It's wasteful, but in an almost ironic novel way.
In the UK the department stores John Lewis and House of Fraser are both guilty of this - if I browse something on either of their sites an ad for it follows me around the web for ~4 months.
E.g. I was buying Birthday gifts for my girlfriend at the beginning of July and looked on both of these sites and they are both displaying the same ads to me (i.e. at this point both are spending their advertising budget to annoy me)
What I want is this - a space where I can say "I'm looking for a picnic hamper for a gift & I want to spend between £25 & £50. I need it by date X" This can then be given to the advertisers (auctioned?) and they can display some ads to me which are relevant. When date X is reached (or I indicate that I've bought said item and am therefore out of the market) these ads stop. For added info I can even say what I bought and why - e.g. "I bought X in your store as a picnic hamper won't fit through my mailbox"
Surely this is more useful for everyone involved? I get ads which are actually being targeted based on something I control (vs. being inferred via which sites I happen to click on or what cookies are set) and the advertisers get more detailed info as well.
But I already had joined, and even if I wanted a second account I already know where to go to get it. Ad tech is dumb, real dumb.
> You were hacked and exploited
Yeah, that's not what either of those words mean.
Actually, I did address that, as part of the second case:
"That may mean that you simply didn't know the product before and finding it was good for you"
>> You were hacked and exploited
>Yeah, that's not what either of those words mean.
Late response for the record: you think you're in control of your mind and how it works. But advertisers are very ingenious in developing ways to make your mind behave in a manner you (the admin) does not want it to, in a sneaky way. A very good metaphor for it is hacking.
Unfortunately, this is neither DefCon or a James Randi show, so they do not do it for fun. They explore this hack to take advantage from you (your system, if you will) for their profit and your damage. An exploit.
I did not use "literally", but I refrained from using a more strong indicator of a figure of speech (eg, using "virtually") because I though I could engage in a better debate here then this. I still think I was right, but there are always exceptions.
Adverts are at their basic level a way of informing end users about what they can purchase. They are also there to try and raise brand awareness. People are more likely to trust a brand that they have heard of rather than some unknown.
Is this a good thing?
And advertisers know this so we get a host a stupid ads trying to convince you that one flavor of sugar water is better than another. Or that this poop inducing yogurt is better than that. In other words, effective ads rely on trickery to get you to think style is more important than substance.
In the first case, the advertisement was wasteful: the company that sold you the product has unnecessarily spent money, which goes to the product price. And this is not a small amount: big consumer companies spend billions on advertisement space/time alone, an amount comparable to their R&D expenses. I'm talking about ads alone, not other marketing expenses, many of which are related to advertisement. In most companies, marketing budget dwarves R&D, by the way, and in some markets, this costs could very well be the biggest chunk of the price in a product.
In the second case, you would not buy the product without the ad. That may mean that you simply didn't know the product before and finding it was good for you, but most probably you didn't need it or would not want it if not because of the ad.
In this common case, you didn't win: you just spent money because of a need/want that you didn't have before seeing the ad. You were hacked and exploited for both the publisher and advertiser benefit.