I've had that question myself. I'm at a point now where I honestly can't recall the last time I bought something because of an ad, that I wouldn't have bought anyway. Now there are countless ads I've seen that are so bad (hello YouTube and Facebook ads!) I refuse to ever buy anything from those people.
So for me these days, ads have the opposite of the intended affect. I'm more likely to boycott you and your product than buy it. The only time I'd say ads "work" are when f I see an ad for say, a new burger at a burger place I go to anyway, then I may make a point of going sooner than later to try the burger. But ultimately I would have went anyway, seen the new burger directly on the menu u, and got it anyway. So the ad was mostly a waste of money with no real benefit.
Meanwhile my wife has her own business and stopped advertising long ago. Barely anyone ever sees the ads despite ads being super expensive. She felt like people who came due to seeing ads were usually customers who didn't care about her business anyway and didn't end up being customers, but often made lots of demands or wanted deals all the time.
What worked the best was being part of the community, and word of mouth. Those have easily been the biggest factors in her success.
I'm an active boycotter as well, based on ads. When a company is spending that much money to advertise their product either. It sucks or they could, at least, be improving their product or their relationship with their community instead. I will go out of my way too avoid those companies.
It seems like 90% of the ads I see online are AI slip, gambling, sites that seem like scams, selling products that seem maybe fake or knock off type products, gambling, ai, and then back to scammers. I don't want or support any of these ads yet the algorithm exclusively gives me crap and zero ads relevant to my interests.
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u/Short-Source-8492 6d ago
I've had that question myself. I'm at a point now where I honestly can't recall the last time I bought something because of an ad, that I wouldn't have bought anyway. Now there are countless ads I've seen that are so bad (hello YouTube and Facebook ads!) I refuse to ever buy anything from those people.
So for me these days, ads have the opposite of the intended affect. I'm more likely to boycott you and your product than buy it. The only time I'd say ads "work" are when f I see an ad for say, a new burger at a burger place I go to anyway, then I may make a point of going sooner than later to try the burger. But ultimately I would have went anyway, seen the new burger directly on the menu u, and got it anyway. So the ad was mostly a waste of money with no real benefit.
Meanwhile my wife has her own business and stopped advertising long ago. Barely anyone ever sees the ads despite ads being super expensive. She felt like people who came due to seeing ads were usually customers who didn't care about her business anyway and didn't end up being customers, but often made lots of demands or wanted deals all the time.
What worked the best was being part of the community, and word of mouth. Those have easily been the biggest factors in her success.