I strongly disagree. Targeted ads are significantly worse than generic ads.

The entire point of advertising is manipulating human beings. Targeted advertising means you have even more data specific to an individual making it easier to manipulate the individual. More generic advertising (for example, TV ads) means all you have is the general area they live in, or the general interest of the individual (magazine ads). You cannot manipulate people based on their personal traits anymore.

The focus of the advertising shifts immediately from the consumer of the ad to the product and/or message of the ad, because you simply do not have enough information about the consumer.

> The entire point of advertising is manipulating human beings.

That's quite cynical. No the point is to connect products to interested consumers. Case in point: we recently had a baby so I've been googling for baby stuff. Now I get some ads for more baby stuff. It's relevant to my life far more than Viagra ads or whatever other generic ads could be shown to me. It's not exactly manipulation because I do need lots of baby stuff.

I think an important part of your statement is “interested consumers”. A consumer who is not interested should not have to be bombarded with advertisements. At this point (making someone do something they do not want to), is where it becomes manipulation.

For instance, I have no interest in receiving snail-mail ads for credit cards. I am happy with the ones that I have right now, and regularly research on my own via trusted third parties to see if any are available which would be of interest to me. Still, I am unable to stop receiving mail advertising credit cards to me. There is not even recourse I can take because states have fallen for the same “connecting producers to consumers” argument as above, in the most broad sense, where every human is a potentially interested consumer for every single product.

The business is worse off (because they pay to advertise to me, and I will not get one of their credit cards), I am worse off (because I am upset I receive this mail), the planet is worse off (deforestation), others are worse off (perhaps the time spent by postal workers delivering me junk mail could improve service to others or reduce costs).

So while I agree that advertising is not inherently manipulative, when the audience is captive and uninterested, it becomes manipulation.

"making someone do something"? what kind of ad does that describe?

What's the line between "were making someone do something" and "We have an army of psychologists hard at work to convince someone they need to do something"? Is that line different when it's directed to a 14 year old? Or a senior citizen? Or someone you know is likely a addict of what you're selling?

Any ad that is sent to a person does not want to see it, in an intrusive way such that they cannot avoid it. The “something” is “looking at it.”

Captive? At what point does personal accountability matter? Everyone's choosing to be there and look at this stuff.

It matters at the point when an individual is accountable for having seen the ad. There are countless situations where you cannot possibly perform any normal function of life (shy of sitting in the house and having someone else do all interaction with the outside world):

- Billboards. You cannot possibly keep these out of your peripheral (or center of) vision while driving without endangering everyone else on the road. - Mailed advertisements. You have to check your mail, for example, for legal summons, that you are required by law to respond to. - Public transit (lest I be auto-shamed). You cannot, where I am, even look toward where a train arrives, without seeing ads.

To remediate just these three advertising venues, you have to drive and board public transit with your eyes closed and not check your mail. These aren’t even activities I’d consider voluntary - people need to get to work to support themselves, and check their mail for legal purposes. Unless your argument is that we all make choices to participate in our sovereign nation’s legal structure and to have jobs that require leaving the home (not everyone can work in a cushy remote role).

Psychological manipulation is a thing. People write dissertations on this stuff. These people are then hired by advertising companies. Often the people they target are children or adolescents.

Deodorant became popular after advertisements started emotionally negging people by implying that they were stinky and everybody around them were laughing behind their back.

Connecting products to interested customers often involve manipulating the customer into being interested. Think about sugary cereals targeted at kids with songs and colors.

As usual with matters of opinion, there is a positive and negative way to frame everything. You framed the negative. Allow me to frame the positive:

The human condition has been improved now that we all spend $3/mo on deodorant.

Is emotional manipulation a good thing if it has positive outcomes? What about torture, is torture with positive outcomes a good thing for society? Why stop there, what about killing people without a trial, if we can find enough positive outcomes?

You highlighted an important point: ads only frame one side of the story.

If you want the full story, look elsewhere.

Imagine a world where, if interested in baby stuff, you paid money for articles on baby stuff, and advertisers knew to buy pages of ads among those articles; or if you watched TV shows about people doing baby stuff, advertisers knew to bookend those shows with baby stuff?

Research shows contextual advertising (the way it was done for ever before retargeting became a thing) beats retargeting for both purchases per dollar of ad spend and consumer appreciation / satisfaction (versus annoyance).

I'm reminded of the time when I bought BYTE magazine, and when holding it sideways a huge pile of ads fell out of it.

But, yes, you are right. Even this was infinitely better than the current situation with ads.

I've purchased a handful of things that I have scoured the internet for hours and couldn't find because they later came up in an ad randomly. I am extremely satisfied with the products. In fact, the only thing I'm not satisfied about is how much time I've spent fruitlessly which shows search is still an unsolved problem.

That something has some positive utility does not justify all negative consequences.

For instance installing publicly accessible cameras in all rooms in all homes would help reduce domestic abuse, however that obviously does not mean it's a net social good. In the same vein helpful target ads do not make up for all of the other shenanigans in manipulating people politically.

You sound like a perfect candidate for Facebook's new and revolutionary suppository microphone, which analyzes your outputs to more effectively target your interests. Think of the time you would save!

You should opt-in then to the silo where we will put all ads after we ban them from public view.

Fun fact: the original word used for 'advertising' was 'propaganda', and advertising uses several propaganda techniques. There's nothing cynical about that, it's just a fact.

Interesting. Propoganda was also the term used by the Public Relations industry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda#Public_perceptions

> > The entire point of advertising is manipulating human beings.

> No the point is to connect products to interested consumers.

You're both right in identifying points of advertising, and they're not in conflict.

Advertising has _two_ points, which I phrase as:

1. Increasing consumer awareness

2. Increasing consumer demand

Increasing consumer awareness generally feels useful: that's finding out what baby products exist, or showing people a new invention or service.

Increasing consumer demand generally feels manipulative: that's showing sugary cereals and crap toys to children, or associating vaping with success, etc.

The two goals usually are working together — but I find it useful to separate which parts of the advertisement are doing what.

Counterpoint: what makes you think you need lots of baby stuff?

Well, we have relatively little baby stuff compared to some parents, it's still enough though. Some monitoring tech, stroller, car seat, bassinet, diapers, clothing, some early age books to help develop eyesight (supposedly), plus bath stuff.

I guess we could raise him in a cardboard box, bathe him in the sink and not have half this shit that's really for our convenience, but it is all convenient. We're definitely not going that crazy compared to the typical American/Canadian parent...

Wouldn't you prefer to realize you need something, and then you actively go and get it? I don't want to be manipulated into thinking I need something subconsciously just because I've seen it a bunch of times.

It depends. Sometimes you don't know that a solution exists for your problem.

I think it would be more healthy for your kid if you talked to other parents (and not just for finding solutions to problems).

It is a huge conflict of interest "learning" of a solution to a problem from an ad who's express purpose is to get you to buy it. I agree with the sibling comment; fixing problems is fine but do it from something trustworthy, not the company with the biggest advertising pocketbook.

Interestingly most babies in Finland have a cardboard box as their first bed.

It is manipulation of you, towards specific product, within domain you look for. So you and your subconsciousness are outright attacked to buy product whose manufacturer paid the most, regardless of actual quality.

(ie we also buy baby stuff but sure as hell the best products are not ie 'pampers' which are in every freaking ad block on TV I ever saw, probably... same for thousand other household products, advertised ones are very rarely proper high quality within their category, since so much is spent on pushing them down everybody's throat).

I can't comprehend how otherwise smart folks can't grok this basic principle of advertising, its pure logic and simple follow-the-money principle. Its fight for your wallet, and your brain controls the wallet. Maybe it doesn't insult your intelligence to be manipulated like a sheep, but it sure does mine.

I think the field of advertising successfully whitewashes its own public image as innocent and neutral, "connecting products to interested consumers". It's the same as in politics, religion, finance, insurance, and other kinds of mass fraud and racketeering - hypnotizing people with smoke and mirrors, make belief, a theatrical performance. It's insidious and sneaky how it masquerades as normal, how entire individual lived experiences are spent in manufactured illusion, a system of exploiting human beings through psychological manipulation, and extracting value.

The problem is that advertising never gives you balanced information.

You would be better served by talking to other parents, by reading information from consumer organizations, by reading reviews, even by talking to shop personnel (where multiple brands are sold).

Targeted ads is why we see an explosions in new companies. With traditional marketing, new companies had no way to reach an audience effectively. You could start a company but couldn’t build a customer base. With targeted advertising, it gave us things like free trading with Robinhood that leveraged targeted ads to buy installs. It gave us a bunch of new banking options that offer zero fees. It gave us new clothing brands, razors, workout equipment, cosmetics and washable rugs.

Killing targeted ads will just mean the incumbents will dominate and without competition, consumer prices will rise. Gillette did their first price reduction because of dollar shave club is an example.

You seem to say that as if it were the only way to build an audience. There have been disruptors and innovators out there long before targeted advertising became a thing.

Targeted ads gave us none of the things you mentioned, it merely gave them highly-effective ad targeting. But a company can still buy TV ad spots, they can still spread via word-of-mouth or grassroots campaigns, they can still hire people to canvas and pitch, nowadays they can still go viral.

I agree with GP that ads are manipulation, and that we cannot give ad people (or any people, really) tools that are too good in this area.

Literally every big company in existence today started small, disrupting or innovating or just effectively competing at something. Yet somehow they managed to become what they are without targeted advertising?

You can have targeted ads without user tracking. E.g. you can show job openings on a website where hackers meet.

User tracking is absolutely despicable and must be killed.

RobinHood didn't use targeted ads. That should blow a hole in your thesis.

Okay, I'm sure they used some of them as well, but that was not their primary advertising mechanic to get the first 1,000,000 signups.

> The entire point of advertising is manipulating human beings

The entire point of your comment is manipulating human beings.

Advertising often just seeks to make a consumer aware of a certain product. If that is manipulation, so is pretty much any content that seeks to change what people know.

I think the difference is in what the two are trying to manipulate you to do.

His comment is trying to manipulate the reader into believing something that he believes is better for mankind. He doesn't materially benefit, and the reader doesn't lose anything.

Ads and advertisers are not trying to manipulate the viewers into buying a product. They are manipulating viewers into becoming the type of person that buys products impulsively and with little research. The product of the advertiser is not an ad; the product of the advertiser is you. This is not to your benefit.

So, trying to reduce gp's comment and ads in general to equivalence is misguided imo.

What if an advertiser truly believes in their product and thinks it will better mankind? What if they've done a bunch of research into the product and theirs is actually the best on the market? I think the two are closer than you'd like to admit.

That's not really how things work in a modern context. Today we have to distinguish between the people making the stuff, who really may "believe" in their product, and the people advertising those same products, who don't care, and who aren't the ones creating anything of value.

As a shoemaker, you might think your shoe is the best shoe on the market. Google doesn't care which is the best shoe. Google simply sells a product, namely, a credulous audience, to the shoemakers, who want buyers. And their ecosystem is bent toward improving that product. The shoemakers' noble ends don't justify the evil means of the advertisers.

This is kinda what I take the old adage to mean, "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product." You might think that Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc. are free services because they don't cost you money. But that's like saying that a stay at the butcher's is free for the cow. They're not free at all; advertisers have to pay good money for access to their product, which is you.

Or so my view goes :) I could be wrong though.

Most companies brainwash themselves into thinking they are making the world a better place.

Selling snake oil becomes no more socially good when the salesman deludes themself into believing the pitch.

Most people brainwash themselves into thinking their opinions are right and others' are wrong.

Yeah. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

What is your definition of "a better place"?

The vast majority of products people buy help them solve problems of all kinds. An economic transaction is a win-win for both buyers and sellers. Look at products like the computer, the car, the telephone, etc. I think the world is becoming a better place as a result.

Silicon Valley had a great bit about this kind of thinking:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8C5sjjhsso

> Advertising often just seeks to make a consumer aware of a certain product.

It wants to get me to buy. Any stated aim less than this is a waste of their money.

I studied and worked in marketing for a little while before becoming disgusted by it and leaving. The vast, vast majority of ads have a primary goal of raising awareness, not triggering a purchase. It's extremely hard (and often ineffective) to trigger a purchase, unless the ad is seen while literally standing in front of the product at the store. The best marketing technique is to raise awareness of the product, so that when the user thinks about their own need, your brand/product is the one they think of as a solution.

Perhaps a consumer who is aware of a product is more likely to buy it?

> The entire point of your comment is manipulating human beings.

The difference is in the intention for said manipulation. His comment isn’t trying to get us to part with our hard-earned income for ultimately frivolous goods.

What's frivolous about a wallet or a sweater? Ultimately, all your hard-earned income is to make your life easier via goods and services, some of which may be frivolous. If you can't trust yourself not to make all frivolous purchases, that's a problem you can try to solve on your own.

How many wallets or sweaters does one need? That is the reason I included the word "ultimately" in my comment

I'm not arguing we don't need to buy anything ever. I'm arguing most ads are either pushing stuff you don't really need 99% of the time or selling outright junk. And let's not get into how close some ads are to plainly false advertising (I'm looking at you, wellness / nutrition)

Sounds like you are experiencing poorly targeted ads if 99% of yours aren't things you need :)

Question. If your ads were perfectly targeted in that 100% of advertised products were something that you're interested in, is that not ideal? Isn't that what companies like Google and Facebook are trying to do? Wouldn't you be happier if you didn't get the Wellness / Nutrition / Viagra ads?

Interested isn't a synonym for need. If you are "interested" in junk food, ads for it aren't something to you "need."

Is there no such thing as a win-win? If the business makes money off of a sale and the consumer gets a product they actually wanted?

Or is the default mode of operation always the consumer losing and the business winning?

If I actually wanted the product, I probably didn’t need the ad. I just needed to know about it in a very factual manner

Hard disagree.

You may want a THING, but you don't know about a particular brand or style of said THING. Just by making you aware of them can be a win win.

Say you've been researching "THINGS" for a couple weeks and narrowed it down to 2 brands. An Ad pops for a brand you'd never heard of. Naturally you check it out, only to find out its better than either of the options you were previously considering.

I trust myself to find better products than what random ads will suggest. In my experience, that holds true. I hardly ever purchase anything from "new" brands except for niche products but ofc YMMV

There's so much noise online now, ads are necessity for me to eventually find something I like.

As an example, a couple of months ago I was searching for some new summer outfits. Went through Google, Reddit, various clothing blogs, catalogs, etc. but didn't find a lot that I liked. After a week more of targeted ads on Instagram, I was finally able to discover brands that fit my tastes.

Unless I'm buying something well-defined like a TV or Airpods, passive exposure via targeted ads has been one of the best ways for me to find something worth purchasing.

Sometimes ads do that. I recently had a purchase that I got a lot of value off of based on an Instagram ad to my partner. I would not have known about the product otherwise.

The issue is "sometimes" probably amounts to ~1% of the time, based on my made up anecdotal observations.

"frivolous goods"

Sure, if the good or service is actually frivolous, but what about the case where the human is actively searching for some good or service that offer some actual value?

> Advertising often just seeks to make a consumer aware of a certain product. If that is manipulation, so is pretty much any content that seeks to change what people know.

That's what advertising used to do before tracking was a thing. When this was introduced the industry realized that targeting and manipulation is far more profitable and this made ad campaigns that don't do this unviable. Because nobody ever wants to go back to a lower profit margin.

PS Not sure why I get 0 points here :) I have it on good authority from some webmasters that were trying to offer non-tracked ads that advertisers simply don't want them anymore.

They're so addicted to tracking, and 'retargeting' (meaning repeat ads) that they're just not paying for untracked anymore. Not nearly enough to make an ad-supported website work anyway.

Due to GDPR and the cookie ban, things are turning in Europe though. Because now they no longer have the choice.

"Advertising often just seeks to make a consumer aware of a certain product."

And this is why shiny new product is often placed along a half naked beatiful women or alike? Sex sells?

Some marketing indeed exists, that just tries to make a consumer aware of a product. But most marketing campaigns try to associate a certain product with certain attractive person/livestyle/object.

The Malboro Man, the Taste of freedom. Etc.

It is highly manipulative to its core. And with targeted ads, you can play with the target persons fears and desires in a automated way. So far this likely not happening (very well), but the potential is very real and dark.

> And this is why shiny new product is often placed along a half naked beatiful women or alike? Sex sells?

If anything, this was more common in the pre-internet advertising age. Can't remember the last time I saw an ad like this.

It is still totally a thing, it just takes effort to notice it, since it is so common. Also there is still nondigital advertisement.

I disagree. Manipulate is not only loaded, but it is the wrong word.

Ads attempt to persuade. They can be implemented in manipulative ways, but ads aren't inherently that IMO.

By that logic you prefer random recommendations over personalized ones which means listening to the radio and TV over Netflix and Spotify

First of all, yes I rather get irrelevant ads than being targeted. If you worked in certain industries you know that some advertisers are extremely cynical, and I simply don't want to be in a constant state of mental warfare against these people. This has a real effect on stress and in my opinion is worse than seeing an irrelevant ad. At least I know this ad isn't tracking and profiling me.

There is also the concept of identity, and specifically, who owns your identity. If you are the owner of your own identity, including interests, wants and needs, then no company should be allowed to create a profile of your identity ("shadow profile") without your permission. However, the big ad corporations like Google and Facebook (and recently TikTok) all create shadow profiles for you, like it or not, with or without your consent. Why are they allowed to do this? Should I not be paid if my unique identity is being used and monetized?

This "ownership of identity" complaint makes no sense to me. You are the owner of your identity, but I would still be free to think you are an asshole if I so wanted (I don't, to be clear, just an example :) )

Making inferences about you doesn't mean you "own" your identity less.

Of course you can think what you like of me, but how did you obtain this opinion? In all likelihood, from a personal interaction - perhaps you met me or replied to my misguided comments. Now imagine a person constantly badgering you for personal information that you don't want to share, and then using whatever info they found to manipulate you. There's a law against that, it's harassment, nobody wants this. But when a machine does it, it's supposedly okay.

I would consider consenting to being tracked and offered personalized ads if I got paid to see these ads. If I am the owner of my identity, I should be the one monetizing it. Why would I agree some corporation should make money off of my very being? I resent that. Either don't profile me (especially against my will) or compensate me.

Getting paid for your thoughts is not something new. People are constantly being paid to take part in focus groups, AB testing, polls and surveys. So why not pay you for the right to use this information in advertising?

> imagine a person constantly badgering you for personal information that you don't want to share, and then using whatever info they found to manipulate you. There's a law against that, it's harassment, nobody wants this. But when a machine does it, it's supposedly okay.

Badgering you for personal information? You are freely choosing to go on their site and interact with it how you want. The comparison with "harassment" seems extremely hyperbolic.

> So why not pay you for the right to use this information in advertising?

You're being compensated by using their free product, which you are free to not use.

> You are freely choosing to go on their site and interact with it how you want.

Only that the entire effort of collecting your data and profiling you happens without you being able to notice, stop or interfere (unless using some extension or sometimes a specific browser). It's more akin to you visiting public places (the visible websites) while a creepy stalker follows your every move and tries to profile you. This might be a form of harassment, but even if it isn't, I rather avoid this situation.

> You're being compensated by using their free product, which you are free to not use.

You might not be awere of how some of this works then. TikTok can seemingly track users visiting WebMD and Weight Watchers [1]. You can visit the webpage of your church, a clinic or even some municipal authorities and still get shadow profiled. And TikTok is new to this. Imagine the data collected by Google and Facebook.

We're not talking about visiting websites like YouTube where you enjoy a "free product". We're talking about virtually any website you visit including some essential services.

[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics-computers/privac...

No. Because targeting means you’ve built a profile on me by collecting data about my habits and interests without permission and will sell/leak that to god knows who. Websites can tailor their ads to the audience likely to visit them.

You can turn off personalized ads on iOS https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/control-how-apple-del...

Turn personalized ads on or off Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Apple Advertising, then turn Personalized Ads on or off. Note: Turning off personalized ads limits Apple’s ability to deliver relevant ads to you. It may not reduce the number of ads you receive.

I would be fine with paying for youtube premium, etc. if they did not track and build profiles on paying customers. I get mining my data in exchange for using it for free, but I do not think it is fair to mine data on paying customers without giving them some discount/opt out.

Plus: they're often even worse than the wholesale because what they think they know about me is basically always pure nonsense. (Other than offering me an ad to buy the book I just fckn bought.)

> Everyone has to suffer to through those stupid viagra and antidepressants ads because there is no targeting.

This is no worse than suffering through "Raid Shadow Legends" ads because I have a "gamer" bit flipped somewhere in Google's profile of me. 99% (or even 100%) of stuff advertised to me is hot garbage, even if I'm in the right demographic for the product.

The problem is that targeting is only part of the equation of what you see. The other part is the advertiser's budget. And companies that spend big on marketing are often either selling digital crack (e.g. gacha games, scams, gambling) or simply have the most capital investment (startup of the week, manscaped, Nord VPN, etc.). Neither scenario is a good signal of quality. As a result, the safest approach as a consumer is to ignore all ads.

I'm against all ads, but I'm particularly against targeted ads because building and tuning systems that are designed to track people and personalize messages to influence behavior have far too many uses that are far worse that convincing someone to buy some pants or whatever. It's highly tuned and personalized psychological warfare at scale, that can be deployed for any number of reasons.

I think that's the model everyone (eg: your average consumer) likes and is most familiar with.

Advertisements on TV are tolerated because it's not targeted and just a random broadcast to everyone who might be interested.

Anxiety that certain things may be used against you in the form of advertising is a very real problem people face. A teenager who is researching transgender topics would be potentially frightened if the TV station the family usually watches that never shows any ads about transgender health suddenly started pushing those kinds of ads and the parents disapproved.

The problem lies in the tracking technology. In order to make informed decisions about what people might potentially be looking to buy includes learning that individual's preferences and the rather unfortunate part of everything being online is that includes everything you could possibly imagine. Everything from the type of job you have right down to your porn preferences and other proclivities are potentially up for grabs and I'm sure the vast majority of people would feel greatly unnerved if Google, Facebook or whoever showed them just what kind of person the algorithms have determined them to be just by the data they've already collected.

I live multiple lives. I'm a father, a businessman, have multiple hobbies, do sports. Targeted ads mean this info can be combined. I can be profiled and abused. Algorithm has calculated what I might impulsively buy and shows me that personalized ad everywhere.

Non-targeted ads do not mean viagra ads. Non-targeted ads still have the context of the website/app I'm using.

Non-targeted ads mean that I can get ads about specific hardware when I browse my hobby forums; I can get ads about some interesting SaaS when I browse my work related news sites. I don't get anything that's targeting some calculated personality quirks of mine to the highest ad bidder.

> Or did that just make advertising more inefficient which then led to just more irrelevant ads.

Why should I care about the "efficiency" of the ads I'm being served? It's not my job to help them exploit me.

Seriously. I literally have gone to the page for my Google advertising profile and updated my interests to be more accurate.

Targeted ads usually aren't trying to trick me, they're telling me about products and services I genuinely don't know about. Maybe this will shock people, but I have actually bought things linked straight from ads a handful of times. (Only a handful, but that's more than zero.)

I infinitely prefer targeted advertising rather than the horrible lowest-common-denominator generic non-targeted "grow your dick" and "one weird trick" and "millionth website visitor" garbage. (I just wish there were a button for "don't show me ads for humidifiers anymore because I already bought one after researching, I'm not gonna buy another". So that the targeting worked even better.)

If they were any good I might agree. But in my experience ad targeting just fixates on things you recently looked up, or actually already purchased. I don't recall ever finding a product through a targeted ad that I didn't already know about.

> I know everone hates ads, but isn’t targeted ads better than wholesale bombardment?

There’s a lot of people disagreeing with you, but it’s missing the point, I think.

Everybody can get the experience they want; both you and they can. You can get targeted ads by accepting when an advertiser asks to track you. They can get non-targeted ads by rejecting when an advertiser asks to track them.

The key thing here is that everybody is given the choice. And that’s Apple’s only requirement – they haven’t banned tracking, they have banned tracking without asking the user for their consent first.

Apple blocked targeted ads based on track individuals, and collecting personal data. There are plenty of ways of serving targeted ads without the tracking.

The most obvious approach is content based targeting. If someone is reading an article about baby names, put ads for baby clothes next to it. If there’re reading an article about cloud infrastructure, put an AWS ad next to it.

People managed to make and sell perfectly good adverts long before Facebook and Google came along. Have you never noticed that every advert in a trade magazine targets people in that trade?

They didn't block targeted ads based on collecting data. Facebook can collect all the personal data they want and use it for advertising.

What they can't do w/o consent is collect data from third party apps and use that to target users in other apps.

I understand your point, but there's a difference between ads targeting specific audiences and ads targeting specific individuals.

I will add yet another voice to the heap saying "nope, targeted is worse." The point of ads is to trick me into buying something I don't need, I'd rather they were less efficient.

Further, lots of smart people are working on the project of ads. Talented programmers and data scientists. Hopefully less efficient ads will result in a less lucrative ad sector, and more of these folks can be convinced to do something productive with their talents.

Doesn’t it say more about you than the advertiser that you are allowing yourself to be tricked?

Sure -- ads are a billion dollar industry so apparently they are getting some people to spend money they wouldn't have otherwise, what is says about me is that I don't think I'm somehow uniquely immune to them. Naturally, like most technically inclined people, I've adjusted to this vulnerability by using an ad blocker.

If you want a contrary opinion, I disagree. On the face of it, I agree with your premise. However, targeted ads unfortunately also means creating profiles which are sold to data brokers. Targeted ads are I suppose ok. However, collecting data, profiling and selling to whomever is paying has very significant ramifications.

If advertisers figure out a way to target ads without profiling, I'm all for it. In fact, it's not that uncommon for me to watch "sponsors" on YouTube. It's targeted because people who are watching a video on mechanical principles, might be interested in.. Say "brilliant".

That said. VPN services and ear pods can gf themselves.

I would argue no, but that is my opinion.

The reason for my no is that if there are ad agencies committed to building a profile of you, that's far to easy for that profile to get sold/stolen by bad actors. For example, if I was a trans man, and I was buying feminine hygiene products, I could be targeted for harassment by a leaked advertising profile.

If there's no money in building profiles it makes it less likely that one will be built, not that it can't. But that's a reasonable tradeoff to me.

Maybe not so much for the individual user's experience, but society as a whole.

We're seeing that targeted (political) ads are a powerful way to hack a democracy.

If everyone is seeing the same shitty advertisement, at least they have something to complain about together - even that much common ground is better in my opinion than everyone with their own version of reality.

Sure, but it's not as if the data used to create the targeted ad disappears after the ad is served, or that the data in a single, secure location. It's shared with 100 other analytics companies and could end up in the hands of your health insurer, or God knows who else.

I don’t see how targeted ads are any less insufferable than a viagra ad. I don’t watch ads for fun.

No matter how “relevant” an ad may be, you’re still breaking context to insert yourself, and distract me from, the thing I’m actually interested in.

Also, targeted ads can be very useful for small businesses trying to reach their target market.

Untargetted ads tend to be big companies promoting their brand.

No targeted ads are worse in several ways.

1.) It's one of the main reason why surveillance capitalism is so widespread. Some of the worst things that came out of tech in past 20 years are directly or indirectly connected to "targeting ads".

2. ) Better name for targeted adds would be Machine driven adds. And with it comes the counter part of machine driven re-posters re-blogers, ai generated spam content etc. If you didn't have all those "targeted" machine driven networks there would be a lot less reason to build such sites. Since most advertisers would not want to advertise on such sites if they had a choice in it.

3.) With all the crap they bring, they still suck at targeting. They either focus on one search you did a while ago to the exclusion of everything else, they to sell you same expensive stuff for months after you already bought it, or completely irrelevant most of the time.

4.) They make pages load slower, sometimes a lot slower.

You are forgetting the alternative that is no ads.

The more targeted an ad, the more it manipulates your mind.

> but isn’t targeted ads better than wholesale bombardment?

Better by what measure? Not at the expense of privacy. Where is the data going? Who is it being sold to?

Sure, American TV ads are annoying, but they're predictable and sometimes entertaining. American TV ads are so inefficient that they need to work for your attention.

One issue with targeting is receiving antidepressant ads, knowing the algorithm knows that you're depressed. Or receiving baby ads when the algorithm knows you were expecting, but doesn't know you had a miscarriage. There are countless examples of targeting being a danger to the public as well, being used for very effective misinformation campaigns.

when I am on a kiteboarding forum I prefer to see ads that are relevant to kiteboarding and not ads for hand mixers just because I looked at or bought one last week.

I also think targeted ads are really bad for society in general. They have incentivized the building of companies that have created massive surveillance and manipulation systems on a scale nobody would have dreamt of some decades ago. Think about Stalin or Hitler having the datasets Google or Facebook have built up and how they could have used them. I can't see anything good about targeted advertising unless you buy into the vision that people's only purpose in life is to buy things.