This has strong intuitive "makes sense" feel but at the same time, I would hesitate to say ALL advertising is valueless. The problem is the cost/benefit, not that there is no benefit.
I still recall tagline slogans "clunk click every trip" (Fmr UK police commissioner Robert Marks, road safety campaign after seatbelts became compulsory in the 70s) And my partner recalls the "dollar song" from Australian decimalisation in the late 1960s. So.. the memetic quality of an Ad and therefore brand recall is very very strong.
When I smoked, I smoked Gauloise for taste, and Benson and Hedges for the Ad imparted sense of self worth. There were perfectly adequate alternate french cigarettes (Gitanes) which I did NOT smoke because the ad did not appeal to me, and there were perfectly adequate alternatives to B&H which I did NOT smoke because they imparted no value to me, assessing my own image. I would not refuse to smoke anyone elses cigarette irrespective of brand, I only observe how shallow was my personal choice determination when picking a brand from 20 or more. And since I gave up smoking in 1984 this is recall from 40 years ago. I have all the B&H adverts in mind. Thats pretty strong branding.
So "doesn't match cost" I could agree. "does not work" would be a stretch too far.
I have spent the last two weeks clicking on "this add does not please me" (for various values) in google for TEMU who are blitzing my non-adblocked feeds. I won't be using TEMU any time soon. The ad worked, to negatively re-inforce me.
Their ads are frankly bizarre. They are entirely SFW objects such as a plastic clip for childrens balloons, or a padded cycle shorts, which have been hyper-sexualised into images which look extremely NSFW. I wonder how they derived these images? I suspect its GPT driven, or A/B tested in young hormone raged men.
