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by nfailor 4659 days ago
1. we do the best we can to target. you get blanketed by irrelevant ads for a myriad of reasons not limited to: -lazy clients who don't understand their userbase -ads for things you might be interested in being choked out by higher paying spots.

2. that's actually not an advertiser's job--although some of those elements may be part of a campaign. we live in an era where clients demand an ROI, they want a conversion stat, and that's what they base an ad buy on--we agree this is detrimental in the industry. we'd much rather present you with a product over a span of time. we'd much rather show a product to likely consumers.

I'd give you a treatise on the industry, but ogilvy did that:

http://www.commissionedwriting.com/CONFESSIONS%20OF%20AN%20A...

3. that's also a client generated evil.

4. we've been making that sort of connection our entire history. content producers check too, they call it 'knowing your audience.' we're actually in the midst of a massive democratization. instead of five or six market research companies (or one TV research company, or one radio company) we're opening up. you can actually opt-out--that's never happened before.

5. so pay for the service.

not enough users are interested in baring the true cost of a service--hence the dependence on ad revenue.