Advertising a painkiller in a hospital is also targeted advertising. The question is whether digital is somehow dangerously more effective than other forms (which are ostensibly considered "safe"). I m not surprised by your data point, you are obviously selling something to very specific to people who really need it, but this says nothing about the ability to change people's opinion on something.
And as counterpoint, if it was really so effective as you claim, why haven't we seen huge increases in ad spending lately?
>Advertising a painkiller in a hospital is also targeted advertising
And should also be banned. A painkiller being promoted and bought more by customers just because it has more money to spend in advertising is morally worse than the mere creepiness of regular (buy BS stuff you don't need) targeted advertisement.
Who needs ads?
Level the playing field with an online catalog where patients can discover (in, say, random order for each viewing, to avoid even sorting bias) all available painkillers.
You can then add voting to the catalog, so patients and doctors can weight in for how good they think the painkiller is -- but with huge fines and prison for any company trying to manipulate buy those votes.
Ad spending for anything worthwhile is insane. if you haven't seen it you're just not in the industry. I've seen keywords that go for over 60$ for a single click. And nearly all are exploitative
Google is one of the biggest companies in the world solely from advertising revenue. Same with Facebook and other social media. The more information they have about you, the more terrible the ad targeting
> you are obviously selling something to very specific to people who really need it
Is that really the "obvious" inference?
Perhaps they're just good at selling something outrageously overpriced to a category of particularly gullible marks. It wouldn't be the first time in advertising history, I'm sure.
And as counterpoint, if it was really so effective as you claim, why haven't we seen huge increases in ad spending lately?