First, I'm talking about better targeting than demo + geo. That's what 'old' media has had for like a century. What works for many D2C and DR advertisers specifically on FB as an example is a combo of: retargeting, customer list upload (using lifetime value e.g. someone who bought many times in past sees more ads), lookalike from those lists.

probably wasted a bunch of time but I went ahead and searched some things if you care to learn more.

There are a ton of sources showing value of this data and ROI. FB just recently posted this study they did with Group M which is like the biggest media buying conglomerate they touch everything. FB's research is pretty good though obviously they wouldn't publish something totally negative.

https://www.facebook.com/business/news/insights/a-full-funne...

Another recent piece surveying marketers showing IG stories have better ROI than Snap (that's our experience by a long shot too)

https://archive.is/U0NDu

App Install ads are another huge vertical for direct response which drives a ton of revenue.

I just looked at Zynga 10-k. quick word search they say from FB, google ads "In 2020, 2019 and 2018 we incurred $583.1 million, $377.2 million and $157.7 million, respectively, of these player acquisition costs."

I don't see quickly if they report a direct roi (im sure that would be closely held..) or cost per active user acquired but they do mention a ton how it's revenue driver and list all the risks from iOS privacy changes, and mention risk with more volatile ad market with covid.

and privacy/data rules impact Zynga double because they have to pay FB for instance for new users, but then they sell ads in their games.

They specifically talk a lot about building up their own 1P data (like FB) to up value on their inventory (or evidently own ad network if they are buying/building one). But the risk is iOS will be blocking a lot of this, and in my experience 'open market' ad exchange 3p data is not even close to as good as FB. and see link about build/buy their own ad network

https://investor.zynga.com/static-files/c0a44588-72cb-4e6e-9...
https://investor.zynga.com/static-files/5b5771d0-52d1-4b91-8...
https://www.adexchanger.com/ad-exchange-news/zynga-is-buildi...

No offense I don't think you know more than they do about their own businesses (and like also questioning mine...).

It bugs me that people who don't seem to work in the industry just assume they know better and that these million dollar revenue companies (sometimes billion $) are just throwing their money away because they are what. Stupid?...

Like Amazon is another great example of the high value of the type of data apple wants to get rid of. Not many companies will pay $20 for a $10 purchase at any scale. Maybe for Dollar Shave Club type business they do since they have recurring revenue projected.

I only found one kind of hit on scholar there aren't any direct response articles easily findable.

I can't read this one but the title says "Personalized ads on Facebook: An effective marketing tool for online marketers"

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09696...

and also kind of funny here is one showing FB targeting worked really well for clinical trial recruitment

https://www.researchprotocols.org/2018/1/e20