It seems techies collectively try to avoid ads, but clearly other segments of people actively click and buy through ads. I would love to get a marketing expert's view on this. It differs by product obviously, but there must be some common character variables (gender, wealth level, ...)
I bought once through facebook ads, and now I actively try to avoid any ads
Advertisements have multiple purposes - brand awareness, product awareness, sale awareness, etc.
Coca Cola advertising is mainly brand awareness - remind you they exist but not really directing you to buy one “right now”.
Product awareness is how you learn about new product - usually trying to convince new customers, but sometimes just trying to swap existing customers. These can be “offensive” (a new product aimed at taking a competitors market share) or “defensive” (keeping existing customers from switching away). Of course this overlaps with above.
Sale awareness is how you “scoop” up customers who have been exposed to the above but haven’t bought - you’re offering a “deal” so they’re more likely to buy. Most online search-targeted advertising is this kind, and is the most immediate (click and buy) - the other two are just to make it so when you want product, you want their product.
For a while I tried creating traffic-light-free bicycle routes from my home in the suburbs to my office in Amsterdam center (because intersections, especially with trams, can sometimes take a long time.
Unfortunately there was no API with data on which intersections have traffic lights and I had to build these routes manually in Strava using satellite images.
I did learn in the process that some traffic light data is actually available from the government, but only for selected partners. The Flitsmeister app for example has it and shows at some traffic lights how long it will take for the light to turn green (in a car, not on a bicycle)
OpenStreetMap has traffic lights (at least in my municipality in the Netherlands) so it might be usable for this purpose.
Also, https://routeplanner.fietsersbond.nl/ has options for different route types including an option to avoid traffic lights if a reasonable alternative is available.
Richard Branson, he goes against so much convention:
- everyone has so much process to "hire right", but in his books he hired kinda random it seems. And seems to delegate a lot rather than "founder mode"
- the original remote worker: bought a caribbean island for cheap and managed his businesses from there
- random collections of businesses under his brand: airline, telecom, music, ...
was he just like super lucky that everything worked out for him?
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