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Re:The Advertising Bubble by GCA10 on Monday November 16, 2015 @01:15PM (#10576001)
You're both right, but OP is more right. Targeted plumbing ads elicit slightly higher click-through rates and purchases. Let's say 0.12% instead of 0.1% clicks. So in the ad community's eyes, the targeting is "effective."

But for 99.88% of people seeing those plumbing ads -- including many folks who have already bought their sinks -- such ads are stupid distractions. The net result: there's a big surge in the use of ad blockers, and the swamp is starting to drain.

Another case in point: I now follow Twitter trending reports for Yokohama, even though I live 5,000 miles away and can barely read a few characters of hiragana. It's my primitive hack to disable the trending "service." I'd rather have incomprehensible squiggles on a corner of my screen than a bunch of garbage content that's clamoring for attention, even though it's irrelevant to me.

Re:The Advertising Bubble by Balgair on Monday November 16, 2015 @01:33PM (#10576120)
I mean, that effectively is just an adblocker. Many readers here really get bent out of shape on the use of blockers, and you may be one of them, I don't know. But directing the ads to you from a language you can't even read might as well be an adblocker as your mind can't even absorb the ad by osmosis. Just use uBlock Origin.