The Price of Free Google Report.
Proton analyzed over 54,000 demographic profiles using 2025 ad auction data to estimate what advertisers pay to reach different types of Americans. The range is much wider than you might expect.
The average American generates about $1,605 a year in advertising value. A 35- to 44-year-old man in Bozeman, MT, without children, using a desktop and making high-value corporate searches, generates an estimated $17,929.30. An 18- to 24-year-old father in Fort Smith, AR, using an Android phone and making low-value searches, generates $31.05.
That’s a 577x difference between two people using the same free service.
I mean, I agree with a lot of what you’re saying, but the sentence “If you saw it, it had an effect on you, and any effect is a better effect than nothing” is just absolutely wrong. Getting a person to install an ad blocker is bad, getting a person to talk negatively about you is bad, like the whole “no press is bad press” thing is not true. You telling everyone you know that raycons are bad is directly bad for the company.
Scientists finding out that sodas are bad for you didn’t result in more soda sales, it resulted in fewer.
Companies absolutely do not want you talking shit about them, that’s literally why they use NPS to measure how well they’re doing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_promoter_score
“If you realize an advertisement worked on you, the advertisement has failed part of its job.” Is also just wrong, but let’s argue one point at a time.
Finally “Everybody who thinks this is definitely having sales revenue made off of them” is such an all encompassing statement it will never be true. I think that the majority of companies I see advertisements for will never make sales revenue off of me. Why? Well many reasons, but you haven’t really bothered to think of why that could be the case and you’ve just made a wide all encompassing statement so I’m not really sure I want to bother. But I will make one point. People thinking about a product has nothing to do with spending money on that product. I’m sure that you know someone that talks to you about raycons all the time (oh wait, maybe that’s your friends). Do you (they) go out and spend money on raycons? Probably not. Same for talking about new cars, etc.
Sentiment matters, which is what a lot of advertisement is, not headspace.
For a great example of this, look at amazon with their Super Bowl ring advertisement (which I didn’t even see). Do you think that resulted in more sales or less?