Ask HN: Can an ad personalization market even work?

1 points by meltyness 3y ago ↗ HN

Reports have been circulating that since Q4 2021 that ad spending is falling[0], but most large companies in the space have been sharpening their capacity for ad personalization.

- Do ad-techs have a perverse incentive to do a poor job of it to drive up ad spend artificially? "Dyspersonalizing" of ads?

- Would this even be obvious to companies?

- Have advertisers insulated themselves, or managed the risk of adversarial dulling of ad effectiveness by tech companies?

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-22/snap-warning-feeds-concerns-over-social-media-ad-splurge

2 comments

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theCrowing 3y ago ↗

I could go into detail but don't have time right now for your last point. If you spend a lot of money on any given platform you will get good or amazing metrics. I don't matter if your ADs are creative or not, but the metrics will get even better if you use the latest features the platforms just introduced... and for marketing there is nothing better than good metrics to report to your CMO.

legitster 3y ago ↗

I work in marketing.

A lot of ad-spending is waste, and it's one of the easiest cuts to make when facing a downturn.

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make vis-a-vis personalization. Personalization is not actually a huge driver of ad effectiveness - but targeting is.