I think that's precisely his point; even if Vogue has an ad network with highly accurate data that points you being interested in SSDs, Vogue is probably not the right place to put that ad. It's kind of a philosophical question - do you want to see ads that are relevant to your primary interests at ALL TIMES, or do you want to see ads that are relevant to the interests of where you are. There are, let's simplistically say, three classes of ads:

1. Old Internet - Pages curate and/or sell whatever ads they can possibly get. They are generally statically hosted assets. 2. Original Ad Networks - They don't know anything about you, but it removes the need for pages to individually make ad contracts. You'll get whatever ads are in the queue, possibly sorted by rough groupings; "technology" ads, etc. 3. Current Situation - Everywhere you go you are presented with ads relevant to your interests, regardless of your current site. Vogue might try to show SSD ads or car parts ads, even though that's not the kind of content you would go to Vogue to consume.

I think there's an interesting case to be made that clickthrough decreases can be at least partially attributed to the fact that as tracking increases the probability that the ad represents the content of the site decreases and becomes an even more unwelcome distraction. Sponsored content is a way to defeat this, and ad blocking, by making the advertising appear more in line with the content of the site (or is it making the content of the site more in line with the advertising?).

Why would Vogue show an SSD ad at all? What does Vogue know about SSDs? Nothing. Why would I think that an ad for SSDs on Vogue tells me anything about the quality of the SSD they're hocking? It's non-information and communicates nothing about the product beyond the fact that it exists. Anyone who knows what an SSD is knows where they can buy an SSD - what I really want to know is which SSD should I buy and an SSD ad on Vogue doesn't give me any information in that regard.

Your complaints have nothing to do with Vogue, but with the uselessness of an ad in general. Even if a site were talking about SSDs, you wouldn't need an ad to tell you about them, would you?

Ad networks at the moment seem to mostly provide the service of showing me pictures of things I have bought, just in case I forgot that I already own them.

> what I really want to know is which SSD should I buy

In that case you need reviews, not ads.

Ads can also communicate something about the quality of a branch/product based on how much the ad cost to run and which publication chose to run the ad. This is no substitute for a review, but if I see a non-targeted ad for an SSD in a tech publication that chooses ads based on what it thinks is good (I'm describing The Deck basically) it at least assures me that this SSD is not a hunk of garbage. Again this is not a lot, but a targeted ad tells me nothing.

On the flip side of this, if Vogue let any old crap run as advertising in their magazine this would be a form of reputation mining - trading their good name (earned after years of operation) for some short-term profit, but no-one bats an eye when the same thing happens online even though it's subtly devaluing online properties that do the same.