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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
in one of my previous jobs I was the advertiser. from there I got the idea that marketing people need to spend their budget and if they don't, they will get less budget for the next project or next year. they tell their bossed that the thousanths of percent success rate from the ads is great and we should do more of that.

what's your opinion on that?

@stavvers
I think geraniums are very cheerful and there are many worse things advertisers could do with their time than looking after geraniums. This may disqualify me from the job of being their boss.
@hananc

@RedRobyn @stavvers @hananc Cory Doctrow wrote about this. He said that they start by giving their users the best experience. Once enough users create a lock in, they start giving advertisers the best. Once advertisers are locked, they start taking to themselves.