If Google's ability to discern my interests for ads is as bad as is their ability to discern my interests for news, then I would not be surprised.

I have never been aware of listening to any music by the band "Foo Fighters". I've almost certainly heard their songs in passing, but never in a context that gave me the name of the band.

A friend on Facebook posted a link to a YouTube video called "Dave Grohl brings kid on stage in Kansas City to rock out", in which Grohl, who is apparently the lead of the Foo Fighters, invited a kid from the audience at a Foo Fighters concert up to play a song, and I watched this video. (The kid asked to play a Metallica song, which Grohl and the Foo Fighters knew and played, so I still have not knowingly listened to any Foo Fighters music!)

Google has latched onto this and decided that I am interested in Dave Grohl news. Every time I go to Google News, for the last several weeks, the top of the "recommended by your interests" section is a story about Grohl or the Foo Fighters. Even though I hit the "show fewer stories like this" link for most of them, still they come.

Furthermore, they are almost all negative stories. The one thing they have of me showing any interest in Grohl and/or Foo Fighters, that video of the kid on stage, was a positive thing. But what they are giving me is a parade of stories about Grohl screwing over current or former bandmates, Grohl misbehaving while drunk, etc., from what appear to be trashy gossip publications. Yet a bit of research shows that Grohl is apparently actually a nice guy, well regarded. If I click the link to tell Google to not show me anything else from one of these trash publications...it obeys and just turns to other one to find Grohl gossip for me.

What the heck, Gooogle!?

There doesn't appear to be a way to filter out sports I'm not interested in, or even all sports.

Apple News has a hard time telling the difference between Paris, France and Paris Hilton.

I don't think so.

A human would understand context. AI isn't supposed to be simple string matching.

Also, there is no "Paris Hilton" hotel. There is Hilton Paris Opera, Hilton Paris La Defense, and Hilton Paris De Gaulle.

"Letter from Foo Fighters frontman to Cornwall Council goes viral again"

When a targeted ad is creepily accurate and on point, people flip and think that the machines have figured us out. But the ads that are irrelevant just fly by us without a hit. The one-out-of-a-hundred ads that get it right, likely due to an ad targeter's lucky strike, are the ones that get under our skin, and the only ones we really notice.

It was Target in the US:

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits....

> As Pole’s computers crawled through the data, he was able to identify about 25 products that, when analyzed together, allowed him to assign each shopper a “pregnancy prediction” score. More important, he could also estimate her due date to within a small window, so Target could send coupons timed to very specific stages of her pregnancy.

> ...

> “With the pregnancy products, though, we learned that some women react badly,” the executive said. “Then we started mixing in all these ads for things we knew pregnant women would never buy, so the baby ads looked random. We’d put an ad for a lawn mower next to diapers. We’d put a coupon for wineglasses next to infant clothes. That way, it looked like all the products were chosen by chance.

I can see how this could cause embarrassment and, maybe, awkward questions if one's partner also uses the same account.

I'm always surprised when I see a company wasting money on adwords when they are also ranking many #1 keywords organically, specially on brand keywords. I may be outdated but I doesn't make any sense to me.

It's clearly confused, and so my wonder is how do they correct that over time? How do you un-scramble a scrambled machine learned profile? Can you even detect that it's gone awry?

The models react strongly to that...i went from years of poor ads to fantastic ads within 2-3 purchases

They are very efficient in telling people that are intending to buy your product that they are going to buy your product. Or even buy your advertised product on the website that you're advertising.

They are not efficient in acquiring new customers, as most(90%+++) of the ad impressions go to the people that are already aware about your product.

The only truly efficient ad targeting is restricted by geography, culture, age and timezone.