[tomtang0514]

You have no idea about ad network at all. "unnecessarily track"? Tracking is the only way to make the ad relevant to you and increase the ad's value so you actually see fewer ads and those ads fund better content. Without any tracking, you gonna see at least tripled amount of ads on the most popular websites today in order to generate same amount of revenue. And BTW, everything between "you land on a webpage" and "ad network decided which ad to serve" happens in about 100ms or less, like you can really notice it?! Complain about ads when you actually pay for subscription rather than asking for "workaround links" when you try to read a WSJ article posted on HN next time.

[stephenr]

If your site has recipes, cooking tips etc, you don't need to track my activity across the web, to know that I'm interested in cooking, and may want to buy cooking related items. Magazine based advertising has worked on this concept for literally decades.

As for your little quip about WSJ links. Do you mean this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10015496 ?

> I can't read the article because its paywalled

I never asked for a "workaround". Honestly the only reason I wanted to see the article is to identify if the article is as ridiculous as the title implied, so why would I buy a subscription for a publisher that puts out shit like that?

[tomtang0514]

That's exactly why I said you don't understand what targeted advertisement can do. Let's talk about 3 concepts:

1) Relevance. Take your cooking website example, say if that recipes has chicken in it. Then the magazine method can show you an ad about local supermarket for you to buy chicken. Then how do they know if you "probably" prefer walmart or wholefoods or local farmer's market? What if you are an organic guy? (which means you probably prefer wholefoods) Traditional magazine method doesn't make the result relevant enough for today's online advertising standard.

2) Feedback. As a brand who wanna do an online campaign, how do I know if my advertisement works? Today's advertiser no longer count on clicks, they count on impression. They don't need you to click to ad. They just want to make sure you see it. How do they if you didn't block to ad? How do they know if you didn't go to other tabs when their 15 second youtube ad is playing? That means at least 1 additional request send out from your browser. Usually it's more because they wanna know if you watched half of the video or the whole video. Things above don't have to be done with tracking you profile, but the other things does. For example, how to the advertisers know if they reach their target audience? If I'm selling the new mustang how do I know if I show the ad to ford people instead of chevy people? It's called on target percentage and it's one of the top metrics advertisers care about.

3) Availability. In many situations, there's just no ad available that actually relevant to the content. Then it's better for advertisers to show you something that may relevant to you instead of something completely random or no ad at all.

Your magazine method has works for decades doesn't mean it will continue to work in the future. Does magazine itself still work?

BTW, when I raise the WSJ thing I didn't target you specifically and I have no idea you had that comment you posted before. But as you said, you (and probably most people) won't pay for subscription for such ridiculous publication. Then advertisement is the way for you to read it freely so you can identify if the article is ridiculous or not. Or maybe just don't read it and comment by title?

[stephenr]

I don't care what they "can do". It's fucking creepy and I'll never accept it.

A site can just as easily say "show me ads for <page specific tags> as hard-coded "recipes", and knowing where I shop just goes into the creepy factor even more.

[tomtang0514]

Okay if I understand correctly, you just hate targeting ads with tracking not any ads right? Then instead of using ad blocker, you can opt out from cookie tracking on NAI so all participating companies of NAI (which covers almost all major players in the ad network industry) will not use your cookie.

[stephenr]

No, it isn't just privacy invasion that bothers me. Ridiculous screen-covering ads, bandwidth hogging, battery draining etc.

But forget all that - your suggestion, to avoid a tracking cookie from the various companies in what is frankly an industry with a terrible track record for doing the right thing, is to use the NAI "don't track me" "feature"... Which requires that I accept cookies from any domain and let them put a cookie on my device?

Are you aware of how stupid I would have to be, to believe that works?

[tomtang0514]

I work for one of the ad network. And I know the people in my company who implemented that specific piece of code for that specific opt-out feature. It's one of the most safety-critical feature we have so we do regression test before every single release regardless if we modified that code or not. So I'm pretty sure that opt-out feature works. Because if it doesn't, someone gonna sue us.

I find it really hard to communicate with you because before we even start this discussion you seems already tagged the entire ad industry as an "evil empire" who try to steal your personal information all the time. The ad industry is not an angle for sure. It's just a business that try to make money, like any other business. Intentionally ruin people's life is not the interest of any mature business. Believe or not, doing things that make people hate ads is the last thing the ad industry wants. Because the more everyone hate ads, the less effective those ad campaigns will be, and the less ad companies get paid. Most of the problems with ads today are not introduced in favor of anybody, it's just not as easy as you might think to find a overall better way. Do you recall how many years it has been for people to actually produce a practical substitution for gas engine since everyone realize it's messing up our planet?

In the end, I'm interest to hear your vision on how to fund high quality online contents today without the profit of targeted advertisement.

[alkonaut]

Magazines and bus stop ads have worked for decades without knowing more about me than that I read a particular magazine for example. Small time outlets didn't advertise in magazines and bus stops in the past, so it's quite likely that small blogs and similar outlets with less than (say) a few hundred thousand unique visitors per day will no longer be able to support themselves via advertising, even to just cover hosting. The solution will be to aggregate into larger networks (medium etc) or rely on donations/subscriptions/affiliate links etc.

I don't want "targeted" "relevant" ads related to what I wrote on Facebook yesterday or what I googled last Tuesday. Ever. I'll just have to live with whatever content people can afford to show me without such ads. I really don't feel sorry for any ad network or any site that used them.

[Ntrails]

How about you consider the possibility that there are zero ads relevant to me. For as long as I can remember the only times I have clicked on an ad (on mobile) have been mistakes.

If ads make money based on click-throughs and purchases, then my blocking them has zero change in revenue generated. If they are simply displaying for brand awareness (less common on the web) then sure I'm having a minor impact but given that ads often ruin content enough to close the window (recent example being a floating banner covering half my screen and thus making article unreadable) I doubt there is positive brand impact anyway.

[monochromatic]

I didn't ask for relevant ads or privacy intrusions. And if your business model can be demolished by a bit of code that lets me selectively decide what I'm willing to view, it was never a good model anyway.