Comment by recursive
13 days ago
Metric implies there is some way to objectively measure it. I'm not sure if that's true.
But almost everyone thinks the same as you do, and yet ads are huge business. How are you affected? I don't know, but my first guess is brand perception, regardless of your self-diagnosis. If a company is advertising a certain time-limited sale, some of their value will come from conversions taking that offer. But some, maybe most, is the brand impression that people get over time. Think "I never heard of that" vs "Oh yeah, I've seen that somewhere".
Does the average person really think the same way I do? I'd assume the average person does click on an ad for something they want sometimes, and they do convert. They do things that are measurable, so they have ad profiles that show the sort of ads that are effective on them.
I'm not saying that I'm immune to ads. What I'm saying is that my "ad profile" probably only says what sort of content I consume, if anything at all. Ironically, since I barely consume gaming-related content these days, I assume there is no way for ad companies to figure out that's the one thing I would actually buy from an ad.
Instead they show me ads for things I would never spend a cent on, like Decentraland, just because I've watched some tech videos.
I've heard many people say they've never clicked on an ad. I don't think I've ever heard someone say they intentionally clicked an ad.
I don't know if your assumptions are right or not.