I wonder how much of the purported "success" of retargeting is just mis-assigned credit? You research a camera, but it takes you some time to make a decision. In the meantime, you get blasted with camera ads, which you ignore. Then you actually make your purchase. Even though the ads had no effect on you, there's a fairly high chance you still purchased an advertised model at a vendor that targeted you with an ad for the camera you bought (there are only so many of each). The advertisers may claim credit for that sale, even though in reality they deserve done.

Even more egregiously, maybe sometimes the advertiser's metrics have some reverse-causality: you buy the camera, then they show you the ads for it; but something in their metrics isn't properly modeling the sequence of events (e.g. they correlate retargeted camera ads shown per week with camera sales per week). Then they mistakenly take credit for a sale that happened before the ad was shown.

That's not to say such mistakes always happen, but I wouldn't be surprised they didn't happen fairly frequently. Given that measurement is hard and both adtech and advertisers are motivated to present success stories, and may not be too motivated to second-guess positive-sounding numbers.

I have literally never done so. I have, however, mentally blacklisted brands that had obnoxious ads, and I have always had a really low threshold for that determination.

I hate ads (particularly the ones interrupting TV programming) and try to avoid products/services that are heavily advertised. Imo it is the hygienic thing to do but also with a spin it is also smart business if one is price sensitive, why pay the for the obscene marketing budget factored in?

Amazon affiliate links for books are the sole times I've ever clicked on an ad with the intention to buy the product behind it. And I can count the number of times I've done that on one hand.

Incidentally, those weren't targeted ads. Those were ads hand-picked by the person producing the content about those books. From that very small sample I conclude that ads relevant to the context in which they're placed are more effective than targeted ads.

Whenever I get hyper-repetitive ads (usually GM, Dodge, or financial products - seriously, is that all of the ad inventory in the network on some days?), it usually has the opposite effect; I just assume those companies' products and processes are as inefficient and wasteful as their advertising.

I will say that I'm thankful that Squarespace, Audible, and Skillshare support independent video and podcast creators. I click their referral links sometimes to check out new features etc, but would only ever sign up if I needed that particular service. Still, I think that form of repetition helps their mindshare in a positive way.

I did buy the Glif directly from an ad on Daring Fireball, albeit months later, and in combination with brand awareness from their free time-lapse / speed ramping app.

Haha, similar. I was shopping around for a Sony mirrorless camera a year ago. Ended up with the model I actually had in mind in the first place (A7S2 for its supreme low light capability), but shit am I hounded on the Internet either for Sony cameras or accessories. And there's no way I know of to get rid of it! And for what its worth even Facebook and Instagram (at least the latter, I only use on my tablet in the app!) showed me camera ads.

This is annoying and, when one thinks about the implication that everyone and their dog knows who you are, scary.

I have purchased products/services off of ads, but only because I was directly searching to buy those things and they came up as sponsored results. I'm not sure if that counts.

I have never bought off of ads otherwise and find that most of the time they are not relevant to my interests. I also started using an adblocker because of other reasons (mal-ads/autoplay) even though I previously did not do so because I felt text/banner ads were quite acceptable in order to help keep the lights on.

I've installed grammarly after seeing an ad for it >100 times on youtube. Did even briefly use it.

I do all the time!

Mostly clothing...things I didn't even think did existed