Some people, besides the ones who read HN, believe the success of online advertising service providers, including so-called "Big Tech" and "adtech", is based on fraud. Please distinguish the success of online advertising service providers, e.g., Google, versus the success of online advertisers, e.g., Joe's Pizza.

One example is Bob Hoffman. Hoffman is an ad industry veteran who suggests that despite all the advances in computing, advertising has gotten worse, not better. That is, ads today are, for various reasons, less effective at creating brands than in the past. (If so, then one might ask "Why pay for them?" There are multiple answers, none of them satisfactory. IMHO. Yours may differ.)

https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B007W8R8H6/about

https://www.bobhoffmanswebsite.com

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/171361.Bob_Hoffman

https://www.marketingsociety.com/the-library/bob-hoffman-ind...

https://the-media-leader.com/making-sense-of-it-all-bob-hoff...

https://www.amazon.com/ADSCAM-Advertising-Historys-Greatest-...

https://www.amazon.com/Advertising-Skeptics-Bob-Hoffman/dp/0...

https://podcasts.marketingsociety.com/episode/dave-dye-talks...

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/businessofstory/BOB_HOFFMA...

https://www.moreaboutadvertising.com/2023/01/ad-contrarian-b...

https://stoppress.co.nz/stoppress-series/features/a-qa-with-...