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The Billion-Dollar Machine vs. One Free Extension (thelemmy.club)
submitted 1 day ago by [M] to c/FightForPrivacy@sopuli.xyz
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[–] 6 points 12 hours ago (5 children)

They wouldn't waste money on ads if they didn't work enough to at least break even on them. They work. People with adblockers or who do not click on ads are not the norm. Not that I like this, but here we are.

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  • [–] 9 points 55 minutes ago (2 children)

    I'm no longer convinced by this line of reasoning. They wouldn't waste money on meetings if they didn't break even. They wouldn't waste money on physical offices if they didn't break even. They wouldn't use chat bots if they didn't break even.

    What we have isn't an efficient rational market. It's just a bunch of superstitions from business school.

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  • [–] 2 points 37 minutes ago

    They just raise prices to compensate for the advertising budget. Sounds easy to justify when you make the assumption that reaching more people would generate more return. Perversely customers wind up paying more for the very thing that pays for the ads that get shoved in their faces.

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  • [–] 2 points 39 minutes ago

    Somewhere along the path from the boardroom to the consumer's eyes, advertising still works. If they stop advertising, they sell less, that's a metric they can measure and I'm sure they do, or at least have. Exactly how it works may be more art than science and not as well understood as they like to claim, but the numbers don't lie.

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  • [–] 5 points 51 minutes ago

    Actually, data suggests that over 50% of internet users are using some kind of adblockers. Looking at ads is absolutely “not the norm.” Using adblock software just makes one part of the largest consumer boycott in history.

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