[tenebrisalietum]

Devil's advocate:

2 advantages to targeted advertising.

Targeted advertising if done correctly can connect people who want to buy stuff with people who produce stuff with a minimum of waste. People are able to waste less time and energy discovering what to buy and companies are able to waste less time and energy producing things that people don't want.

Targeted advertising can also enable companies to effectively communicate their value propositions more effectively to local communities, and will allow companies to resist the temptation to support efforts through laws/lobbying/etc. to 'flatten' culture; companies can now embrace rather than steamroll differences in communities.

[throw_awy_1]

>Targeted advertising if done correctly can connect people who want to buy stuff with people who produce stuff with a minimum of waste.

What exactly is the waste? I'm assuming you're saying the advertiser doesn't "waste" money by advertising to folks he doesn't think will be receptive to his message. That may be true bit it's not necessarily a societal benefit. It's also most enriching the targeting companies, not saving the producers in this case. Google et al still collect the money that would have been spent on untargeted ads.

> People are able to waste less time and energy discovering what to buy and companies are able to waste less time and energy producing things that people don't want.

This seems a very generous and ad friendly interpretation that ignores other costs. Are there people who need Juul? Are there people who need fattening foods and soda? Is it possible that advertisers will prey on people's insecurities to sell them magic beauty creams?

>Targeted advertising can also enable companies to effectively communicate their value propositions more effectively to local communities, and will allow companies to resist the temptation to support efforts through laws/lobbying/etc. to 'flatten' culture; companies can now embrace rather than steamroll differences in communities.

Not sure what is being said here? If you don't by my product I'll lobby for laws you don't like in your jurisdiction?

At the same time we seem to be ignoring all the costs to targeted advertising including the main point of this suggestion, the adversarial collection of personal data but there are others side effects as well.

[tenebrisalietum]

> What exactly is the waste?

Companies are less likely to overproduce unwanted goods when the known buyers and sellers are easily predicted and/or connected. This is environmentally beneficial, for one. My argument was that targeted advertising helps that.

> This seems a very generous and ad friendly interpretation that ignores other costs.

The question "where do we draw the line for X to be illegal because of bad effects Y" can't be the job of the advertising industry to determine, because advertisers are not scientists and are only incidentally any type of educator. There is no advertising industry for illegal products; if a product or quantity thereof is harmful enough it should be illegal and outside the scope of the industry.

> If you don't by my product I'll lobby for laws you don't like in your jurisdiction?

Not laws ... but let me clarify: Advertising is done through the same medium as entertainment. Therefore, advertising contributes to determining the fate of those mediums, as most media-based entertainment products don't survive when they aren't largely financially supported. Targeted advertising can allow more localized entertainment to exist, thereby preventing monoculture.