I want no ads, but apparently it's impossible to build a business these days without also trying to manipulate me into buying random other stuff. If I can't go around them, I'd still prefer to ignore generic ads rather than targeted ones. It's easier to do and less creepy from their side.

One requires a network that tracks your every step and analyzes your behavior in a way that makes most totalitarian regimes green with envy. The other knows nothing about you except that the site you are browsing right now is about computer hardware and there might be a slight chance that you want to buy computer hardware right now.

Generic ads are more useful to me anyway. When the ads are targeted, it's usually for products I already have an opinion about, and about which I have therefore already made up my mind.

Generic ads, on the other hand, can be about topics/products I usually would never consider or have a strong opinion about, when I realise it might be helpful to a problem I've been neglecting or something like that.

Put another way: Targeted ads are never useful to me, generic ads are sometimes useful to me.

Because targeted apps need information about you that some people do not want to provide. And don't care about ads..

I see generic ads as a signal that a company strongly backs its product. I see targeted ads a way for companies hocking cheap products to squeeze value out of their impressions.

The billboards on highway 80/101 in SF are usually rented by big brands with large corporate backing, but their products are usually solid, whereas AdSense ads usually show me what I assume must be dropshipped goods with little quality control (but usually have some sort of novelty value).

I’m not against targeted advertisement, I’m against being spied on. You can target advertisement by picking which media you advertise in.

“Targeted” ads almost never show me anything of interest and insist on compromising my privacy. “Generic” ads are more likely to be interesting to me and don't attack my privacy.

I think these terms are misleading though. Traditional advertising is targeted: at the audience of some particular media which takes advertising. And that kind of advertising is actually very effective, and still is. What do viewers of a technology YouTube channel perhaps have an interest in? Technology! What might readers of a gardening magazine want to buy? Gardening tools!

And traditional advertising also advertises to people things at the time they are most receptive to it: when am I thinking most about buying video games? Perhaps when I'm watching others playing them.

You're fine with political campaign ads targeting you? Only showing their support of wedge issues you agree with, while hiding their support of issues you disagree with? Sorry, but that's just too manipulative.

The problem is less with me seeing personalized ads, and more with the ad-server and/or the website getting my PII, and anyone who sees my screen or sniffs my traffic acquiring PII by observing which ads I get.

Because generic ads are less likely to work.

Targeted (i.e. better) ads mean you are manipulated harder, and have less chance to notice it or defend against it.

Ads work.

Apart from obvious privacy concerns, I started getting much more interesting ads on sites that respect my settings. One time I found an ad for a poem this way.

Targeted ads simply show me what I bought or was interested in recently(there's always a delay).

Because targeted ads need profilation while generics not.

Generic ads don't require surveillance

You're joking, right? I'd be far more likely to buy something from an ad based on the content of the page I'm currently looking at as it's something I'm obviously interested in. The targeted ads I've seen tend to be for things I've already bought (how many mattresses does one man need!?)