As an example of stupid targeted ads: I bought a Casper mattress a couple of months ago and pretty much every single ad I've seen since then (on devices where I don't have them blocked) has been for mattresses. How many mattresses does the internet think I need?

If I'm reading about something on the internet it's generally because I'm interested in it. Why not try to sell me something related to that rather than something I already bought!?

1. I bought one of those spinning face brushes for my girlfriend. A few minutes after purchasing online, I started seeing advertisements from that same store, for the same exact brush. Literally 90% of the page views were showing that advertisement.

2. I was browsing Airbnb accommodation for a trip to let's say Mexico. I was checking apartments on and off for weeks. I didn't see any Airbnb advertisements during that time. The minute I book that accommodation, Airbnb starts showing advertisements for rooms in Mexico.

3. I'm browsing barbers in a new city. No advertisements until I book an appointment with one online. Then, I start seeing advertisements for the same barbershop. Now, that has potential, but the advertisements stopped after a week. Why do I need to book a second hair appointment in the same week? Why not recognize I booked a men's haircut, and start showing me ads in a few weeks?

For all the tracking, privacy invasion, and fancy "machine learning", advertising sure is dumb.

> Our results indicate that more sophisticated targeting algorithms might not gain, and might even harm, the advertiser as those seeing the ad would convert in the absence of advertising.

There are a bunch of ad-tech people on this site; maybe some of them could chime in and share how many more sales they make using total surveillance versus basic keyword-in-page.

[1] https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=7020000840130690...

For almost A YEAR afterwards, I would constantly see ads about RAM trucks and various dealerships in my area (including the one I Googled and bought the truck from) when browsing the web on my iPad. Not every ad, of course, but certainly often enough that I would notice it a couple times a week and just laugh and shake my head at the dealerships who were just throwing their ad dollars away.

If they would just ask me what my interests are and stop allowing shady/malicious ads, I'd probably just turn off adblock.

If you pick "videogame", unless they ask you if you like RPGs, which videogame do they advertise to you?

(not saying it's WORTH it, but ad tech is pretty darn sophisticated these days)