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I have a serious question. Obviously if one were to choose between an ad-free experience and an ad-full experience, one would choose ad-free. But, if ads were n

by kin 6y ago

I have a serious question. Obviously if one were to choose between an ad-free experience and an ad-full experience, one would choose ad-free. But, if ads were needed for monetization, wouldn't you choose personalized vs non-personalized? Personally, I would go with personalized because a non-personalized experienced usually has no relevancy and frankly it is inefficient use of money in this world. From there, it really comes down to companies invading your privacy, usually they make the wrong assumptions from it. Why can't there be a way for me to tell the ad-world what I'm in the market for and have them stop trying to snoop around and guess what I want? Most may say that making a Google search is enough to tell ads what I want but I think there are a ton of assumptions made there.

esrauch 6y ago
How would you imagine "tell them what you're in the market for" would work? I don't think it would work at scale; almost no user would take time to make a manually personalized ad profile instead of ... not doing that.
- jfk13 6y ago
  If I'm in the market for something, I'm likely to indicate that by doing a search for relevant terms. So the search engine could sell associated ad space to appropriate categories of advertizers. If I'm reading reviews about a certain product category, it's a fair bet I might be in the market for such a product. So the site could show me relevant ads. If I'm reading a site devoted to a particular topic or activity, the publisher might reasonably guess that I could be in the market for related products, and offer relevant ads. None of this requires any privacy-invasive tracking. If I'm reading a general news site, the site shouldn't have any more idea what I'm "in the market for" than the publisher of a print newspaper I might buy. If I'm browsing used-car listings, the site shouldn't have any idea what genre of novels I like to read, what my grocery cart usually contains, where I go to work out, or how many pets I have. Why does anyone think it's OK for a company to surreptitiously gather that sort of personal information about everyone?
- elliekelly 6y ago
  Why would it be any different from the way advertising worked before Facebook and Google? Vogue subscribers are probably in the market for new designer clothes. People who watch Cesar Milan are probably in the market for pet supplies. Someone driving down a highway is probably in the market for gas and a snack. Someone who searches for “affordable laptop” is probably in the market to buy a new computer. You don’t need to track someone’s every move to serve them relevant ads.
  - esrauch 6y ago
    I was calling out "user manually provide targeting information to ads companies" as unrealistic, the alternative of "don't have persistent user profiles for ads" is obviously possible.
grawprog 6y ago
I would choose personalized ads if ad companies would personally allow me the choice to select some predetermined categories of ads. Personalized ads created by siphoning data off everything I do not so much. Put it this way, to use an example, what kind of relationship would you prefer, someone who knows all the things about you because they asked or someone that comes up to you and is like 'yeah, I know you like this that and the other because i've been following you everywhere you go, listening to your phone calls and installed a RAT on your computer?
- artificial 6y ago
  This could be great to include on device, the ad profile that's editable there so you're in control and when an affiliated ad network is encountered on a site/platform and with user granted access. A manipulated/curated queue of interests may be shared so recent purchases can be listed to better show relevant ads. Like what if you shared you're looking for phones, or you just bought something so do or don't show more of that?
lr 6y ago
Non-personalized all the way, and for many, many reasons. Two off the top of my head: 1) You already bought the product, and now you see ads for it for the next x weeks; 2) You may not want other people (like maybe a spouse) to know you were browsing for something (like a gift, or perhaps even something untoward). On the second point, my spouse and I, each of us on our own devices, one of us can search for something, browse a website, and then the other one will start to see the ads for such in their Instagram feed (and for the record, it is usually me seeing the things my spouse is looking for). It is completely insidious and it needs to stop!
schwinn140 6y ago
The general consensus within the AdTech industry is that everything is going to be going back to the basic 'context-level' targeting. This will be very akin to the web 1.0 based targeting philosophies. Still will be relevant to what you're doing and where you're spending your digital time but will lack the cross-site personalization and hyper-detailed targeting layers currently available to advertisers.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
eddieroger 6y ago
Serious answer: non-personalized until they figure out a real, safe way of me to post my interests that doesn't involve tracking, and I think that's highly improbable to happen, so non-personalized. I don't see a way of me personalizing ads without sacrificing things I'd prefer to have - my privacy around the Internet. > it is inefficient use of money in this world That's the advertiser's problem, not mine, and their choice to spend money just as it's mine to buy what they're selling. Advertising is already largely a guessing game of how to appeal to people and where to do it, and the only way to make it easier /today/ is by violating our privacy. They could spend the money however they want and choose to advertise.
tomjen3 6y ago
In theory personalized would be better. In practice I have seen several ads targeted just based on "living in large geographical area" and is "any gender aged 15 to 50". The ones that were personalized where insulting. Like Facebook showing me ads for healing stones when I have my religion marked as atheists. Facebook needs a lot less data and to force their adbuyers to actually target their ads. Probably though they don't because then the ad buyers will find out how little they actually gain from the ads.
eyesee 6y ago
I think contextual targeting is more than sufficient, and in fact is the only kind of advertisement that I would gauge is effective for my personal use. If I'm searching for a waffle iron, a restaurant to visit or a new car I expect to see relevant ads because that's exactly what I'm searching for. There's no need to violate my privacy by extrapolating my interests based on my site history. In fact this is what leads me to see ads for something well after I've already made my purchase.
- criddell 6y ago
  If you are searching for a restaurant, what makes up the context? Is it just the query or are you okay with Google using what it knows about you to show you restaurants in your area?
  - cptskippy 6y ago
    I think the argument being made is that, even when they know everything about you, they still can't target you properly. An example, I visit Amazon and my recommendations for the "buy it again" section are all very expensive networking equipment that I literally just ordered from Amazon to build out a new home network. There aren't any recommendations for consumables, like the box of exam gloves, hair gel, or the windshield wiper fluid tablets that I purchased in the last 6 months.
- Terretta 6y ago
  This is the key. Major firms that switched from outsourced “personalized” ads (ad networks w/ retargeting) to selling ads against content, found their ad revenue go up, and their advertisers found conversions go up. Turns out that 50 years of advertising industry had gotten pretty good at tailoring ad messaging and placement to content for moving product — much stronger than endlessly showing people ads for a product they just searched and already purchased.
fsflover 6y ago
Personalized ads is a way to trick you into buying something which you had not necessarily planned to buy, i.e. psychological manipulation. The more they know about you, the better they can manipulate you into buying their product (whether you actually need it or not). I don't understand how anyone would agree on that.
- artificial 6y ago
  I'm not fond of the current display of ads on websites and I block them mercilessly. If I'm looking for shoes, I'm shown more shoes in ads (this is my reality right now.) How is that trickery? Unless you're considering any advertisement manipulation. The part where the current model falls down is it doesn't stop (since there's no means to really show that one isn't interested) and a big ticket item like a toilet becomes your inaugural purchase in your new toilet buying hobby. The tech works by identifying users into audiences and marketers use this to allocate campaigns and budget to. Typically this doesn't include a lot of personal demographic information (FB & Google). Filling out a card with interests and opting in would be the best way to do this, something like rough location, age bracket (18-25, 26-34 etc.), income bracket, types of product interests maybe including a few categories of items (designer pants, tech backpack, industrial hardcore music, pizza delivery) recently purchased in a rotating queue.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > Unless you're considering any advertisement manipulation. Any advertisement is manipulation. Think about it: the purpose of an ad is to influence your decisions primarily for the benefit the self-interest of the party that paid for the ad (otherwise they wouldn't have paid for it). Any benefit you derive from your decision is secondary, and doesn't typically factor into the decision to take out the ad. That's pretty clearly manipulation. However, there are definitely differences in how manipulative an ad can be. An ad for a plumber in the yellow pages is not very manipulative, but a targeted political ad meant to make you angry that's been interjected into your Facebook feed is very manipulative.
    - 6y ago
pythux 6y ago
I would probably always pick non-personalized, as my assumption is that the less relevant they are, the easiest it would become for me to ignore them (assuming they are not more intrusive than the personalized ones).
- Fernicia 6y ago
  This isn't a scalable solution. If the value per ad decreases, services will need to display more til the user generates enough value to support the costs they incur. If TV was able to cater ads to individual viewers then ad breaks would be a lot shorter.
  - kaibee 6y ago
    > If TV was able to cater ads to individual viewers then ad breaks would be a lot shorter. Or they could sell the same amount of ads as they do now for higher prices. Which one do you think the company would pick? The length of ad breaks is determined by what 'price' the customer is willing to pay in terms of their time.
  - pythux 6y ago
    > This isn't a scalable solution. I am not sure what your point is. > If the value per ad decreases, services will need to display more til the user generates enough value to support the costs they incur. What they need to do is to find a way to pay their bills. If ads allow them to do that then it's great (maybe non-personalized work well enough? Or contextual targeting, as others have suggested in this thread). If users cannot stand the increasing amount of ads then they will stop using their service. Or maybe these companies can adopt a mixed model where people can pay to not see the super intrusive ads, and everyone else gets the ads?
  - basscomm 6y ago
    > If TV was able to cater ads to individual viewers then ad breaks would be a lot shorter. Personalized ads is one of the 'features' of ATSC 3.0 whenever that finally rolls out: https://www.techhive.com/article/3268635/next-gen-tv-to-usher-in-viewer-tracking-and-personalized-ads.html https://www.techhive.com/article/3268635/next-gen-tv-to-ushe...
m12k 6y ago
If personalized ads meant ads that were actually good recommendations for products I could be interested in and would be grateful to be informed about the existence of - maybe. The reality of it is that personalized ads are mostly just ads from those with the money and demographics info to stalk me around the internet - e.g. webshops running after me, believing that I abandoned my shopping cart simply because I got distracted, not because I was trying to figure out what the shipping cost would be and their site didn't leave me any other options. Or sites trying to sell me another vacuum cleaner weeks after I already bought one. The point I'm trying to make is that personalized ads are very poor at actually recommending me anything I care about. They're like semi-incompetent sales clerks in a physical store - I'd really prefer to do my shopping without them breathing down my neck. So long story short, personalized ads are just as useless to me as un-personalized ads, only creepier, and I'd prefer not to be stalked.
- Fernicia 6y ago
  Criticism like this essentially boil down to the adverts not being targeted enough. Lumping you in the wrong group, not knowing enough about your intentions, etc.
  - vlovich123 6y ago
    An alternative interpretation is that the level of stalking, intrusion, & privacy you would have to give up to be targeted enough to make it useful isn't an acceptable trade off (& isn't even technically possible in the near future).
  - m12k 6y ago
    No, I'd say it boils down to ads being a bad way to discover products you are interested in. I love sites like thewirecutter or similar for getting actual recommendations, when I want to seek something out. Randomly getting products recommended in a drive-by fashion as I surf around the internet doesn't work, but even if it did work, it's neither the format nor timing in which I'd ever want to receive these recommendations anyway.
  - ubercow13 6y ago
sleepinseattle 6y ago
No. Ads should be related to the content, not personalized to the person viewing the content.
- intopieces 6y ago
  While I agree in principle, I don't think this is manageable given how diverse the content is on the Internet. What sort of thing are you going to sell me when I'm reading a news article about wars in the Middle East?
  - frickinLasers 6y ago
    A subscription to Foreign Affairs Magazine A device on which to read articles about wars in the middle east An donation to Red Cross/Doctors without Borders/relevant charity
    - Closi 6y ago
      To continue adding: Books on the history of the Middle East... A Netflix documentary about the Middle East, offering a free Netflix trial if you want to watch it...
cabaalis 6y ago
If we had a truly diverse internet that wasn't driven by social media, non-personalized would work fine. Want to reach an audience interested in computers? Buy ads on sites that talk about computers. Instead, we have centralized distribution of content that requires personal knowledge to cater ads to individuals in order for them to be remotely effective.
vladvasiliu 6y ago
I would say non-personalized. Like many siblings say, I often see ads for products after I've already bought them (or something similar). That's just useless. I also remember a funny experience with Google Maps 2 years ago. I had my home and work addresses on profile. They're both in the same city and close enough that it's possible to walk between the two. I was looking at the closest way to go from the office to another place not far away, on foot. The top suggestions google thought I would have a use for while looking around my destinations were hotels. When I live maybe an hour away. So I figure if Google's recommendations are so useless even though I gave them precise information, how exactly is some random adtech company going to figure something useful for me when all they supposedly have is infered information?
bonestamp2 6y ago
Non-personalized -- I want to give up as little personal data as possible. Even if they claim that it's anonymous, with enough browsing data and other signals (IP, browser fingerprinting, etc), it eventually becomes possible to identify you.
benhurmarcel 6y ago
Apart from the privacy aspect already mentioned, I'd choose non-personalized to minimize their effectiveness. Inherently ads are made to manipulate your behavior. I'd choose being manipulated the least possible.
rahoulb 6y ago
I would prefer "non-personalised" - simply because "personalised" means that people and companies I know nothing about know lots about me.
fossuser 6y ago
I'd rather not have personalized ads because I'd rather there not be an incentive to harvest my data to leverage for personalization. I may be an outlier since I generally try and turn this stuff off everywhere. I also pay for a lot of ad-free content that I like (Stratechery, Stay Tuned with Preet, Persuasion, etc.). I think the incentives from ads are a corrupting influence in building stuff that users want. I think the 'personalization is good for users' argument is often just a rationalization.
trts 6y ago
The answer for me is no. As I have become increasingly aggressive about blocking ads, trackers, social media, using web containers, and setting up pihole, the ads I do see are hilariously untargeted. It's been fascinating to get a glimpse of the bigger universe of ad content for women, doctors, lawyers, the infirmed... instead of just the $150 hoodies and baldness pills I used to see constantly.
kerkeslager 6y ago
> But, if ads were needed for monetization, wouldn't you choose personalized vs non-personalized? Ads aren't needed for monetization of anything I care about. Ads are only needed for businesses to scale quickly without having to actually provide a service worth paying for, and that's something we would be better off without.
elliekelly 6y ago
Why would I prefer to buy from the salesperson who stalks me first?
jka 6y ago
Given a choice and assuming that ads stick around, I'd prefer to pull relevant personalized advertising when I want to see it. In other words, allow advertisers to put all their personalized / targeted ads into a common ecosystem, but allow me to dip into that when I'm looking for some specific purchase. That would mean that advertisers wouldn't have tracking on almost every website and inside almost every smartphone app, gathering information, taking up screen real estate, and consuming valuable bandwidth and user attention.
whoopdedo 6y ago
> Why can't there be a way for me to tell the ad-world what I'm in the market for Because there's no money in that. What's the value in selling you something that you've already decided you want to buy? Advertisers are trying to get into your head and manipulate your perception to make you open your wallet where you otherwise wouldn't have. And when you do decide to purchase a product, that it's the advertiser's brand which you think of first.
- xenonite 6y ago
  I think the OP meant general "market", not the "concrete product X". Hence the decision has not yet been made.
jfb 6y ago
Why on Earth should the Pareto optimality of the advertising business matter to anyone not in the advertising business? That is an extremely alien concern to me.
amelius 6y ago
You never felt creeped out by personalized ads? I.e. you search for X on website number 1, then visit totally unrelated website number 2 and get an ad for X?
ebg13 6y ago
> But, if ads were needed for monetization, wouldn't you choose personalized vs non-personalized? I looked online at mattress once. I did some research, made a decision, and even bought one. And then for the next month at least everywhere I looked was MATTRESSES! DO YOU LIKE MATTRESSES? HAVE YOU HEARD OF THIS THING CALLED MATTRESSES? HEY MAYBE YOU WANT MATTRESSES! GET MATTRESSES HERE! Like, mfer, I already bought my mattress. Step off. [edit] I guess someone out there _really_ likes mattress ads.
egypturnash 6y ago
I’ll take non-personalized, thanks. I don’t want advertisers sitting there making profiles about me that include everything they can guess.
- ffpip 6y ago
  Exactly. If I leave on personalization , I always fell like they will collect extra data, just for the sake of it.
the_other 6y ago
I want content-linked advertising. If I’m reading a music blog I want to see ads for bands and synths, not razors and wrenches. If I’m reading stackoverflow I’d be content to gloss over ads for text editors and web hosting. Not the same f*ing razor ad. Call me old school (I’m a 70s baby, 80s child). I enjoyed the content-linked advertising in magazines. I actually read them and used them to learn the market around my interest. Robot selected ads which follow me around claiming to know what I like based on interactions I had do all the following: - creep me out because I know I’m being followed - annoy Me by removing any semblance of my own agency in the event: at least with content-linked ads I have chosen to consume that content and I feel like I want to in that zone - annoy me by getting me wrong - annoy me by assuming I’m just like everyone else that ticked the same boxes/set the same flags - annoy me by presenting mostly mainstream stuff rather than small-scale/artisan/bespoke/local stuff that would be much more interesting. I appreciate that this one ought to work better if the advertising host/network knew where I was browsing from (which is a step towards tracking) The tracking and bidding has completely destroyed what was actually good about advertising for the consumer.
ardy42 6y ago
> I have a serious question. Obviously if one were to choose between an ad-free experience and an ad-full experience, one would choose ad-free. But, if ads were needed for monetization, wouldn't you choose personalized vs non-personalized? No. If I have to be surrounded by messages trying to manipulate me (which is what ads are, by the way), then I don't want them to be personalized for extra effectiveness (at manipulating me). I don't really understand how some people seem to treat ads as some kind of neutral, helpful information source. It's almost like saying "I don't mind propaganda, since it's such an efficient way to find out what to think."
- SebastianKra 6y ago
  Exactly! I feel like most people already don't realize how much they are being manipulated. Each day is a struggle against malicous influences. Even though I'm aware of it, I still fall for YouTube recommendations. My brain still lights up when I see an ad for a product I recognize. I'm still impressed by the sponsored Amazon search results. Personalization only makes this worse. Now, that product that I made the difficult decision to pass on will taunt and distract me even in situations when I should be focusing on different things.
petters 6y ago
Definitely personalized. I stopped using FB a couple of years ago, but when I did, its ads were amazingly good (I almost miss them sometimes). FB would show me an ad for the perfect obscure Kickstarter project that I was happy to back. Win-win.
noja 6y ago
> But, if ads were needed for monetization That's a big if.
dwighttk 6y ago
Why do I care about the advertisers efficiency? If you were talking about some sort of imagined strong AI personalization I might prefer that assuming ad free wasn’t an option, but this absurd, deep from within the uncanny valley personalization is worse than generic advertising. The only place I am exposed to generic ads are when watching sporting events at a bar or at someone’s house. Everywhere else I get ads blocked or get “targeted” ads that mildly (at best) offend me that that is what the algorithm thinks I’d be interested in buying. I prefer the generic ads.
sveme 6y ago
Most ads are related to previous searches or visits on the web. I once searched for a new car mirror - now I get car parts ads everywhere. Wouldn‘t it be smarter to have context-dependent ads? If I‘m reading a blog on hexagonal architecture, wouldn‘t I be interested in books on that and related topics? Those kinds of ads would not necessitate tracking.
reaperducer 6y ago
non-personalized experienced usually has no relevancy In my experience, it's the opposite. Non-personalized ads show me a broad range of items that I might possibly be interested in. The same way that newspaper, television, and magazine ads do. While personalized ads show me the same ads for the same products that I've either already purchased, or no am no longer interested in for weeks or months after I've moved on to other things. frankly it is inefficient use of money in this world I find this argument... odd. Why, as a consumer, which is how you've framed the overall argument, would I care even a little about the efficiency use of money in this world? I think to refine your point: Why would I give fark one about whether an advertiser's money is spent efficiently, and why is that even my concern at all? Why can't there be a way for me to tell the ad-world what I'm in the market for There is. For example, if you're into gardening, you read gardening magazines and garden-related advertisers advertise in those magazines. Easy peasy. This is old tech that the dead tree folks figured out centuries ago. What's changed is that digital advertising isn't about actual advertising. It's about getting rich quick and easy without doing any heavy lifting that the legacy ad companies did.
backtoyoujim 6y ago
" if ads were needed for monetization," It is a solution to monetization. It is not the only solution. Lack of economic development has been because of the addictive nature of fascist behavior. Non-personalized vs personalized is not the question for me; companies might still collect the same data from my "experience" habits. If they are going to do that I want more profit from it than a custom news page. Like I want money from the company leveraging my identity for the company's bottom line. I want some of that money if you are going to get a simulacra of me in a fucking database. And until we get there we are stuck with a few rich lawless men keeping me for themselves.
nfsdjkghewyuh 6y ago
Wouldn't it make the least sense for advertisers to spend money showing ads to people who are already in the market for their product. Those people will probably be looking it up directly, which is what their website and SEO are there for. If anything contextual ads are probably better for people in the market, so when you search for their product they always appear in the first page of results. I would think ads are meant to drive you into the market for a product and service, and other marketing tools are made to get you to pick a specific offering.
- sosborn 6y ago
  > Wouldn't it make the least sense for advertisers to spend money showing ads to people who are already in the market for their product For manufacturers? Sure. But what about storefronts? Having the best price won't matter if no one knows about it.
  - nfsdjkghewyuh 6y ago
    I was forgetting storefronts, they might benefit from knowing a user is in the market for a good or service. My thinking (probably wrong) is, if I am in the market for (to use the example someone else mentioned) a pebble smartwatch then I am probably going to look for the best price myself. No reason for storefronts to spend money putting their ads with their price up on unrelated sites and apps, if I'm going to search for a good price for free. It would probably be better just to buy and ad on the search term "pebble smartwatch" and advertise the price.
elcomet 6y ago
If I control the variables for personalization, yes. If I don't control them, then no. For example websites could have variables like mental state (like knowing of you're depressed) and show you ads that could "work better" on you. I think this is unacceptable.
DennisP 6y ago
Non-personalized, because it's less likely to work on me. I don't want to be manipulated. If I decide on my own to buy something, it won't be hard to find. I don't need to tell advertisers what I'm in the market for. I can just tell Google or Amazon what I want and I'll find it immediately, even though I'm blocking the ads.
kd913 6y ago
To me it's more about trust regarding the data being gathered and what it is being used for. I care a lot more about how a company can misuse that personalized data to say sway an election. If the data being gathered is purely to give me better recommendations for better targeted products then sure. If that level of personalization is restricted to just me as a user where I and only I can select the ad selection and that personalization remains on my machine. The Facebook CA scandal demonstrates to me how frankly these companies are straight untrustworthy. I do not want political/security/insurance/job agencies getting anywhere near any of this data.
oh_sigh 6y ago
I would vote for customized ads, but customized based on the content I'm viewing, not customized based on what they think I want or like. If I'm reading an article about astronomy, give me a link to telescopes to buy. Don't show me the washer/dryer that I've been looking for in another context in my life. I would even take content-customized ads with slight tweaks based on my personal profile, but still relevant to the content at hand. For example, if I'm in eastern Nebraska, give me the telescope ad from the example above. But if I'm in Philadelphia, maybe show me a link to the observatory at the Franklin Institute.
barnabee 6y ago
I’d prefer ads that are not relevant to me because the chance of them manipulating me psychologically into doing something I wouldn’t rationally do is lower. Advertising is the new smoking. We do not fully understand the damage it does to society and our planet, but it is huge.
scarface74 6y ago
No take the Overcast podcast player for instance. Marco, the author, didn’t want any third party mystery meat SDK in his application and he wanted to control advertising. He created his own ad platform. Ads are based on the category of the podcast you are listening to. Nothing creepy about it and I’ve found quite a few relevant podcasts. The entire podcast until recently has been supported by no more targeting than guessing about the demographics.
ConsiderCrying 6y ago
As others have pointed out, if you're being subjected to consumeristic propaganda, might as well make it non-targeted so there's less chance of you buying in. It's like being dipped in a tub full of insects. You could choose your favorite type of insect to be crawling all over you... but would that really make the situation that much better? Personally, the only time I had mildly relevant ads was back when I had an account on Instagram. It served ads for local businesses that actually kinda matched my interests. The rest is just "oh, you searched for info on a long-dead general? Must be interested in WW2 replica medals, buy fifty!"
alkonaut 6y ago
Personalized means I’m buying more relevant ads and paying with my integrity. It’s better to see relevant than irrelevant ads but the amount of personal information I’m willing to give up is tiny and includes zero of my history online.
xbkingx 6y ago
The problem for me is that I honestly can't think of more than a half dozen instances in the last 20+ years where ads made me aware of something new that I actually wanted, and zero of those were web-based. I can't think of a single time ads swayed my opinion to purchase something I didn't want or caused me to buy something earlier than I would have otherwise. At BEST there have been a few ads that have led me explore options within that market, but the company posting the ad had zero impact on my decision (it almost deters me, since that ad money could have been spent making the product better or cheaper, so the competition is probably a better buy). Why would I want even 1% of the content I'm consuming to be polluted with irrelevant garbage? That's a huge amount of time and mental effort filtering out stuff like toothpaste ads because I googled directions to my dentist's office. Nope. Ad blockers on EVERYTHING and custom CSS for sites that whine about ad blockers or display a sea of whitespace to inflate page view times.
jes5199 6y ago
oh gosh what was that article claiming that pre-internet, ads functioned as a monetary sacrifice that companies could make as a demonstration of their solvency. if you saw an ad frequently, that meant it was a big, stable company, that was preferable to have an ongoing relationship with. Personalized ads don't have that property. I think the author compared personalized ads to direct-mailers - those junk grocery store flyers that show up in your snailmail. They don't signal anything other than "this product exists"
lopmotr 6y ago
This was the bold new idea of Google, back in the day. At that time, the internet was plastered with banner ads for cars and shoes and other lowest common denominator crap. Personalized ads were a good thing!
thewebcount 6y ago
> But, if ads were needed for monetization, wouldn't you choose personalized vs non-personalized? No. I simply do not ever look at ads. I've never, in 30 years of browsing the web, intentionally clicked on an ad. Furthermore, I don't want a company keeping a dossier on me. The exchange of seeing ads for something I might want isn't worth the assault on my privacy, if it worked. And it doesn't work, so no thank you.

by kin 6y ago

esrauch 6y ago

How would you imagine "tell them what you're in the market for" would work? I don't think it would work at scale; almost no user would take time to make a manually personalized ad profile instead of ... not doing that.

jfk13 6y ago
If I'm in the market for something, I'm likely to indicate that by doing a search for relevant terms. So the search engine could sell associated ad space to appropriate categories of advertizers. If I'm reading reviews about a certain product category, it's a fair bet I might be in the market for such a product. So the site could show me relevant ads. If I'm reading a site devoted to a particular topic or activity, the publisher might reasonably guess that I could be in the market for related products, and offer relevant ads. None of this requires any privacy-invasive tracking. If I'm reading a general news site, the site shouldn't have any more idea what I'm "in the market for" than the publisher of a print newspaper I might buy. If I'm browsing used-car listings, the site shouldn't have any idea what genre of novels I like to read, what my grocery cart usually contains, where I go to work out, or how many pets I have. Why does anyone think it's OK for a company to surreptitiously gather that sort of personal information about everyone?
elliekelly 6y ago
Why would it be any different from the way advertising worked before Facebook and Google? Vogue subscribers are probably in the market for new designer clothes. People who watch Cesar Milan are probably in the market for pet supplies. Someone driving down a highway is probably in the market for gas and a snack. Someone who searches for “affordable laptop” is probably in the market to buy a new computer. You don’t need to track someone’s every move to serve them relevant ads.
- esrauch 6y ago
  I was calling out "user manually provide targeting information to ads companies" as unrealistic, the alternative of "don't have persistent user profiles for ads" is obviously possible.

grawprog 6y ago

I would choose personalized ads if ad companies would personally allow me the choice to select some predetermined categories of ads. Personalized ads created by siphoning data off everything I do not so much. Put it this way, to use an example, what kind of relationship would you prefer, someone who knows all the things about you because they asked or someone that comes up to you and is like 'yeah, I know you like this that and the other because i've been following you everywhere you go, listening to your phone calls and installed a RAT on your computer?

artificial 6y ago
This could be great to include on device, the ad profile that's editable there so you're in control and when an affiliated ad network is encountered on a site/platform and with user granted access. A manipulated/curated queue of interests may be shared so recent purchases can be listed to better show relevant ads. Like what if you shared you're looking for phones, or you just bought something so do or don't show more of that?

lr 6y ago

Non-personalized all the way, and for many, many reasons. Two off the top of my head: 1) You already bought the product, and now you see ads for it for the next x weeks; 2) You may not want other people (like maybe a spouse) to know you were browsing for something (like a gift, or perhaps even something untoward). On the second point, my spouse and I, each of us on our own devices, one of us can search for something, browse a website, and then the other one will start to see the ads for such in their Instagram feed (and for the record, it is usually me seeing the things my spouse is looking for). It is completely insidious and it needs to stop!

schwinn140 6y ago

The general consensus within the AdTech industry is that everything is going to be going back to the basic 'context-level' targeting. This will be very akin to the web 1.0 based targeting philosophies. Still will be relevant to what you're doing and where you're spending your digital time but will lack the cross-site personalization and hyper-detailed targeting layers currently available to advertisers.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

eddieroger 6y ago

Serious answer: non-personalized until they figure out a real, safe way of me to post my interests that doesn't involve tracking, and I think that's highly improbable to happen, so non-personalized. I don't see a way of me personalizing ads without sacrificing things I'd prefer to have - my privacy around the Internet. > it is inefficient use of money in this world That's the advertiser's problem, not mine, and their choice to spend money just as it's mine to buy what they're selling. Advertising is already largely a guessing game of how to appeal to people and where to do it, and the only way to make it easier /today/ is by violating our privacy. They could spend the money however they want and choose to advertise.

tomjen3 6y ago

In theory personalized would be better. In practice I have seen several ads targeted just based on "living in large geographical area" and is "any gender aged 15 to 50". The ones that were personalized where insulting. Like Facebook showing me ads for healing stones when I have my religion marked as atheists. Facebook needs a lot less data and to force their adbuyers to actually target their ads. Probably though they don't because then the ad buyers will find out how little they actually gain from the ads.

eyesee 6y ago

I think contextual targeting is more than sufficient, and in fact is the only kind of advertisement that I would gauge is effective for my personal use. If I'm searching for a waffle iron, a restaurant to visit or a new car I expect to see relevant ads because that's exactly what I'm searching for. There's no need to violate my privacy by extrapolating my interests based on my site history. In fact this is what leads me to see ads for something well after I've already made my purchase.

criddell 6y ago
If you are searching for a restaurant, what makes up the context? Is it just the query or are you okay with Google using what it knows about you to show you restaurants in your area?
- cptskippy 6y ago
  I think the argument being made is that, even when they know everything about you, they still can't target you properly. An example, I visit Amazon and my recommendations for the "buy it again" section are all very expensive networking equipment that I literally just ordered from Amazon to build out a new home network. There aren't any recommendations for consumables, like the box of exam gloves, hair gel, or the windshield wiper fluid tablets that I purchased in the last 6 months.
Terretta 6y ago
This is the key. Major firms that switched from outsourced “personalized” ads (ad networks w/ retargeting) to selling ads against content, found their ad revenue go up, and their advertisers found conversions go up. Turns out that 50 years of advertising industry had gotten pretty good at tailoring ad messaging and placement to content for moving product — much stronger than endlessly showing people ads for a product they just searched and already purchased.

fsflover 6y ago

Personalized ads is a way to trick you into buying something which you had not necessarily planned to buy, i.e. psychological manipulation. The more they know about you, the better they can manipulate you into buying their product (whether you actually need it or not). I don't understand how anyone would agree on that.

artificial 6y ago
I'm not fond of the current display of ads on websites and I block them mercilessly. If I'm looking for shoes, I'm shown more shoes in ads (this is my reality right now.) How is that trickery? Unless you're considering any advertisement manipulation. The part where the current model falls down is it doesn't stop (since there's no means to really show that one isn't interested) and a big ticket item like a toilet becomes your inaugural purchase in your new toilet buying hobby. The tech works by identifying users into audiences and marketers use this to allocate campaigns and budget to. Typically this doesn't include a lot of personal demographic information (FB & Google). Filling out a card with interests and opting in would be the best way to do this, something like rough location, age bracket (18-25, 26-34 etc.), income bracket, types of product interests maybe including a few categories of items (designer pants, tech backpack, industrial hardcore music, pizza delivery) recently purchased in a rotating queue.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > Unless you're considering any advertisement manipulation. Any advertisement is manipulation. Think about it: the purpose of an ad is to influence your decisions primarily for the benefit the self-interest of the party that paid for the ad (otherwise they wouldn't have paid for it). Any benefit you derive from your decision is secondary, and doesn't typically factor into the decision to take out the ad. That's pretty clearly manipulation. However, there are definitely differences in how manipulative an ad can be. An ad for a plumber in the yellow pages is not very manipulative, but a targeted political ad meant to make you angry that's been interjected into your Facebook feed is very manipulative.
  - 6y ago

pythux 6y ago

I would probably always pick non-personalized, as my assumption is that the less relevant they are, the easiest it would become for me to ignore them (assuming they are not more intrusive than the personalized ones).

Fernicia 6y ago
This isn't a scalable solution. If the value per ad decreases, services will need to display more til the user generates enough value to support the costs they incur. If TV was able to cater ads to individual viewers then ad breaks would be a lot shorter.
- kaibee 6y ago
  > If TV was able to cater ads to individual viewers then ad breaks would be a lot shorter. Or they could sell the same amount of ads as they do now for higher prices. Which one do you think the company would pick? The length of ad breaks is determined by what 'price' the customer is willing to pay in terms of their time.
- pythux 6y ago
  > This isn't a scalable solution. I am not sure what your point is. > If the value per ad decreases, services will need to display more til the user generates enough value to support the costs they incur. What they need to do is to find a way to pay their bills. If ads allow them to do that then it's great (maybe non-personalized work well enough? Or contextual targeting, as others have suggested in this thread). If users cannot stand the increasing amount of ads then they will stop using their service. Or maybe these companies can adopt a mixed model where people can pay to not see the super intrusive ads, and everyone else gets the ads?
- basscomm 6y ago
  > If TV was able to cater ads to individual viewers then ad breaks would be a lot shorter. Personalized ads is one of the 'features' of ATSC 3.0 whenever that finally rolls out: https://www.techhive.com/article/3268635/next-gen-tv-to-usher-in-viewer-tracking-and-personalized-ads.html https://www.techhive.com/article/3268635/next-gen-tv-to-ushe...

m12k 6y ago

If personalized ads meant ads that were actually good recommendations for products I could be interested in and would be grateful to be informed about the existence of - maybe. The reality of it is that personalized ads are mostly just ads from those with the money and demographics info to stalk me around the internet - e.g. webshops running after me, believing that I abandoned my shopping cart simply because I got distracted, not because I was trying to figure out what the shipping cost would be and their site didn't leave me any other options. Or sites trying to sell me another vacuum cleaner weeks after I already bought one. The point I'm trying to make is that personalized ads are very poor at actually recommending me anything I care about. They're like semi-incompetent sales clerks in a physical store - I'd really prefer to do my shopping without them breathing down my neck. So long story short, personalized ads are just as useless to me as un-personalized ads, only creepier, and I'd prefer not to be stalked.

Fernicia 6y ago
Criticism like this essentially boil down to the adverts not being targeted enough. Lumping you in the wrong group, not knowing enough about your intentions, etc.
- vlovich123 6y ago
  An alternative interpretation is that the level of stalking, intrusion, & privacy you would have to give up to be targeted enough to make it useful isn't an acceptable trade off (& isn't even technically possible in the near future).
- m12k 6y ago
  No, I'd say it boils down to ads being a bad way to discover products you are interested in. I love sites like thewirecutter or similar for getting actual recommendations, when I want to seek something out. Randomly getting products recommended in a drive-by fashion as I surf around the internet doesn't work, but even if it did work, it's neither the format nor timing in which I'd ever want to receive these recommendations anyway.
- ubercow13 6y ago

sleepinseattle 6y ago

No. Ads should be related to the content, not personalized to the person viewing the content.

intopieces 6y ago
While I agree in principle, I don't think this is manageable given how diverse the content is on the Internet. What sort of thing are you going to sell me when I'm reading a news article about wars in the Middle East?
- frickinLasers 6y ago
  A subscription to Foreign Affairs Magazine A device on which to read articles about wars in the middle east An donation to Red Cross/Doctors without Borders/relevant charity
  - Closi 6y ago
    To continue adding: Books on the history of the Middle East... A Netflix documentary about the Middle East, offering a free Netflix trial if you want to watch it...

cabaalis 6y ago

If we had a truly diverse internet that wasn't driven by social media, non-personalized would work fine. Want to reach an audience interested in computers? Buy ads on sites that talk about computers. Instead, we have centralized distribution of content that requires personal knowledge to cater ads to individuals in order for them to be remotely effective.

vladvasiliu 6y ago

I would say non-personalized. Like many siblings say, I often see ads for products after I've already bought them (or something similar). That's just useless. I also remember a funny experience with Google Maps 2 years ago. I had my home and work addresses on profile. They're both in the same city and close enough that it's possible to walk between the two. I was looking at the closest way to go from the office to another place not far away, on foot. The top suggestions google thought I would have a use for while looking around my destinations were hotels. When I live maybe an hour away. So I figure if Google's recommendations are so useless even though I gave them precise information, how exactly is some random adtech company going to figure something useful for me when all they supposedly have is infered information?

bonestamp2 6y ago

Non-personalized -- I want to give up as little personal data as possible. Even if they claim that it's anonymous, with enough browsing data and other signals (IP, browser fingerprinting, etc), it eventually becomes possible to identify you.

benhurmarcel 6y ago

Apart from the privacy aspect already mentioned, I'd choose non-personalized to minimize their effectiveness. Inherently ads are made to manipulate your behavior. I'd choose being manipulated the least possible.

rahoulb 6y ago

I would prefer "non-personalised" - simply because "personalised" means that people and companies I know nothing about know lots about me.

fossuser 6y ago

I'd rather not have personalized ads because I'd rather there not be an incentive to harvest my data to leverage for personalization. I may be an outlier since I generally try and turn this stuff off everywhere. I also pay for a lot of ad-free content that I like (Stratechery, Stay Tuned with Preet, Persuasion, etc.). I think the incentives from ads are a corrupting influence in building stuff that users want. I think the 'personalization is good for users' argument is often just a rationalization.

trts 6y ago

The answer for me is no. As I have become increasingly aggressive about blocking ads, trackers, social media, using web containers, and setting up pihole, the ads I do see are hilariously untargeted. It's been fascinating to get a glimpse of the bigger universe of ad content for women, doctors, lawyers, the infirmed... instead of just the $150 hoodies and baldness pills I used to see constantly.

kerkeslager 6y ago

> But, if ads were needed for monetization, wouldn't you choose personalized vs non-personalized? Ads aren't needed for monetization of anything I care about. Ads are only needed for businesses to scale quickly without having to actually provide a service worth paying for, and that's something we would be better off without.

elliekelly 6y ago

Why would I prefer to buy from the salesperson who stalks me first?

jka 6y ago

Given a choice and assuming that ads stick around, I'd prefer to pull relevant personalized advertising when I want to see it. In other words, allow advertisers to put all their personalized / targeted ads into a common ecosystem, but allow me to dip into that when I'm looking for some specific purchase. That would mean that advertisers wouldn't have tracking on almost every website and inside almost every smartphone app, gathering information, taking up screen real estate, and consuming valuable bandwidth and user attention.

whoopdedo 6y ago

> Why can't there be a way for me to tell the ad-world what I'm in the market for Because there's no money in that. What's the value in selling you something that you've already decided you want to buy? Advertisers are trying to get into your head and manipulate your perception to make you open your wallet where you otherwise wouldn't have. And when you do decide to purchase a product, that it's the advertiser's brand which you think of first.

xenonite 6y ago
I think the OP meant general "market", not the "concrete product X". Hence the decision has not yet been made.

jfb 6y ago

Why on Earth should the Pareto optimality of the advertising business matter to anyone not in the advertising business? That is an extremely alien concern to me.

amelius 6y ago

You never felt creeped out by personalized ads? I.e. you search for X on website number 1, then visit totally unrelated website number 2 and get an ad for X?

ebg13 6y ago

> But, if ads were needed for monetization, wouldn't you choose personalized vs non-personalized? I looked online at mattress once. I did some research, made a decision, and even bought one. And then for the next month at least everywhere I looked was MATTRESSES! DO YOU LIKE MATTRESSES? HAVE YOU HEARD OF THIS THING CALLED MATTRESSES? HEY MAYBE YOU WANT MATTRESSES! GET MATTRESSES HERE! Like, mfer, I already bought my mattress. Step off. [edit] I guess someone out there _really_ likes mattress ads.

egypturnash 6y ago

I’ll take non-personalized, thanks. I don’t want advertisers sitting there making profiles about me that include everything they can guess.

ffpip 6y ago
Exactly. If I leave on personalization , I always fell like they will collect extra data, just for the sake of it.

the_other 6y ago

I want content-linked advertising. If I’m reading a music blog I want to see ads for bands and synths, not razors and wrenches. If I’m reading stackoverflow I’d be content to gloss over ads for text editors and web hosting. Not the same f*ing razor ad. Call me old school (I’m a 70s baby, 80s child). I enjoyed the content-linked advertising in magazines. I actually read them and used them to learn the market around my interest. Robot selected ads which follow me around claiming to know what I like based on interactions I had do all the following: - creep me out because I know I’m being followed - annoy Me by removing any semblance of my own agency in the event: at least with content-linked ads I have chosen to consume that content and I feel like I want to in that zone - annoy me by getting me wrong - annoy me by assuming I’m just like everyone else that ticked the same boxes/set the same flags - annoy me by presenting mostly mainstream stuff rather than small-scale/artisan/bespoke/local stuff that would be much more interesting. I appreciate that this one ought to work better if the advertising host/network knew where I was browsing from (which is a step towards tracking) The tracking and bidding has completely destroyed what was actually good about advertising for the consumer.

ardy42 6y ago

> I have a serious question. Obviously if one were to choose between an ad-free experience and an ad-full experience, one would choose ad-free. But, if ads were needed for monetization, wouldn't you choose personalized vs non-personalized? No. If I have to be surrounded by messages trying to manipulate me (which is what ads are, by the way), then I don't want them to be personalized for extra effectiveness (at manipulating me). I don't really understand how some people seem to treat ads as some kind of neutral, helpful information source. It's almost like saying "I don't mind propaganda, since it's such an efficient way to find out what to think."

SebastianKra 6y ago
Exactly! I feel like most people already don't realize how much they are being manipulated. Each day is a struggle against malicous influences. Even though I'm aware of it, I still fall for YouTube recommendations. My brain still lights up when I see an ad for a product I recognize. I'm still impressed by the sponsored Amazon search results. Personalization only makes this worse. Now, that product that I made the difficult decision to pass on will taunt and distract me even in situations when I should be focusing on different things.

petters 6y ago

Definitely personalized. I stopped using FB a couple of years ago, but when I did, its ads were amazingly good (I almost miss them sometimes). FB would show me an ad for the perfect obscure Kickstarter project that I was happy to back. Win-win.

noja 6y ago

> But, if ads were needed for monetization That's a big if.

dwighttk 6y ago

Why do I care about the advertisers efficiency? If you were talking about some sort of imagined strong AI personalization I might prefer that assuming ad free wasn’t an option, but this absurd, deep from within the uncanny valley personalization is worse than generic advertising. The only place I am exposed to generic ads are when watching sporting events at a bar or at someone’s house. Everywhere else I get ads blocked or get “targeted” ads that mildly (at best) offend me that that is what the algorithm thinks I’d be interested in buying. I prefer the generic ads.

sveme 6y ago

Most ads are related to previous searches or visits on the web. I once searched for a new car mirror - now I get car parts ads everywhere. Wouldn‘t it be smarter to have context-dependent ads? If I‘m reading a blog on hexagonal architecture, wouldn‘t I be interested in books on that and related topics? Those kinds of ads would not necessitate tracking.

reaperducer 6y ago

non-personalized experienced usually has no relevancy In my experience, it's the opposite. Non-personalized ads show me a broad range of items that I might possibly be interested in. The same way that newspaper, television, and magazine ads do. While personalized ads show me the same ads for the same products that I've either already purchased, or no am no longer interested in for weeks or months after I've moved on to other things. frankly it is inefficient use of money in this world I find this argument... odd. Why, as a consumer, which is how you've framed the overall argument, would I care even a little about the efficiency use of money in this world? I think to refine your point: Why would I give fark one about whether an advertiser's money is spent efficiently, and why is that even my concern at all? Why can't there be a way for me to tell the ad-world what I'm in the market for There is. For example, if you're into gardening, you read gardening magazines and garden-related advertisers advertise in those magazines. Easy peasy. This is old tech that the dead tree folks figured out centuries ago. What's changed is that digital advertising isn't about actual advertising. It's about getting rich quick and easy without doing any heavy lifting that the legacy ad companies did.

backtoyoujim 6y ago

" if ads were needed for monetization," It is a solution to monetization. It is not the only solution. Lack of economic development has been because of the addictive nature of fascist behavior. Non-personalized vs personalized is not the question for me; companies might still collect the same data from my "experience" habits. If they are going to do that I want more profit from it than a custom news page. Like I want money from the company leveraging my identity for the company's bottom line. I want some of that money if you are going to get a simulacra of me in a fucking database. And until we get there we are stuck with a few rich lawless men keeping me for themselves.

nfsdjkghewyuh 6y ago

Wouldn't it make the least sense for advertisers to spend money showing ads to people who are already in the market for their product. Those people will probably be looking it up directly, which is what their website and SEO are there for. If anything contextual ads are probably better for people in the market, so when you search for their product they always appear in the first page of results. I would think ads are meant to drive you into the market for a product and service, and other marketing tools are made to get you to pick a specific offering.

sosborn 6y ago
> Wouldn't it make the least sense for advertisers to spend money showing ads to people who are already in the market for their product For manufacturers? Sure. But what about storefronts? Having the best price won't matter if no one knows about it.
- nfsdjkghewyuh 6y ago
  I was forgetting storefronts, they might benefit from knowing a user is in the market for a good or service. My thinking (probably wrong) is, if I am in the market for (to use the example someone else mentioned) a pebble smartwatch then I am probably going to look for the best price myself. No reason for storefronts to spend money putting their ads with their price up on unrelated sites and apps, if I'm going to search for a good price for free. It would probably be better just to buy and ad on the search term "pebble smartwatch" and advertise the price.

elcomet 6y ago

If I control the variables for personalization, yes. If I don't control them, then no. For example websites could have variables like mental state (like knowing of you're depressed) and show you ads that could "work better" on you. I think this is unacceptable.

DennisP 6y ago

Non-personalized, because it's less likely to work on me. I don't want to be manipulated. If I decide on my own to buy something, it won't be hard to find. I don't need to tell advertisers what I'm in the market for. I can just tell Google or Amazon what I want and I'll find it immediately, even though I'm blocking the ads.

kd913 6y ago

To me it's more about trust regarding the data being gathered and what it is being used for. I care a lot more about how a company can misuse that personalized data to say sway an election. If the data being gathered is purely to give me better recommendations for better targeted products then sure. If that level of personalization is restricted to just me as a user where I and only I can select the ad selection and that personalization remains on my machine. The Facebook CA scandal demonstrates to me how frankly these companies are straight untrustworthy. I do not want political/security/insurance/job agencies getting anywhere near any of this data.

oh_sigh 6y ago

I would vote for customized ads, but customized based on the content I'm viewing, not customized based on what they think I want or like. If I'm reading an article about astronomy, give me a link to telescopes to buy. Don't show me the washer/dryer that I've been looking for in another context in my life. I would even take content-customized ads with slight tweaks based on my personal profile, but still relevant to the content at hand. For example, if I'm in eastern Nebraska, give me the telescope ad from the example above. But if I'm in Philadelphia, maybe show me a link to the observatory at the Franklin Institute.

barnabee 6y ago

I’d prefer ads that are not relevant to me because the chance of them manipulating me psychologically into doing something I wouldn’t rationally do is lower. Advertising is the new smoking. We do not fully understand the damage it does to society and our planet, but it is huge.

scarface74 6y ago

No take the Overcast podcast player for instance. Marco, the author, didn’t want any third party mystery meat SDK in his application and he wanted to control advertising. He created his own ad platform. Ads are based on the category of the podcast you are listening to. Nothing creepy about it and I’ve found quite a few relevant podcasts. The entire podcast until recently has been supported by no more targeting than guessing about the demographics.

ConsiderCrying 6y ago

As others have pointed out, if you're being subjected to consumeristic propaganda, might as well make it non-targeted so there's less chance of you buying in. It's like being dipped in a tub full of insects. You could choose your favorite type of insect to be crawling all over you... but would that really make the situation that much better? Personally, the only time I had mildly relevant ads was back when I had an account on Instagram. It served ads for local businesses that actually kinda matched my interests. The rest is just "oh, you searched for info on a long-dead general? Must be interested in WW2 replica medals, buy fifty!"

alkonaut 6y ago

Personalized means I’m buying more relevant ads and paying with my integrity. It’s better to see relevant than irrelevant ads but the amount of personal information I’m willing to give up is tiny and includes zero of my history online.

xbkingx 6y ago

The problem for me is that I honestly can't think of more than a half dozen instances in the last 20+ years where ads made me aware of something new that I actually wanted, and zero of those were web-based. I can't think of a single time ads swayed my opinion to purchase something I didn't want or caused me to buy something earlier than I would have otherwise. At BEST there have been a few ads that have led me explore options within that market, but the company posting the ad had zero impact on my decision (it almost deters me, since that ad money could have been spent making the product better or cheaper, so the competition is probably a better buy). Why would I want even 1% of the content I'm consuming to be polluted with irrelevant garbage? That's a huge amount of time and mental effort filtering out stuff like toothpaste ads because I googled directions to my dentist's office. Nope. Ad blockers on EVERYTHING and custom CSS for sites that whine about ad blockers or display a sea of whitespace to inflate page view times.

jes5199 6y ago

oh gosh what was that article claiming that pre-internet, ads functioned as a monetary sacrifice that companies could make as a demonstration of their solvency. if you saw an ad frequently, that meant it was a big, stable company, that was preferable to have an ongoing relationship with. Personalized ads don't have that property. I think the author compared personalized ads to direct-mailers - those junk grocery store flyers that show up in your snailmail. They don't signal anything other than "this product exists"

lopmotr 6y ago

This was the bold new idea of Google, back in the day. At that time, the internet was plastered with banner ads for cars and shoes and other lowest common denominator crap. Personalized ads were a good thing!

thewebcount 6y ago

> But, if ads were needed for monetization, wouldn't you choose personalized vs non-personalized? No. I simply do not ever look at ads. I've never, in 30 years of browsing the web, intentionally clicked on an ad. Furthermore, I don't want a company keeping a dossier on me. The exchange of seeing ads for something I might want isn't worth the assault on my privacy, if it worked. And it doesn't work, so no thank you.