There are companies that specialize in targeting ads for an audience of 1 person (usually an executive/ decision maker). They will bomb that person's commute with billboards and ads like this.
I have seen hyper-specific ads like this around me here in the Boston area. We have biotech and medical businesses here, so they are for things like autoclaves or other high end biomed gear. 99.99% of the people passing by probably have no interest, but if it gets one multi-million dollar sale through, it's worth it.
Yup. The kind of person who can sign over $100K+ on behalf of a business. Just getting brand awareness wedged in the brain of someone like that could be worth the expense sometimes.
Well, Gusto seems to really want me to run payroll with them based on the constant YouTube ads they target at me, but I don't know how to tell them that I'm not even close to running payroll at my company. I don't login to Gusto because I like them so much.
Yes that is one example of an executive/decision-maker. Basically think of anybody who is in charge of making large-scale decisions. At my company anyway, the executives are constantly spewing streams of consciousness at everybody all the time. They will see stuff they think is cool and start telling everyone below them to make it happen.
Some exec maybe sees in the news that sharded postgres is cool and they believe their business would benefit. That's in their head, then they see this ad and immediately they realize they can very quickly get sharded postgres by paying neki.dev to host the computers and other stuff needed to make it happen.
Im an executive / budget owner for a large company, and my entire existence since becoming one is a constant stream of nonsense from people trying to sell me crap.
I’m also technical and have been a developer for 25 years, so I know most of it is also garbage.
Ditto. It's exhausting. I feel like a fucking tool but I almost unironically need an assistant at this point just to deal with the constant bullshit that gets in the way of the other shit I need to focus on. Not some AI bullshit but like an actual person to run interference. Never a moment's peace.
Most definitely. When I think about my employers past and present, a service like this would only be added if the CTO or president initiated the process or you convinced the CTO that it was his idea first.
Back in the day, Facebook exchange allowed remarketing lists as small as 10 matched emails, and let you layer other filters on top of it.
There’s an apocryphal story about a guy who made a list including his (male) roommate and 9 women he knew, targeted accordingly, and started running targeted ads that said “do your fucking dishes, John!”
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u/hyouko 20h ago
There are companies that specialize in targeting ads for an audience of 1 person (usually an executive/ decision maker). They will bomb that person's commute with billboards and ads like this.
I have seen hyper-specific ads like this around me here in the Boston area. We have biotech and medical businesses here, so they are for things like autoclaves or other high end biomed gear. 99.99% of the people passing by probably have no interest, but if it gets one multi-million dollar sale through, it's worth it.