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Comment by SilverRed | Hacker News Reader

It seems like you could get most of the benefits by just doing content aware adverts? Is the advert showing on a page about guitars? Show an advert about guitars and music accessories. We don't need that advert to follow us around for the next month.

It also completely eliminates the creep factor and conspiracies around adverts. "How did they know I was interested in this, are they listening to my phone?" goes away when its the same as the content you are looking at currently.

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This is what DDG does and they're not exactly rolling in dough.

Also there are a plethora of contexts where this wouldn't work well. For example, Instagram has the best targeted ads I've ever seen – basically every ad I get is for something I would consider buying.

I don't think their ads would work nearly so well if I got an add for a guitar just because my friend tagged her post with #guitar.

That may not maximize ad revenue however. For instance if the Going rate for placing guitar ads is low (not many people bidding to show guitar related ads) but mortgages is quite high google (or someone) would rather show the expensive mortgage ad than the cheap guitar ad.

Yeah it's unclear to me that having a list of all the pages you've visited (or similar) provides a strong enough signal that advertisers will bid higher or result in greater conversion. In some cases it surely will, but then it becomes a question of what proportion of Google's revenue is dependent on this scenario. If it's not a significant portion, Google might just say the potential regulatory and PR headache is not worth it.

I don't agree, I've been searching for a new backpack on my iPad which is too old for an ad blocker. Now every single website, regardless of context, is packed full of adds for backpacks.

A constant bombarding reminder that I need a new backpack. 90 percent of websites I visit are not about backpacks. I'm getting 90% more ads about backpacks.

Thats a possible factor, at the same time, how many times have you looked at something random that you don't intend to buy and then you see adverts for days for this thing you don't want. How much is wasted on this? I'd say that at the moment you are looking at backpack review posts, that's the highest chance of you clicking on and buying a backpack.

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