> If you see a wildly off base ad, it's likely not targeted, it's just part of an ad buy. I usually see such ads them immediately after purchasing the item in

> If you see a wildly off base ad, it's likely not targeted, it's just part of an ad buy. I usually see such ads them immediately after purchasing the item in question. It's almost as if the targeting models are, in an abstract sense, extremely over-fitted. > Targeting only by the demographic of the publication is not so great because publishers usually only have a vague idea who their actual demographic is. As far as I'm concerned, coarse granularity targeting is a feature, not a bug. I often discover legitimately interesting things I didn't know existed but are adjacent to my interests in venue-scoped advertisements. Even if I didn't find targeted advertising morally objectionable (I do) I would still consider it functionally inferior to more coarse-grained venue/demographic/etc-based placement. Targeted advertising doesn't help me discover new things, it tries to preempt purchases I'm already likely to make, and put them in front of me. I don't think that's actually very useful.