[dangerface]

80% of their money will come from big advertisers like Unilever and Coke who target everyone and anyone.

It's only the small advertisers who want their adverts targeted at people in their country and topic, thats it.

That sort of targeting can be done simply by what country is their ip from whats the topic of the content Im sending them.

The whole targeted advertising thing is 100% a gimmick that advertisers don't care about.

[the_watcher]

This is simply untrue. Large advertisers are often the most demanding about ensuring that their ads reach the specific audience that they are targeting. Giant companies are the only ones who can afford to hire someone whose entire job is "drive engagement with millennials in the American Southwest" (and yes, I personally know someone whose first job was basically that). Small businesses are much less active in managing targeted ads beyond location, as their marketing is usually done in the spare time of the business owner.

[jefftk]

> The whole targeted advertising thing is 100% a gimmick that advertisers don't care about.

While many advertisers don't care about it, to others it's very important. For example, if you visit a product page but don't complete a purchase, showing you ads for that project on different pages [1] is much more likely to lead to a sale than showing untargeted ads.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_retargeting

(Disclosure: I work on ads at Google. Speaking only for myself.)

[ZitchDog]

Nonsense. Big advertisers have sub-brands that they love to target. It's not like Coca-Cola corporation is selling a single product. Personal data is a gold mine when it comes time to market individual SKUs.

[mattferderer]

IP address is poor targeting. Small businesses will want to target a geographic region of their local city & surrounding areas.

While small businesses don't sound as awesome & big as Coke, there are a lot of small businesses.

Edit - my IP address has put me in another state that's over a 6 hour drive away before. I wouldn't find that useful when targeting local people for my store.

[michaelt]

Surely even huge multinationals have a need to target their denture glue adverts to people who need denture glue?