[hamiltont]

My ad experience has changed dramatically after I leaned into multiple browser personas. In personal persona, I hate ads with passion and do everything to get rid of them (browser extensions, premium membership, etc). I value my personal time and the ads are totally useless.

In work persona, I suddenly have found ads are actually useful. Often find myself choosing to spend 30 seconds watching a YouTube ad because it is relevant to topics I need to be aware of as a CTO. It's clear my daily browsing history influences the ads I am seeing, and I see useful information. Been looking into SIEM tools lately, and via an ad I was just made aware of some data center appliances for security. I clicked to their website and browsed a while to learn what was available. When you have some real challenges to solve and the targeting is on point, ads can be a great news feed.

Clearly segmenting my browser history into one persona where I am actively looking for solutions vs my personal persona where I want to be left alone helped the feeds target me.

Still, surreal feeling to intentionally choose to watch an ad...

[amelius]

Yes, ads should be locked up inside services that users specifically choose to use if and when they want.

Those services should not have overlapping features, like providing mail, social media, or general search, for example, as that would be a clear conflict of interest.

[yumraj]

> Been looking into SIEM tools lately, and via an ad I was just made aware of some data center appliances for security.

Would you not have come cross them if you were actively searching for data center appliances for security? Were Ads the only way to find them?

[londons_explore]

You would be far better served by taking advice of someone you've hired than taking the advice from YouTube ads about snake-oil...