I find it funny when the ad tech clearly doesn't have enough data points. I get weird ads now (on platforms where I can't block them, of course). Usually it's a drop shipped aliexpress product from a forgettably named shopify front, recently a lot of eczema treatment ads (I don't have eczema), and today I got a bayer aspirin ad. The last time I bought aspirin was 3 years ago when I had a headache and bought the biggest strongest bottle they had at CVS, generic of course.

Who even clicks on internet ads? Grandma? Kids? People who weren't on the internet when clicking a banner ad gave you malware? My family has been blocking ads since 2005, I wonder if advertisers even know if their ads are being blocked? If I were Zuckerberg, I'd lie all day about my engagement numbers, because why wouldn't you? Hire a Russian click farm to get your numbers, your board of trustees probably isn't tech literate enough to tell the difference and that's good enough to keep the stock afloat.

I don't know who clicks on ads. I've only ever deliberately clicked on an ad once in my life, because they showed a game and I had nothing better to do at the time. The rest... I have no idea who these ads are really for, I just know that somehow it's worth it for companies to spend money on them.

I've upvoted you because you kindly exposed an angle I hadn't thought of, thank you :)

However, doesn't facebook already optionally ask me where I live, birth date etc ? Come on, those are enough info to classify me as student/working/revenue/ etc, and these I give with my consent. You don't need to analyze my location history, throw nlp at my comments, track my hyperlink activity or whatever the hell they do.

>I've upvoted you because you kindly exposed an angle I hadn't thought of, thank you :)

That is very kind of you. Thank you!

>However, doesn't facebook already optionally ask me where I live, birth date etc ? Come on, those are enough info to classify me as student/working/revenue/ etc, and these I give with my consent.

I agree with you, but not every service asks you for that information. I don't really want them to ask it either, because I would probably have to register on every website I try to visit to get access to the content. On the other hand, I completely agree that the whole thing has gone overboard. They try to track way too much stuff.

> many of the ads I get are in languages I do not understand

Curious...that's not a problem I see much, if at all. If sites simply display ads that are in the same language as their primary content, surely that shouldn't be much of an issue? Or are you in the habit of visiting sites you don't understand?

That would make the ads understandable, but that doesn't deal with the problem that they are advertising something that's not available in my region. For example, if I go on reddit and see ads in English, then only ads for some digital products and services could be relevant to me, because anything that deals with physical businesses would be inaccessible for me.

The only websites I use that are in my native language are the government websites and banks. This would mean that I would not be the target audience of many (most?) of the ads I see.