Or on apps about snowboarding, or on fora related to snowboarding, or by paying snowboarding content creators, there's a wealth of opportunities out there. I don't give a damn about snowboarding when I'm browsing, say, twitter. (Which, incidentally, for some reason has borked itself into thinking I like rowing.)
Instead of that they want to shove their new snowboard ads on every blog not connected to snowboarding you see because you searched "snow" once on Google
Or because you just bought a new snowboard on-line (and won't need another for years), so now you've got snowboard ads everywhere, despite being in the group of people least likely to need a new snowboard anytime soon.
My shopping habits must be somewhat unique on a local amazon-esque site that 80% of the time when I view something I have already bought (i.e. to check some detail before it arrives, or sometimes if I want to order more - I buy a decent amount of hardware and fittings for DIY projects on there) it has a little carousel at the bottom saying "Others who looked at this item also looked at:" and it's a list of 8 things, 7 of which I know I've looked at recently, or even bought.
This is the thing that “ad tech” people never want to acknowledge (because it makes their “secret sauce” a lot less valuable).
Not only would there be zero tracking required to show content-relevant ads, there’s zero creep factor. No one questions seeing an ad for a new blender or an online grocer when looking at a recipe site, there’s no question why you’re seeing those ads.
Seeing ads about something very specific that you looked for a few days ago, on completely unrelated sites is the epitome of creepy.
"You mean, we can actually buy ads on Snowboarding Websites, or in Print Magazines? We never thought of that, thanks for the deep insight HN commenter! Now the 'secret sauce' of digital advertisers is out of the bag! Right here on HN!"
I've been skiing all of my life and I've never bought a 'skiing magazine' and never visited a skiing website as far as I can mention.
(It's not 'creepy' to get ads for Snowboarding when you're on Twitter, than it is for anything else.)
There are very, very few venues for smaller companies to get the word out - the more efficient those communications channels, the better the products and services we would receive.
There is a massive 'mismatching' problem in modern economies, wherein consumer interests are not met by makers, because the 'matching', if you will is poor. If we could permanently line up people's interests with the right services and products at the right prices, unemployment would cater to zero.
> I've been skiing all of my life and I've never bought a 'skiing magazine' and never visited a skiing website as far as I can mention.
If you never visit skiing websites (and thus presumably also never search for skiing websites), and the likes of Google showed you an ad for ski gear, that would be the epitome of creepy.
> It's not 'creepy' to get ads for Snowboarding when you're on Twitter, than it is for anything else.
If you follow/view a bunch of skiing related accounts, its not unrealistic. If you don't follow/view any ski related accounts, then again, that is very creepy.
But twitter is essentially the model we're talking about: show the visitor ads based on what they choose to view (mostly, afaik), not based on what they searched for last week on a different site.
> the more efficient those communications channels, the better the products and services we would receive.
Well while we're using anecdotal evidence, I've never seen an ad and thought "yeah that's actually just what I want, <click>". If I want something, I got search for it specifically.