Skeptics say the effectiveness of online advertising is overhyped since ad marketers optimize ever more for people who would have bought anyway
Mel Karmazin, the president of Viacom, one of the largest media conglomerates in the world, walked into the Google offices in Mountain View, California. Tweets: @frolleinjune , @wolfiechristl , @radiomorgenland , @woganmay , @saminprint , and @ingridlunden Tweets: Jule Neumann / @frolleinjune : “When these experiments showed that ads were utterly pointless, advertisers were not bothered in the slightest. [...] Even when they knew, or could have known, that their ad campaigns were not very profitable, it had no impact on how they behaved.” https://thecorrespondent.com/ ... Wolfie Christl / @wolfiechristl : Despite being a $270bn industry, I also believe that much of today's behavioral advertising is empty promises or even a giant fraud. This piece explains, in part, why. But I think it's too quick to dismiss concerns about personalized digital environments. https://thecorrespondent.com/ ... Radio Morgenland / @radiomorgenland : 🧡#Consciousness - “Just like we believe our research is important, even if it isn't.” That's why #science is a believe systems like any other believe systems like #religions....it is conveyed by humans that are convinced they know the truth! https://thecorrespondent.com/ ... @woganmay : “The experiment ended up showing that, for years, eBay had been spending millions of dollars on fruitless online advertising excess, and that the joke had been entirely on the company.” Oof. https://twitter.com/... Sam Trilling / @saminprint : “Keep that in mind the next time you read one of those calamity stories about Google, Facebook or Cambridge Analytica.. Realistically, advertising does something, but only a small something - and at any rate it does far less than most advertisers believe.” https://thecorrespondent.com/ ... Ingrid / @ingridlunden : This has always been my complaint with retargeting: why show me jeans if I JUST BOUGHT SOME JEANS? https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This piece revives the core measurement critique of digital advertising: controlled experiments — most famously eBay's finding that its ads drove little to no incremental purchasing — suggested much of what marketers count as 'conversions' are people who would have bought anyway, and advertisers kept running unprofitable campaigns even after seeing those results. The Correspondent's follow-up the next day framed the same problem as a benchmarking failure, since standard metrics cannot separate ad-caused buyers from would-be buyers.
The argument landed years before external pressure forced the issue: a 2019 study had already found publishers earn only about 4% more revenue per impression with a cookie enabled, implying behavioral targeting's measured payoff was thin, and Apple's ATT changes later disrupted the tracking that made inflated attribution easy — triggering advertisers shifting budgets away from Meta's price increases and, by 2023, a broader junk-ad reckoning across a slowing digital market.
First-order effects
- Advertisers optimizing against engagement-based benchmarks keep paying Google and Meta for conversions that were going to happen regardless, meaning their effective cost per incremental sale is far higher than reported.
- Platforms whose pitch rests on targeting precision face direct challenges to demonstrate incrementality, since the published experiments showed minimal purchase lift even when campaigns looked profitable on paper.
Second-order effects
- When tracking constraints like ATT raised Meta's ad prices, advertisers did not simply pay more — they moved budget to Google, Amazon, and TikTok, turning measurement doubt into real competitive reallocation.
- Publishers lose the pricing argument for behavioral targeting: if a cookie-enabled impression is worth only ~4% more, the data middlemen who monetize user profiles have far less leverage than claimed.
Third-order effects
- If incrementality becomes the accepted benchmark rather than attributed clicks, the ad market structurally favors high commercial-intent placements (search, retail media) over broad behavioral display — consistent with the duopoly-to-oligopoly shift of 2022.
- Persistent waste plus bot-faked supply feeds the trust erosion already visible in how fake the internet feels, pushing regulators and large buyers toward demanding verified, incremental outcomes rather than platform-reported metrics.
The trend: Digital advertising is being repriced around proven incremental effect rather than attributed conversions, eroding the premium once commanded by behavioral targeting and reshaping which platforms capture budgets.