[ThorAndZeus]

Very good point indeed. And that is how the publishing industry used to do with segmented magazines. Each publication built their own reader's profile and ad agencies would chose a publication over another based on who they would like to target. That is a much more ethical approach, in my opinion.

[grigjd3]

This still happens with online ads, but supply quality matters. Location of an ad, quality of the domain (ESPN is very good value). But roughly 100 junk auctions come in (no bidder) for every ok auction (single bid reduces to floor) and just a tenth of that represents a good location (bids drive the price above the floor). So yes, people still hit up espn's college football pages with truck ads and the Washington post got targeted for ads by the Bahraini embassy trying to drum up support during their spat with Saudi Arabia.