Do you mean the online to offline issue? It's a pretty big thing right now because it's actually two issues: (1) is being more efficient with ad buying, and (2) is knowing whether your online ads are actually getting people to come in and buy stuff.

Hypothetically, let's say current ROI is $1.10 for every $1 spent. We stop spending for people who already bought a diamond. Our ROI might go up to $1.12 for every $1 spent. That means the ability to avoid targeting people who already bought a ring is worth $0.02 for every $1 we spend. A company comes and says "for $0.01 on every dollar, we'll give you that ability". Of course you'd take it.

That's more or less what's happening now.

> I've used a shopping cart product for about 6 years, I still get ads for their company on my phone. No offline to online issue there and they still dont solve it.

Yeah you're hitting on another theme of modern day digital advertising. Our collection of data far outstrips our ability to actually act on it. So you'll commonly find situations where you'd assume they could know based on the data they probably collected, but for some reason they don't act on it.

>> Hypothetically, let's say current ROI is $1.10 for every $1 spent. We stop spending for people who already bought a diamond. Our ROI might go up to $1.12 for every $1 spent. That means the ability to avoid targeting people who already bought a ring is worth $0.02 for every $1 we spend. A company comes and says "for $0.01 on every dollar, we'll give you that ability". Of course you'd take it.

But this is only if you are looking at 1 user right? The advertiser is making the call between the incremental income from better tracking vs the extra income from more impressions.

It seems as if they are choosing the extra income from more, but worse impressions. If they are not solving the online ad to online purchase, which in my mind, they arent doing because it limits the advertising base, which limits ROI more than targeting