> Let's be clear: the best targeted ads I will ever see are the ones I get from a search engine when it serves an ad for exactly the thing I was searching for.

> Let's be clear: the best targeted ads I will ever see are the ones I get from a search engine when it serves an ad for exactly the thing I was searching for. Everybody wins: I find what I wanted, the vendor helps me buy their thing, and the search engine gets paid for connecting us. I don't know anybody who complains about this sort of ad. It's a good ad. Not the point of the article, but it's typically the vendors who complain. Other vendors can and do buy up ad space on their keywords, pushing the thing you were searching for further down the page. Search for Miele vacuums, get an ad for Dyson. Now Miele has to buy up ad space for the keyword "miele", which it worked hard to get name recognition for. Some people think this is a bit like extortion, but really it's just the cost of people being able to find your product in 0.00045s. The search engine is just charging the vendor for the service.