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Facebook knows I live in London, and has known this fact for more than a decade. It just loves to serve me ads for businesses in Birmingham, where it knows I don't live.

Google and the brand I bought it from know that I own a specific type of mattress. They know this because I googled it and came into the website and bought it. And yet, I get advertised that specific mattress, from that specific supplier.

This is going to be one of those threads that I wish Mastodon had a "turn off replies" features, so anyway before replying, please thoroughly read this and also know that I work in marketing so I have a decent grasp on how advertising works, which is how I can confidently say the entire thing is a fucking scam run by the stupidest people in the world. https://anotherangrywoman.com/2023/01/18/how-to-give-advice-on-the-internet-without-being-an-utter-menace/

I ended up blogging about this in much more detail because I think it's important we talk about this https://anotherangrywoman.com/2023/07/05/scams-upon-scams-the-data-driven-advertising-grift/

@stavvers eBay did a number of experiments on this in 2013 with the result that search advertising was not statistically distinguishable from not-advertising, and for the sub-groups where advertising was distinguishable from 0, the ROI was negative (ie: the ads cost more than the sales generated).

eBay pays for search placement to this day.