[hedora]

This is unfortunately too common. Abuse prescription drugs? Expect to constantly see ads for those drugs. For some reason ad targeting thinks I have an unpleasant disease or two that I don't.

I've had good luck enabling all the tracking and searching for high-end lifestyle stuff. The prospect of selling luxury goods to the ultra wealthy is jucier to the ad auctions than exploiting a measly few thousand a month for prescription meds, and the ads for that stuff is eye candy anyway.

After kicking it a few times like that, I re-enable the ad blockers.

On a related note, Trump famously targeted the mental illness category with conspiracy theories and libel. It probably won him the presidency.

If I had my way, the entire surveillance capitalism industry would be banned (including targeted ads).

[hnthrow_asdf]

I hadn't thought about skewing the ad auctions that way, thanks. I used to get ads for fancy river cruises, Peloton, high-end furniture cookware etc and will try searching for that stuff again, but am guessing the data brokers know I no longer earn an income. Failing that maybe pretending to be looking for payday loans, lottery, coupons might be "lucrative" enough.

[hedora]

The canonical example I've heard of from Googlers is "yoga pants", though that's out of date. Go with something that's trendy this year.

With any luck, they'll think you have a rich significant othet. I somehow accidentally convinced them I have a mistress with a taste for $600 machine washable silk pyjamas (there is apparently a company that specializes in only that!)

It helps to clear cookies, etc immediately before kicking the recommendation engine.

That seems to significantly lower the weight it puts on the prior. Instead of being a native Spanish speaker, I now know Vietnamese.

(Of course, all of these inferences about me are wrong.)

[rdtwo]

Aycd and kylin will search popular terms with your Google profile. It’s called farming usally too increase capcha score but it’s also useful to improve the noise floor to make it hard to target ads.