> I suspect the HN sentiment comes from a common feeling among techies that they are somehow immune to influence from advertising, combined with a high adoption rate of ad blockers.
I don't believe this at all. The reason I am skeptical of the effectiveness of advertising is despite engaging with dozens of people over the years, I have never had a single person provide me with convincing evidence that it works. Instead, they simply repeat "but of course it works!" similar to your comment.
I manage advertising spend for a small technology company. We spend in the 10's of thousands per month on Google and Facebook.
We can measure customer acquisition cost and we do using normal tools like Google Analytics.
We've had days where we pause our campaigns, and we get fewer new customers that day. We've had platforms pause for a period of time because of some issue, and we get fewer new customers over that period of time.
It's one data point. I'm aware of plenty of other companies with similar results to what we see.
I don't believe this at all. The reason I am skeptical of the effectiveness of advertising is despite engaging with dozens of people over the years, I have never had a single person provide me with convincing evidence that it works. Instead, they simply repeat "but of course it works!" similar to your comment.
So, where is the evidence?