People complain (not that OP is complaining per se) because the ads are irrelevant, but also object to tracking and profiling. You can't have targeted ads AND be anonymous to the ad companies.
Ads can be targeted to context, not user - web developer ads on JavaScript blogs.
Ad profiling and targeting can be done client side.
Users' could opt in to what they are targeted for to ensure it is the relevance they want. You will often find ad tracking technology on some very privacy invasive websites. I've seen it on HIV support, rape support, prayer, single parent dating, cancer advice, alcoholism, political party membership pages and many more; even tracking military intelligence recruitment. Are the relevant ads and infosec risks for these topics good for the user?
Tackling anonymised delivery and fraud prevention is a problem, but it's something that can be overcome with accepting it already happens and then minimising it through privacy respective methods like using auditors and testing, copying anonymisation protocols (maybe Tor), payment style validation (Brave?, zerocoin) and server side metrics.
So much this. I would turn my adblock off, if I had a directory with checkboxes/weights against interesting product topics. I would even browse the topics themselves regularly, as I did in google directory before it was gone. I (and the economy) want me to discover, not to hide from pushiest pushers around.
Modern marketing is just a slowpoke idiot who stalks me for two weeks after I already bought a <productname> via search.
Google’s system isn’t perfect but I can x-out individual ads. I’m hoping that Google will move away from a purely embedding-based targeting system into something more deliberate.
Facebook has [1] which is the closest to what you are asking for, although not used nearly enough to justify more investment in improving it.
But the reason I started blocking trackers was because the ads from tracking were basically antirelevant. I would spend an afternoon investigating what model of a specific tool to buy and where, then I would go buy it. For the next month, all the ads were for that exact tool; at which point, I was probably the least likely person in England to actually respond to those ads.
And that was before the whole Cambridge Analytica thing. I have money and I like to buy cool and useful things, and "good" advertising helps me find cool and useful things to buy. But I definitely do not like the idea of being targeted for psyops.
Most ads have sophisticated analytics, and not only about individual users. That means, basically, that they wouldn't spend their money advertising this way if it wasn't working at all or if there was a more profitable way.
Also, if I'm on a subway and start "reminding" the people around me that their clothes are out of fashion and they can buy new ones at my shop, do you think that people would consider that as friendly? Would you?
The 'psyops' was related to Cambridge Analytica using hyper-targeted messages to affect the outcome of elections; see the "Do So" campaign designed to decrease Black voter turnout in Trinidad and Tobogo [1].
As I said, I don't mind finding out about cool things to buy. I definitely don't want to be sucked into misunderstanding and hating people, or being fooled into acting against my own interests.
[1] https://advox.globalvoices.org/2019/08/06/netflixs-the-great...
The “Do so” is a far better example of what they really did: develop a talent for race-based dog-whistle type messaging that _anyone_ could see but where one group would respond differently. The main differentiator that Cambridge Analytica would introduce was Social media vs. traditional press to split messaging by age-group. They tried to improve it using magazine subscription and car brand (from credit reports) but it wasn’t much better than using party registration datasets.
Now they are trying to create some magic algorithms to determine user interests and serve same ads everwhere, independent of current page context (including vacuum cleaner you bought last week, but maybe you need another?). But why they won't do the obvious thing, serving ads revelant to the page they are shown on..?
They pretty much do. Non-targeted ads will either require an unreasonable amount of effort to disseminate or they will not be relevant to the vast majority of people that see them. Contacting different sites about a specific topic to show your relevant ads is going to take an incredible amount of work.
What's probably even worse is if we get a situation like on YouTube, where it's just the same 5-10 companies buying ads for their products. This means that content creators will advertise NordVPN on their site, even if the product itself is bad, because you only have these few options to choose from.
I see a great opportunity here.
You absolutely can, the ad just needs to match the venue. If you are selling fishing tackle you buy an ad on Total Carp (a real magazine!) and you have guaranteed targeting to fishing enthusiasts. This is the same for any ad for any product.
The idea that tracking is needed for ad targeting is pure deception on behalf of those whose real objective is the tracking for other reasons.
But it's interesting that most people commenting here seem to loathe advertising. Can we really all be outliers?
Yes, absolutely.
People who have something to complain about will often do that waaaaaay in excess of people who don’t.
Compounded by HN tending to attract people who enjoy a text-only interface.