"""Theoretically speaking, isn't being targeted by advertising at absolute efficiency being given exactly what you want when you want it?"""
That sounds an awful like going to a webpage, for example Google, typing in a query, and having the results be appropriate and useful.
(Roughly, how Google was before it stopped being that and started serving useless shit like dozens of the same mailing list mirrors, shareware download sites and shopping aggregate sites).
"""Theoretically speaking, isn't being targeted by advertising at absolute efficiency being given exactly what you want when you want it?"""
No, because part of the point of advertising is to convince you that you want it. Perfect advertising would be such that whatever they show you, you buy.
Well targeted advertising is when you're looking for a car, and you get presented with information about cars.
Perfectly targeted advertising is when you're looking for a car, and you get presented with information about a car that you buy, but that you would have bought if you spent time doing the research yourself.
This is my definition of theoretically perfectly targeted advertising. This is what I think Google is trying to achieve.
But perfect advertising is when you're looking for a car, and you get presented with information about a (more expensive) car that you buy, but that you wouldn't have bought if you spent time doing the research yourself.
This is a worse outcome for you, but a better outcome for Google and the manufacturer.
I'm not sure if this is possible, presumably if there is something that would convince you to buy it, enough research on your part would hit the same thing and you would buy it anyway - in that case it would be the same as your suggestion - but you wouldn't be doing research on "what's the most expensive car I could possibly convince myself to buy", you would be researching "what's the cheapest" or "the best form/function/cost trade".
It still seems like good search results are what you'd want when buying a car, and adverts are what you wouldn't want.
What would it take you to get into a state where you skip researching a purchase and take the first advert Google shows you, confident that it would be close to what you'd have found anyway?
> But perfect advertising is when you're looking for a car, and you get presented with information about a (more expensive) car that you buy, but that you wouldn't have bought if you spent time doing the research yourself.
That would be perfect, but only for the advertiser. So I want to ask you this: do you think there is a potential win win scenario in advertising? And if there is, why do you think Google would pursue the advertiser favorable outcome over the both party win outcome?
Example time
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Ok let's take the Google search example for a ride.
I'm looking for a new pair of headphones. They must be closed, really good quality, and nice looking. I want a good price. But most importantly, they must have favorable reviews. I've spent a few days searching google for reviews and specifications. I've settled on the Shure SRH840 (can't wait for them to get here).
From Shure's perspective, let's see if they could see exactly what I searched for! They would see exactly what I wanted based on the reviews. Then they could decide whether or not their products matched exactly what I'm looking for. Wouldn't Shure be interested in paying to put their headphone, along with all the information I was looking, right in front of my eyes? That would be a win win situation. I save myself some time researching, and Shure makes some money off of me.
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(How do you type an asterisk?) Please note that in a real world application Shure would not see what I searched for. Instead they would target by telling google what type of people looking for such and such information would want Shure stuff.
But unfortunately advertising has not reached that ideal point yet. There are advertisers who have shitty products that barely function, and they try to target uneducated people. This could be an example of good targeting too, because the advertiser can reach its intended target: the idiot. Unfortunately because of the inefficiencies of ad targeting systems, we have people like you and me who are mistaken for idiots (at least I'm hoping it's a mistake) and served these ads for shitty ass products that we don't want. These targeting inefficiencies add noise to the system and not only serve us unwanted ads, but block the wanted ads. They also make advertising less attractive for people who have genuinely good products that could potentially be exactly what some people want.
It's understandable that you and most people hate ads because they've been quite inefficient. And so far advertiser's haven't been able to target to the point of relevancy. Instead they employ a brute force method of either spamming the masses (television) or minimal targeting and slightly less spamming (Google ads). But I believe there is a place for ads to be beneficial by letting companies pay to get favorable information to a target audience, and I believe Google is trying to achieve that.
That sounds an awful like going to a webpage, for example Google, typing in a query, and having the results be appropriate and useful.
(Roughly, how Google was before it stopped being that and started serving useless shit like dozens of the same mailing list mirrors, shareware download sites and shopping aggregate sites).
"""Theoretically speaking, isn't being targeted by advertising at absolute efficiency being given exactly what you want when you want it?"""
No, because part of the point of advertising is to convince you that you want it. Perfect advertising would be such that whatever they show you, you buy.