The True Evils of Advertising

There is a mass hysteria about companies taking your information to sell to advertisers.

Let’s pause for a moment.

You’ve been able to buy lists of potential clients since the 1920s — likely earlier.

Back in the day, you could buy a list of people who recently bought birdhouses. Yeah, that detailed.

Digital marketing today isn’t that good.

It can be effective — for the right product, with the right marketing budget to test literally 40 ads and see which one magically works.

Because if we’re being honest, you test ads because one will inexplicably outperform all of the others. It’s art.

Digital Ads Can’t Seem To Identify Buyers

Back in February, I bought a cat tower on Amazon. Through retargeting, I spent the next 3 months getting ads for cat towers.

Those nefarious advertisers. Clearly, someone who buys one cat tower must be immediately in need of six more.

The 1920’s lists are more advanced than most of the advertising software. Someday, someone will figure out how to flag something as purchased, and offer upsells that follow you around for months, but we aren’t there yet.