> BTW. They'll just be doing it with even less information about what ads might actually interest you.

Good, Ads should be Contextual to the context of the site/subject being viewed NOT contextual to me.

i.e if I am on a site reading about the latest hard drive to come out, Show me ads for a NAS or a Computer, etc. Do not reach into a collection of data about me and show me diaper ads because you think I just had a new child

That's fine when you're on a niche site, but most people don't spend most of their time on those. What about a site - like Facebook, like Google, and so on - that covers every topic under the sun? If they limit themselves to ads that even the most hardened skeptic would agree are relevant to the content currently being viewed, they will be showing far fewer ads. That's what leads to their being more intrusive. Would you still be as happy about only seeing ads for a new NAS box if every such ad forced you to wait for 30 seconds before the content you came for was actually delivered?

Companies have been selling general ads for decades. Billion dollar industries have been created on selling General Viewer Ads.

I always found it fascinating that a TV Channel can sell Ads with out any real tracking any real data on the individuals users watching the ad, and they can sell these ads for $$$$$$$

Yet you tube which has much higher viewer numbers than any TV Channel can not seem to sell ads at all, the ads are of low quality, and they need to be ultra targeted.

At the end of the day though, if they can not find away to market their ad space with out tracking me and knowing every detail of my life well then they need to simply exit the market.

There is zero justification for building these types of databases, they should be resisted as strongly as possible, and we need to institute much strong data security and privacy regulations on how the data is collected, stored and used. Including the ability to require all services to allow individuals to audit the information they are collecting about them and to force a company to delete all information about them if the user wishes to stop using the services.

That's a misleading comparison. So companies will pay millions more for TV ads even though online ads might reach more eyeballs? Yeah, that's weird, it would be great to understand why they're such idiots, but the reasons don't affect the reality. The reality is that they won't pay more for the online ads. What they do pay, they pay on the basis of targeting which directly correlates to conversion rates etc. Do you think internet companies wouldn't jump at the chance to spend less on all those analytics systems, reduce privacy complaints, and still get more ad revenue? They have those systems and the people who run them because they have positive ROI. They're simply not going to do something that makes their whole growth/revenue model collapse. They might look with envy at what TV networks get away with, but only in the same way that you and I might look with envy at what singers and sports stars get away with. It's basically irrelevant.

A common refrain heard in the industry:

Half of all advertising is useless. The problem is no one knows which half.

> i.e if I am on a site reading about the latest hard drive to come out, Show me ads for a NAS or a Computer, etc.

So, it turns out that you completely ignore those adverts because you have banner blindness and you're on the site to read about the latest hard drive, not the one someone is paying to reach you with. If those ads worked, the CPM would be higher and advertisers would invest in those instead. But they don't, so contextual it is.

I dont ever see the ads because I have multiple layers of ad blocking at the network, PC and Browser Level...

if a Ad gets through I spend some time figuring out why then ensuring it is blocked going forward

For what its worth, you can still call AOL on the phone if you get locked out of your account, and they still have millions of users. As someone who's helped people with their locked out AOL mail accounts before in the last five years, I can easily state that AOL is a superior customer service experience over Google.

(Mind you, case can be made that Google's lack of the same makes the account more secure.)