[isomorphic]

> offering you goods and services you may be interested in

The thing is: never, not even once, has Google offered me an ad with goods and services I was interested in.

[jpeg_hero]

ok, maybe Gmail ads have been irrelevant to you. but surely you've done a google search and been presented with interesting goods and services?!?!

[bostik]

Anecdata: in the past 5 years or so the number of relevant or interesting search ads Google has shown me can be counted with one hand.

- If I'm searching for technical documentation, I couldn't care less about all the random consultancies or shitty-SaaS-of-the-day trash that populate the ad slot(s).

- If I'm looking for technical details on a piece of malware or vulnerability research, the last thing I want to see on the page is a goddamn AV junkware full-frontal.

- If I'm searching for details on some car models ... why the fk is google shoving insurance ads on my screen real estate?

And so on. As far as I'm concerned, online advertising is a stripmined toxic dump. Only the shittiest swindlers and shadiest extortion artists remain.

[pbhjpbhj]

>- If I'm searching for details on some car models ... why the fk is google shoving insurance ads on my screen real estate? //

Brand marketing. It may not work on you, but it works in general.

Personally I consider myself pretty imune to marketing but when you think "who else should I check to switch my car insurance to" then that brand is going to pop up if it's been fed to your brain enough. Indeed when you're looking at a list of similar offers the one that's associated with a name you already know will seem somehow more trustsworthy, it's an insidious finagling of a brand in to your brain drip by drip. Why do they do it? It works.

[takeda]

The only times I clicked on those was:

1. the site was actually what I typed in the address but forgot to add .com etc

2. by accident