

All this data collection, and for what?

Yea, google basically profits off of all their data, so it's either use it or be left out. They don't really give a shit if advertisers bleed dry, there's not much of a competition for Google.

You know how most of the ads on YouTube are watched by kids on their parents phones. But on Google's database they're some adult individual with this and this interests. Google fucks over both ends.

I recently purchased a small apartment. According to calculations, it was cheaper to pay the mortgage than rent a similar size apartment.
Now meta thinks I am into collecting apartments in the same postcode.
On the other hand, I do find it somewhat useful to see what is happening to the apartment prices around.

If you're somewhere in central Europe, Vinted is amazing for buying used books!

I think you overestimate how much time the companies buying ads spend on analyzing the data, or if they even get that data.

The company selling the ad also doesn't have much interest in transparent reporting.

The end result is that neither the company selling the ads or the company buying the ads have any interest in the ads.
They both only care about their own sales numbers. Fuck the consumers, fuck the product, fuck the ads. Only sales.

I can't remember. My doom scrolling of Lemmy and YouTube is so fast I can't find posts from 12 hours ago.

tank jet printer

Anyone who thinks this is a typo is a communist!

How do these humidifiers work? All I know about humidifiers comes from that technology connections video, so "one with wheels" tells me very little.

I can guarantee you that no one is going to sign an advertisement contract if they have to pay more solely because the company sold something within that timeframe.

I used to spend a million a year on TV ads without ever knowing if I got a sale from those ads.

"AI" is an expert in the obvious.

To be fair there's probably people who're interested in collecting all the apartments in your area.

Yeah I just bought a tank on Amazon and now it's like "here's some ammunition for your tanks" and I'm like "ahh actually no thanks I don't want a visit from the FBI thanks"

And did you have to pay extra just because you made a sale in the time span the ad was running?

Right, but the company buying ad space isn't going to pay extra because they sold a product during the time period the ad ran.

No I don't. I'm saying that a company isn't going to pay an advertising platform more money just because.

If they sold a package "X ads for X dollars depending on proof of conversion." it might have been something I signed up for. Realistically if they could have done it, they wouldn't have offered any other option.

"Do you want to run ads? This is our package. You pay $X and if you get sales from those ads you pay $X + $Y because we proved the ads made you money. Take it or leave it. We own 85% of the ad market."

Y'all need to go on the dark web, people are gambling millions on humidifier vs. dehumidifier battles, the videos are disturbing and end dry or moist.

Amazon sells power meters.

So they can charge advertisers/companies money for "relevant" ads. I assume there's pushback in the market on this but even so, that's wasted ad space/time (since they seem to think it's so important to advertise that route. Maybe it's not even such a bad idea since so many products are shit and you may well be in the market soon anyway.

You pay $X and if you get sales from those ads you pay $X + $Y because we proved the ads made you money.

That's the problem. In your original scenario the advertising platform isn't proving ads resulted in sales. They're showing the ads after the sale occurs.

You said the company would be self-reporting their sales to the advertiser so that they'd have to pay the advertiser more money. But companies often run ad campaigns on multiple platforms and even multiple campaigns on one platform. They're not going to pay extra multiple times to multiple companies because they made a single sale.