I am officially retired after over 46 years of gainful employment. This new life stage is a chance to count the blessings, reorient myself, focus on new goals and the road ahead. To gradually ease into the big change I started weeding out my digital presence and social media networks. If you happen to be one of the people who got “deleted”, don’t take it personally. It’s not that I don’t “like” you anymore – it just means that I don’t think our interactions would be deep and meaningful in the future.

When you spend time on social media, clicking on names of people or pages, after a while the algorithm starts showing you different ads. It thinks your interests have changed. When I noticed the change I realized that I don’t pay attention to ads anymore. We are all being bombarded with ads for products and services online, offline, in magazines and papers, on TV and radio channels, in our news feeds and social media accounts. The average person “sees” between four and seven thousand ads per day. Or, actually, we don’t see them. The phenomenon is called “ad fatigue”.

There are entire industries researching why ad fatigue happens, how to prevent it, and how to measure success in advertising. I personally don’t need to advertise anything – my life doesn’t depend on making money by selling myself, or my products, or my ideas. I wish, though, that advertisers – or their products and services – would consider my needs better, offering the things that I often search for and have no luck finding in the endless flood of useless ads.

So, what is it, that I need/want and would actually buy at this point in my life? Abraham Maslow had a pretty good grip on what motivates people. He discovered a hierarchy of human needs and depicted that as a pyramid with initially five steps. He later realized there was something motivating the people at the top of his pyramid to even higher levels of achievement and postulated a sixth step. I agree, the top is definitely there – transcendence is the pinnacle.

I am old enough to have worked my way up the pyramid to the fifth level. I have food, water, clothes, a house, a social life, friends and family, I reached (almost) my full potential. I am actively pursuing level six now. I frequently dig through the internet, searching for something that I’d spend real money on – and can’t seem to find. So why can’t Google, or Amazon, or any search engine, deliver the results that I am searching for? Simple: advertisers don’t realize that there is this untapped target group of potential customers at the top of the pyramid.

I don’t “need” shoes (something from level 1 or 2 of the pyramid) for example, but I do buy shoes often. I like shoes. Very specific shoes. It took me years to find a manufacturer or two who make “my” kind of shoes. So, if you are selling shoes, you’d have to pay close attention to what I am searching for (mostly attributes from level 5 and 6 of the pyramid) and then target your ads to deliver on those search terms – unless you really don’t want me to buy your shoes.

When I am looking to buy new shoes, here’s what I would typically search for: “wide shoes handmade in Europe out of genuine leather with flat heal and round toe box”. Now, if you’d offer my size, favourite colour, easy return policy, and payment via Klarna – we’re in business. Even if your shoes are “expensive”. Or, maybe, especially if your shoes are “expensive”.

I know, I’ve become a snob.