> If I open a site on cooking, I don't want to see ads for car parts or kitchen faucets, regardless of my history. I would want to see ads for cooking supplies.

Is that not the way it works for you? I mean, I pull up allrecipes.com and see a bunch of food-related stuff like my local supermarket (and one less relevant ad for Iceland Air, no idea). Closer to the subject at hand, the modern "Byte Magazine" might be something like tomshardware.com, where I see lots of tech products being hawked (phones, a tablet, Xfinity service), and ads for the retailers that sell them (lots of Best Buy on the pages I saw).

I mean, sure, there are going to be exceptions. But in general ads on the internet seem at least reasonably relevant.

It really seems sometimes like sites like HN are turning into information bubbles, where concepts like "advertising in the modern world is a dystopian disaster" are... just taken as faith? The experience of regular people doesn't really agree, and it seems like we're becoming more detached as the years go by.

No, it doesn't work for me. I'd turn on context-sensitive ads on my sites, and then see what ads it supplies.

Unrelated garbage. I remember once buying a kitchen faucet, and for months it seems every site I visit showed me ads for faucets.

For example, on a programming site it would keep pushing ads for the Batman movie. Phooey.

Another problem is the same C++ training ad would be served on every one of my site's pages. Magazines don't run the same ad on every page.

Instead, I now run affiliate ads for quality programming books from a list I curated. Ads I would like to see myself when browsing those pages. Ads that probably add value to the page, rather than subtract. No more Batman or C++ training ads.

> Another problem is the same C++ training ad would be served on every one of my site's pages. Magazines don't run the same ad on every page.

No, but they ran the same full-page BASF floppy disk ad or whatever at the end of the contents page every month for two years. Repetition in advertising has been a thing since the field was introduced. I can't believe you're only seeing it for the first time now. Even today, go pick up a Motor Trend and compare it to a Car & Driver (or Vogue and Elle, whatever floats your boat) and take a look. They're all running the same ads!

Now, sure, it's true that online ads afford the opportunity to saturate that print doesn't. But it's not any different at all. And it works! Which is why the advertisers (who, let's be clear, know their business a lot better than you do) do it.

I stopped running their ads. Their technique didn't work for me.

With all respect, that sounds like a criticism of internet advertising c. 2008 or so. I mean, sure, weird stuff like that happens and there are always going to be anecdotes. But no, for a long time now advertising on targetted/niche/interest-based sites has followed that niche, for the obvious reason that that's where the best ROI on the advertising is.

I mean, sure, there will always be funny hiccups, and on the edges there are genuine issues of privacy and justice and market fairness to be discussed.

But the idea that we're in some kind of advertising dystopia is simply not the experience of regular users. It's a meme[1] being perpetuated in the tech community. Regular products purchased by regular people are being advertised very effectively, and on the whole with near-universal approval of the customers.

[1] And as mentioned, an increasingly detached and frankly slightly deranged one. Real concerns about privacy are now being short-circuited with nonsense about "But Their Ads", and that's hurting the discourse we actually need.

Have you considered that your experience may not be representative of everyone else's experience? You can't know the objective facts of what ads Walter sees. You also can't know how people experience ads subjectively.

For myself, I have a really hard time focusing on anything in the presence of visual or audio distraction, with ads just being one example. I wear earmuffs all day while working just so I can focus. The equivalent on the internet is adblock. Without adblock and uBlock origin's element zapper, I simply cannot function on the internet today.

Are you implying that my sensitivity to distracting noise in every aspect of life is somehow influenced by a meme about internet ads?

I don't see how you could read what I wrote and take it to mean that it's not possible that anyone ever, anywhere, saw a poorly targetted ad on a web page somewhere. In fact I see my point as sort of the converse: there's a deeply annoying undercurrent in HN discourse that seeks to use the word "advertising" as a shorthand for all sorts of ethical problems that are complicated and nuanced.

When, no, advertising is doing what it always has. Internet advertising, broadly, is well-targetted. It just is. (For really obvious reasons! Of all the people who want ad targetting to work most, the advertisers and the ad brokers are at the top of the list!)

I don't recall ever seeing an ad on a web page that I clicked on.

Today's marketing is much more targeted and dark pattern driven.

There was an earnestness to many ads back then. Either "native" style ads, or price lists -- given researching anything was much more difficult without internet, magazines and print brochures were all you had. Ads were critical.

My perception of ads is they are more automated and naive than they should be.

I get an ad for something I want. I get it. Then I don't need it anymore, but I get the same ad over and over again as if it went from a single thing I wanted to a hoarding obsession.

Then by chance I get an ad for something I want, but I want it later in the year, not today. I click the ad but don't get it.

When I want it, after few months, it is never shown again, and I get dozens of generic unrelated ads instead.

I wish it was actually more tailored to me.

I see the personalized ads Amazon presents for me. All things I don't want.

I bought hundreds of computer shoppers. Just because it was ads. I think there was an article or two in there sometimes. It is funny enough where I learned the xor trick. That thing was a monster at least a couple of inches thick of nothing but computer ads.

As I recall they included just enough editorial material to qualify for the "literature" postage rate rather than the "advertising" postage rate, which was higher.

(those might not be the exact terms that were/are used)

The Alice and Bob article... I don't remember the content exactly.