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Comment by hkuo | Hacker News Reader

I'm all down for that though. Targetting me on past actions have been a huge fail for the ad servers so far. One example, my wife was thinking about applying for a job at Tom's shoes. I checked out the site to read about their company. Ever since, their banner ads have been following me all over the place, with no interest on my part to ever wear or purchase them. Example two, I was watching a podcast interviewing the CEO of a wine making company. I checked out their site, and again I got followed absolutely everywhere with their banner ads. The problem with their targeting as far as I've experienced is that they have no ability whatsoever to understand the context of my actions, and context is the most valuable part of understanding what would be relevant to me. Without that, all they can do is see that i visited X site, so let's hammer X site's banner at me to perpetuity until I visit Y site, and the cycle continues.

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I don't get why this is so annoying. Would you prefer to get random, untargeted banners for home mortgage refinancing or mesothelioma lawsuits?

At least if you allow them to target you, there's an outside chance that once in a while an ad is exactly what you're looking for.

As a matter of fact, yes, I would. I do get tired of seeing the same ad over and over again. I don't use ad block, as I do want to give website owners their rightful due, and I would rather see a variety of ads than one single one over and over again.

Imagine watching television, and in each commercial slot, it's the same commercial, all day, all week. I think you would get sick of that commercial very quickly, and after a while, you would begin to have negative thoughts about the company in the commercial.

The same thing happens when my wife watches her Korean dramas online. There was a week or so, that there was this one single Virgin Mobile ad that played before and during every episode, the one that has that scene of the woman giving birth while screaming at her mobile phone. Even though I wasn't watching the dramas, I was close enough to have to hear that ad 25 times over the course of a night, and I began to harbor extremely violent thoughts against Virgin Mobile.

Edit: not sure that answers your question directly actually, but what I really mean is that I would like to see a variety of ads rather than the one or two that seem to be stalking me everywhere and of which I have no interest. I'd certainly rather see ads from more companies of higher quality than mesotheleomia or mortagage financing, but in all honesty, having one or two of those sprinkled in would at least lessen the badgering I get from the few ads I constantly see.

It can be a good way for people to be targeted on what they are about to do if they are targeted in the appropriate way. A company called bluekai sells this kind of data but it is really alot of junk from what I have seen. There are ways though to know when someone has already completed an action or has the intent to complete an action. You might also know that someone will be in a specific city that is not their home, where ads can be targeted.

But I do agree that in the past and to this day there are many ads that lack the appropriate context to be retargeting you on ad networks.

I feel your pain - there needs to be better tracking of actions. I recently had some major financial documents stolen so I signed up for LifeLock to be safe. I completed the purchase but was followed for days by LifeLock ads, even though I'm now a paying customer. I can imagine it would be pretty simple to remove the cookie once a "goal" was completed at the end of their sales funnel.

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