I get where you're coming from. As someone who has had ads be "basically" what I want, I've never really believed that someone wanting to take my money for a thing I might want is _that_ misaligned in terms of interest (kind of like recruiters or real estate agents wanting you to take basically anything: they might not have your best interests at heart but they do want to close a deal). This is, of course, a naive view of the world
A sort of value-neutral narrative I've come up with recently: the ad -> sale pipeline is basically super flexible (you put in X money to get Y clicks for Z sales, but don't really need much staff on it). So if you're super good at this kind of optimization you can confidently put in the maximum about of X money to get even just some profit. And of course outbid people who are less confident.
So in the auction-based ad market, the people who will "win" the ad space will be people _who are good at auction-based ads_! Everyone who really cares about sales funnels etc will be able to get better results!
Of course there's like.... misleading copy etc, but I'm more and more convinced that the reason for the awfulness is that the people who get the slot are getting it for a mostly unrelated skill.
A sort of value-neutral narrative I've come up with recently: the ad -> sale pipeline is basically super flexible (you put in X money to get Y clicks for Z sales, but don't really need much staff on it). So if you're super good at this kind of optimization you can confidently put in the maximum about of X money to get even just some profit. And of course outbid people who are less confident.
So in the auction-based ad market, the people who will "win" the ad space will be people _who are good at auction-based ads_! Everyone who really cares about sales funnels etc will be able to get better results!
Of course there's like.... misleading copy etc, but I'm more and more convinced that the reason for the awfulness is that the people who get the slot are getting it for a mostly unrelated skill.