I recall when I was going through a bout of insomnia in college, being upset by the quality of the ads on late night TV. I had been taught about what was then known as targeted advertising, and I thought that meant that all those inane ads were being specifically targeted at insomniacs. Like they had decided I was some sort of moron who would fall for this stuff. Didn't take me too long to realize the low quality ads were simply targeting the low-quality time slots. Nothing more sinister than cheap people being cheap.

But with real-time auctions, though, there are whole swaths of people whom the quality ads have decided are a waste of time, and now the hyenas can circle in to prey on everything that is left.

There are some ad networks out there that try to avoid the real time auction and cross-site tracking aspects of these conventional ad networks. I don't know how successful they're being, but maybe they're on to something. Something that should be encourage by public policy.