If targeted ads are no better, and maybe even worse, than untargeted ads, that doesn't imply you need more targeting. Maybe it implies targeting doesn't work (at least for the purpose of providing ads the user wants to see).

I prefer contextual ads, ie. related to what I'm currently looking at, not what my ad profile thinks my personality is based on something unrelated I did on another device last week.

> I prefer contextual ads, ie. related to what I'm currently looking at, not what my ad profile thinks my personality is based on something unrelated I did on another device last week.

That would be my preference for browsing the web, or looking at results of a search. But what about the ads that rely on doom-scrolling? The ones that are inserted every two posts on a Facebook feed would be hard to make contextual, for example.

I don't mind some Instagram ads which are directly related to accounts I follow. For example, follow some musicians on Instagram and get an advert for some other artist's new album. I don't use Facebook but I guess it could work similarly if you follow certain interest-related groups. However, I wouldn't like if it was using my interactions with friends to target me.

Both of these are better that tracking your activity all over the web and using that to target you.

Reading that, I’m SO glad I left facebook.

An alternative interpretation is that the level of stalking, intrusion, & privacy you would have to give up to be targeted enough to make it useful isn't an acceptable trade off (& isn't even technically possible in the near future).

No, I'd say it boils down to ads being a bad way to discover products you are interested in. I love sites like thewirecutter or similar for getting actual recommendations, when I want to seek something out. Randomly getting products recommended in a drive-by fashion as I surf around the internet doesn't work, but even if it did work, it's neither the format nor timing in which I'd ever want to receive these recommendations anyway.

It is a fair criticism, is it not? My go-to for this issue is my Kindle Paperwhite for which I did not spend the extra $20 to turn off the ads. Amazon has over ten years of my reading habits, which mainly consist of sci-fi, philosophical/religious non-fiction, and miscellaneous dregs. You know what I have never, ever read in my life? Some along the lines of the "Witches of Paragrene Point" series of books. Or the "Defending $POPULAR_90S_GIRL_NAME" series (which I take to be "manly hunk is bodyguard for a female has to rescue her at some point"). But those show up on my Kindle, at which point I assume Amazon just isn't even trying.

After about ten years or so of Kindle ownership, I recall clicking the ad and buying the book exactly once. Yup, a sci-fi book, and it was pretty damned good as I recall. The title, you ask? Hell if I know, Amazon never showed me another book from that author ever again. And I wish they would, because I can't remember which one in my "stacks" of sci-fi is the one I want.

Perhaps you didn't read the last part of that comment:

> So long story short, personalized ads are just as useless to me as un-personalized ads, only creepier, and I'd prefer not to be stalked.