[stephenr]

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.

[jariel]

"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.

[stephenr]

> 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.