> if you can show ads only to the people to whom they are relevant,
Except that's not what is happening. The information brokers learned that there's no money to be made in selling to someone who already knows they want to buy that product. With the ad you're getting 90% conversion but without you're only down to 70% conversion.
The real value is in convincing someone who had no interest in a product to spend money they wouldn't have otherwise. And targeting makes this happening by giving the advertisers tools to custom make campaigns that create new engagements. The role of the advertiser is not to connect potential purchasers with the products they want, but to trick unwary consumers into buying irrelevant junk.
And on top of that, it doesn't help small businesses because they only spend money on small campaigns. A tiny micro-targeted set of ads always loses the auction to an algorithmic carpet bombing of manipulative clickbait. That is, they'll "win" a few impressions at first until their budget caps out and then the spam ads will fill in the rest. Which means someone in that cohort will in any period see more of the bad ads than the good ones.
There is no incentive for anyone in adtech to fix this because the "solution" right now is charging more money for better ads. Consumers disliking ads and being inundated with malvertising is the system working as intended.
Except that's not what is happening. The information brokers learned that there's no money to be made in selling to someone who already knows they want to buy that product. With the ad you're getting 90% conversion but without you're only down to 70% conversion.
The real value is in convincing someone who had no interest in a product to spend money they wouldn't have otherwise. And targeting makes this happening by giving the advertisers tools to custom make campaigns that create new engagements. The role of the advertiser is not to connect potential purchasers with the products they want, but to trick unwary consumers into buying irrelevant junk.
And on top of that, it doesn't help small businesses because they only spend money on small campaigns. A tiny micro-targeted set of ads always loses the auction to an algorithmic carpet bombing of manipulative clickbait. That is, they'll "win" a few impressions at first until their budget caps out and then the spam ads will fill in the rest. Which means someone in that cohort will in any period see more of the bad ads than the good ones.
There is no incentive for anyone in adtech to fix this because the "solution" right now is charging more money for better ads. Consumers disliking ads and being inundated with malvertising is the system working as intended.