I like to buy things myself, but I generally have a purpose of some sort, or having used similar things, am targeting a very robust thing that I can camp on and use for a decade or two.
A good friend is always buying products, trying them out, gadgets and such. And they spend a lot, but they are always super happy with their new things and frankly, give me a lot of their older things so they can get more new things!
(that's crazy, but they do them, and we are great friends, and I make good use of the stuff falling my way too)
That said, I generally don't gauge off the AD campaigns. Big spends are a rational choice as are modest ones and or guerilla type campaigns, which the latent rebel in me is a sucker for.
What I can say, knowing someone like that, is they are entertained by new things. I'm sometimes that way, but it's rare. Like a great watch might do that, or some cool tech thing I can use with my hobby computing / making. But, my entertainment is more centered on doing stuff, and or hanging with people, maybe doing things with them.
I do hate getting a thing that sucks. Shuts me down for quite a while.
I LOVE a good score, like a thing that is just awesome and I know it will perform for ages.
Basically I can use targeted ads as a free product discovery engine. Seeing an ad doesn't mean I'm going to mindlessly buy it. I know some people do that, but there's a way to make use of the situation.
[1] there might be an evil conspiracy among kitchen table manufacturing companies who teamed up with Hollywood producers to sell me the idea that I want a loft style new kitchen table :)
I’m talking about Facebook radicalizing people and manipulating their viewpoints and selling them on things they otherwise would have never wanted in a million years if they hadn’t used Facebook.
I’m not talking “Facebook showed me a cool pen and I like to collect fountain pens so I bought it”, no issues there. I’m talking “Facebook radicalized and manipulated me and now I am buying extremist books and courses that I otherwise never would have”.
The latter is why I disable targeted ads. Because it just an order of magnitude beyond “showing me relevant products”
it doesn't matter though