[SmellyGeekBoy]

Why can't ads be relevant to the content of the page like they used to be in the good old days?

As an example of stupid targeted ads: I bought a Casper mattress a couple of months ago and pretty much every single ad I've seen since then (on devices where I don't have them blocked) has been for mattresses. How many mattresses does the internet think I need?

If I'm reading about something on the internet it's generally because I'm interested in it. Why not try to sell me something related to that rather than something I already bought!?

[Guest9812398]

I see these all the time too.

1. I bought one of those spinning face brushes for my girlfriend. A few minutes after purchasing online, I started seeing advertisements from that same store, for the same exact brush. Literally 90% of the page views were showing that advertisement.

2. I was browsing Airbnb accommodation for a trip to let's say Mexico. I was checking apartments on and off for weeks. I didn't see any Airbnb advertisements during that time. The minute I book that accommodation, Airbnb starts showing advertisements for rooms in Mexico.

3. I'm browsing barbers in a new city. No advertisements until I book an appointment with one online. Then, I start seeing advertisements for the same barbershop. Now, that has potential, but the advertisements stopped after a week. Why do I need to book a second hair appointment in the same week? Why not recognize I booked a men's haircut, and start showing me ads in a few weeks?

For all the tracking, privacy invasion, and fancy "machine learning", advertising sure is dumb.

[username223]

Maybe it's optimizing for the wrong thing. Maybe the goal of targeted advertising is to find the people who were about to buy something anyways, shove an ad for it in front of them just in time, and take a cut[1]:

> Our results indicate that more sophisticated targeting algorithms might not gain, and might even harm, the advertiser as those seeing the ad would convert in the absence of advertising.

There are a bunch of ad-tech people on this site; maybe some of them could chime in and share how many more sales they make using total surveillance versus basic keyword-in-page.

[1] https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=7020000840130690...

[jlgaddis]

A little over two years ago, I Googled the name of a local Dodge/RAM dealership (on my iPad, thus no ad blocker) so I could browse their selection online before I ventured over there. That afternoon, I bought a new truck (from that dealership).

For almost A YEAR afterwards, I would constantly see ads about RAM trucks and various dealerships in my area (including the one I Googled and bought the truck from) when browsing the web on my iPad. Not every ad, of course, but certainly often enough that I would notice it a couple times a week and just laugh and shake my head at the dealerships who were just throwing their ad dollars away.

[ams6110]

My guess, some people buy a mattress and end up unhappy with it, return it, and buy something else. This is enough people that it's worth showing mattress ads to all recent mattress buyers.

[nielsbjerg]

My guess is bad purchase tracking

[tzakrajs]

Why would a vendor send a signal back to Facebook or an ad company that their competitors should stop spending money on useless ads?