A large part of the web is free because of targeted advertising, but former Google employee Tim Hwang argues that it doesn’t even work.
He notes that while “some digital and social media messaging is quite effective,” it’s common for platforms and media agencies to triple (at least) its apparent value by wrongly crediting digital ads for purchases that consumers would have made anyway. Aral calls this “the most widely used shell game in business today.”
Or, as Hwang puts it: “The whole edifice of online advertising is, in short, bunk.”