this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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Some people actually like personalized ads!
I have no idea why, it feels counter productive to want them to influence you to buy shit you don't need.
I like my ads to be as unrelated to me as possible, because I wouldn't spend money on those things anyways.
I have to admit that it can be funny with personalized ads when you google something extremely expensive and get ads for it for months after. Many years ago I searched for a high speed camera (like the one the Slow Mo Guys use) and while I very much want one, I could never afford to spend 0,5 to 1,5 million Euro (or whatever the price was) on one camera. So it was amusing to see all the ads urging me (a then teenager) to buy one.
I looked up the backgammon start position, since then all Google wants to sell me is backgammon boards.
The most interesting and absurd ad I ever got on youtube was for a device for inspecting the coils on a huge grid transformer.
this has me thinking, i might actually be interested in looking at ads if they had only completely random things, like literally anything that exists. At least i wouldnt be annoyed with them so much.
In my experience, ad personalization is still so bad it has no impact, like in your last example. But at least now I'm not seeing random shit. I don't really bother to try and counter targeted ads, and the vast majority of the ads I get are for products I actually already bought or never intended to buy but was researching for other purposes. Yes, Google knows I spent a lot of time researching drills, but guess what, Home Depot isn't telling them I bought a drill, so I'll get drill ads for a month. And yeah, I looked at a bunch of luxury sail yachts, private jets, and cars, but it's not because I suddenly make more money. It's because I'm interested in design and engineering. But Google just stupidly assumes I became a billionaire overnight and gives me 100' yacht ads.
I'd honestly be more worried about a random ad getting lucky and pre-emptively catching my interest. Targeted ads are so reactive it's not a problem.