Ads are everywhere, but I don’t think I’ve ever bought something because of an ad. If anything they steer me away from their product. The amount of money, effort and bandwidth required to get all of these ads in front of my eyes only to be completely useless must be staggering.
Back in the days of over-the-air television I’m sure plenty of toys and foods were sold by ads. As a kid you saw other kids playing with GI Joe toys and think “I want that!” Same sort of thing probably happens in game ads now. Even as an adult I consciously resist ads but I’m sure I have become aware of a few products/services via ads and later purchased them.
For a business ads can be one of the best ways to make potential customers aware of what your business offers. But like anything else, ads can be too little or too much, in terms of both content and cost. And it’s easy to get over-saturated with ads. Like YouTube when they want you to watch several ads for a 3 minute video. Sometimes the ads are longer than the video.
I don’t buy anything I see in ads. But have bought many things other people have told me about, or I’ve stumbled on through Amazon.
The “other products you may be interested in” sort of thing are ads IMO. Same thing as when you watch an Amazon Prime video and they show an ad for one of their own shows. I’m not sure why they think that advertising their own show isn’t an ad, that’s not what I clicked Play on.