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Comment by LorenPechtel | Hacker News Reader

Random ads are effectively noise. Targeted ads occasionally are of value. If there's going to be an ad, better it be a targeted one.

I also have no problem with companies tracking for the purpose of seeing which ads work.

I do *not* like the retargeting ads--if I didn't buy the item there's a reason! Either I didn't want it or I'm waiting for a better price, neither of which you're going to solve unless you're telling me about a sale on an item.

And the biggie is how intrusive they get. I'd like to see a system where the browser sends an acceptable-ad policy, a site can either comply or refuse to serve the page.

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Ads should be targeted to the content, not the recipient IMO. If you're reading about California wine in an article, advertise based on that - travel, wine, whatever.

But surely, there are car enthusiasts who read about cars that would never read an article about California wine, but would benefit from knowing about it.

In your world, that person misses out on the pleasures of california wine

This is an amusing example. I'd guess that car enthusiasts are aware of Sonoma for various reasons. I suspect they'd get some exposure to California wine inadvertently through that connection.

You can go to any gas station in the nation and walk out with a bottle of California wine for about $3.

I guess fancy pants California wine then. I know the valley grows a lot of grapes. I interpreted the thread as Napa /Sonoma

You missed the reference: Sonoma has a famous race track; hence car enthusiasts already know about Sonoma and its location in California wine country.

No, you seem to construct some kind of straw man where you can't randomly make ads for California wine? But you can. Don't use profiling, though.

Absolutely - And we already have this in the form of e.g. TV commercials, and, more recently, youtube sponsored segments. I vastly prefer getting ads relevant to what I'm currently looking at to something entirely different based on what The Algorithms decided I wanted to see.

Also, retargetting ads are intrusive as they are the equivalent of a salesperson of a store following me after I left the store, asking me if I want to buy the item I looked at, when I am trying to do something else.

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