According to FB, users just desparately want those ads to be highly targeted and relevant. And, that's awesome, because it just happens to correspond exactly with what advertisers want.
Most amazing is that advertisers continue to believe it. Testament to the power of desparation and wishful thinking.
But, of course, that doesn't mean they want ads. The reality is that they want neither.
Your comment points to exactly the fallacy I referenced: this idea they peddle to advertisers that people want relevant ads. No, they will stomach ads if they must, because it's the lesser of evils.
I remember I had a talk with a coworker once and we talked about if the ad was good enough to give you what you really wanted to buy when you searched and he thought it should be the first result, which I don't agree with because of course what is most helpful to me at some point might not be what I want to buy in relation to the search but something else. But definitely the thing I want to buy should be presented to me when I want to buy it so that I can buy it with the least amount of fuss.
But unfortunately that is not what I get.
I would suggest that you simply appreciate the occasional ad that happens to be relevant, especially given that most aren't (as you noted). But that is a far cry from really wanting to be inundated with or demanding ads, relevant or not.
As an example I recently bought a rabbit for my daughter, there's a bunch of relevant information on rabbits I need to know about, as well as things it would be useful for me to buy. In order for me to determine what I need to buy I need to do research to determine what is the best solution for my needs at the moment. Really relevant ads would give me a very close match to what I need, and explain to me why I needed it. Trusting the relevant ad vendor I would not have to spend time on research and could go directly to purchase. This is of the course the dream, a dream unavailable with today's technology but inching closer. I would like it if it were here. Of course the problem is this kind of relevance would carry with it side effects that I might not like so much.
Retargeting is a perfect example of how a relevance beatdown can occur. Yes, I put those shoes in my cart because I was genuinely interested in them. But, I don't need to see them popping up on every site I visit thereafter for a week. Neither do I need to keep seeing the Softlayer Cloud ads, etc. It's a turnoff to be hounded like this, and even distasteful at a certain point.
To your point, though, perhaps part of the problem is the current ad formats.