This is true of regular advertising too: many people think they're immune to it. Corporations wouldn't spend billions if it wasn't effective.
That being said, I tend to agree with you in the sense that I never buy the obscure products that are recommended to me on FB/Google.
On the other hand, I think paying YouTubers to promote products is super effective. People are extremely receptive to influencers recommending products, esp. when it doesn't seem like advertising.
Corporations wouldn't spend billions on advertising/marketing for no returns. The problem is we have no idea what works. Every single experiment says it does _something_ and that's as far as we’ve gotten.
Corporations do make mistake, but probably not consistently spending billions of dollars for no gain. For instance, Coca Cola spends 4 billions per year [1]
That being said, I tend to agree with you in the sense that I never buy the obscure products that are recommended to me on FB/Google.
On the other hand, I think paying YouTubers to promote products is super effective. People are extremely receptive to influencers recommending products, esp. when it doesn't seem like advertising.