Link: Advertisers paid extra to make their digital marketing worse, not better
Studies have shown that these inferences are inaccurate, if not completely wrong. For example, a 2019 study showed that a single targeting parameter, gender, derived from anonymous website visitation patterns was only 42% accurate, worse than random. If you did no targeting at all, and just did “spray and pray” with your digital ads, you’d at least hit one of the genders 50% of the time. When two parameters were taken into account – age and gender – the accuracy dropped as low as 12%. That’s like 9 times out of 10, those targeting parameters were wrong. And advertisers paid extra to make their digital marketing worse, not better.
(Emphasis my own.)
That last sentence is the kicker. How long will adtech, or their customers, ignore the increasing numbers of reports like this?