Going down a little bit of a research rabbit hole on whether targeted advertising actually yields a significant difference in ad-generated revenue and when I tell you that this entire shift to surveillance advertising appears to be based on NOTHING???
I really have to stop doing this sort of thing, I do not have time/energy to keep deciding to write articles based on stuff I'm just curious about, I need to develop hobbies or something.
But, like, I've found studies demonstrating there is absolutely negligible benefit to publishers of targeted advertising (i.e. websites that buy targeted ad space vs. non-targeted).
I so far haven't found studies that have done direct "this is how much more A Thing is purchased in targeted advertising vs. non-targeted." Do these exist? Because all the articles I've found on how great targeted advertising is seem to base this on views or vibes.
Neither of which say: - targeted advertising costs X and makes Y so the revenue benefit is Z vs - non-targeted advertising costs X and makes Y so the revenue benefit is Z This seems like a thing? That should have been checked?? Before we changed our entire ad ecosystem??????
Very seriously, if anyone is aware of actual studies that demonstrate that targeted advertising results in more actual sales of the things advertised than non-targeted, I would love to see them.
I want to caveat this by saying that I very much am a privacy attorney and not an expert in the technical side of advertising. I'm genuinely trying to understand how this works and how advertisers are measuring ad campaign "success" and determining that targeted ads are better.
Obviously I come down on the "this is bad for privacy" side of things, but I will argue that even if there is a demonstrable monetary benefit to targeted vs. non-targeted advertising. I'm truly surprised that I can't seem to find clear studies on efficacy here.
