In another life, I worked for small webdev/marketing consultancy. Their clients were multilayer marketing firms, subscription services startup and other startups.
The company was run by car salesperson types.
And their clients were even more sleazy. One of the popular joke they repeated with clients was that everyone is unhappy, and if they are not, then they haven't seen the right ad.
It was pretty amazing to see "startup" founders come in and say they want to make the world a better place. Then say they need to target stupid people because they spend the most money. Or only an idiot would buy their crap but there are a lot of idiots.
A lot of subscription services are started by rich stay at home spouses. Many of them didn't even really care about about making money but just wanted it as a status symbol and a way to get their pictures appear in their friend's feed. It was funny how wanted to make sure their friends saw their ad, even though they knew their friends will never buy whatever.
After working there for a year, I decided I will never deal with anything remotely related to adtech. Professionally, I am not yet fully removed from adtech. Stuff I work on now is indirectly used by adtech companies.
But I used to spend a lot of time making websites monetized with AdWords. Now I do algotrading as a hobby and feel a lot better about it. There are no false pretenses. It is just about making money. Honest, pure, simple. And it is challenging.
The company was run by car salesperson types.
And their clients were even more sleazy. One of the popular joke they repeated with clients was that everyone is unhappy, and if they are not, then they haven't seen the right ad.
It was pretty amazing to see "startup" founders come in and say they want to make the world a better place. Then say they need to target stupid people because they spend the most money. Or only an idiot would buy their crap but there are a lot of idiots.
A lot of subscription services are started by rich stay at home spouses. Many of them didn't even really care about about making money but just wanted it as a status symbol and a way to get their pictures appear in their friend's feed. It was funny how wanted to make sure their friends saw their ad, even though they knew their friends will never buy whatever.
After working there for a year, I decided I will never deal with anything remotely related to adtech. Professionally, I am not yet fully removed from adtech. Stuff I work on now is indirectly used by adtech companies.
But I used to spend a lot of time making websites monetized with AdWords. Now I do algotrading as a hobby and feel a lot better about it. There are no false pretenses. It is just about making money. Honest, pure, simple. And it is challenging.
So I would say ads are definitely a lot worse.