Why don't users want to see adverts they might be interested in?

My only real complaint with those ads that follow you around the internet is that they're nearly always trying to sell you something you already own.

I bought one of those GoPro cameras that you mount on your surfboard a while back, and was punished with six months of nonstop ads telling me how awesome my life would be if only I'd purchase a GoPro camera. It was annoying to the point where I actually dropped down that little menu in the hope that it had an option for "OK, I bought it already. Please stop now."

It's the same problem with any recommendation engine. Amazon/Netflix/Lovefilm are constantly recommending things I already own, since my buying history shows they're related. "Hey, I notice you bought Series 2 through 8 of 24! You should totally check out Series 1 of 24!"

Thanks. Now stop.

Because some of us like to think of ourselves as - oh, I don't know - human beings and citizens, rather than mere "consumers".

Because some of us would like, just for once, some space (either virtual or physical) that's not inundated with advertisements.

Because the basis of advertising is manipulation of free will to serve commercial interests, and is thus inherently degrading.

That's why.

Personally, I'd just be happy to see adverts in the right language.

Every major online advertising engine appears to assume that my geolocation equates to my preferred language.

My browser passes the Accept-Language request header of en-GB, but they all ignore it and give me adverts in German or Spanish (or where ever I happen to be visiting or living) based on an IP-to-geolocation lookup.

What I find interesting is that it firstly makes me actively aggressive towards the brands, as well as the site. Secondly, it increases my advertising blindness.

I see this on Google Adsense and Facebook ads.

I assume that in the United States, Spanish speakers are equally ignored? Any Spanish speakers in the US that can confirm this?

Too many negative experiences with overeager matching algorithms. Yes, it's helpful to show me ads for spades if I'm searching on Google for "buy spade", but Amazon will not stop suggesting things to me that it thinks I "might" be interested in. They seem surprisingly bad at it too; I looked at a TV costing around £500, and subsequently got an e-mail every few days containing a list of their entire stock of TVs, without any consideration of price. If I'm looking at one worth £500, I'm probably not interested in a TV that costs £150 or one that costs £1500. They do badly on ebooks too, where the recommendations just seem to be "other books by the same authors you've already bought from", which I barely need; what I'd like are suggestions of similar books from other authors that I don't know about yet.

I feel like I don't mind seeing ads that I'm interested in, but there is a difference between that and being shown hundreds of ads that I might be interested in. I guess a sufficiently smart recommendation algorithm could theoretically overcome that eventually, but it seems to be a pretty hard problem since it's apparently not been well solved yet.

> Why don't users want to see adverts they might be interested in?

Obviously, because they actually are not interested in them.

I have the feeling stackexchange-ux isn't the best place to ask this question. There would be a use for a stackexchange-behaviourial/psychology site.

How many psychologists (or marketers with valid psychology knowledge) are going to explore stackexchange-ui ? Not everything that happens on a screen can be explained by a computer engineer, a computer scientist or a coder :)

I think one of the main reasons is that targeted ads tend to show products you already know (whether you already own them, researched them, or just because you are interested in the subject). Then visual recognition (picture or name of the product) occurs and your focus shifts to the ad for a moment --- when you can just unconsciously ignore just 97-98% of the ads you see on the Internet or on the street. And we all know how annoying commercial crap can be when you are not looking to buy anything

Another thing that applies to older generations and educated people among younger ones (I don't think the young masses understand this or care about it) is the privacy invasion argument.

I'll add that, since most people hate ads altogether, adding just a little annoyance to them can seem like just pushing it too far. I think the only places where ads are not hated are subway stations, since waiting in gloomy underground tunnels (most of those in Paris are, anyway) can be a bit depressing

"Users don't spend all their time purchasing goods on the internet - often they are doing different and completely unrelated tasks, sometimes at the same time."

Its got to make you ask why the only people who purchase space on a screen are people who are selling goods. How much is a reader worth to someone like NYT? How valuable is a poll answer? I can think of plenty of valuable things people would pay to display there that aren't "ads".

For the longest time I avidly clicked answering Hulu's "Is this relevant to you?" question that came with ads.

After a few months, I began to suspect they were not using the results. They never learned I didn't want a new car, for starters. Not the kind of purchase a commercial is going to change my mind about. (And I can't even recall the brand.)

I'd actually like a decent as network just fine.

Where's the evidence to suggest they don't want to? A few privacy nuts on sites like stackexchange/HN/Reddit?

AdBlock, anyone?

Embracing targeted ads requires a mind shift that the per-Facebook generation will not be able to conceive. Most people worried about targeted ads are merely riding the ill-fated privacy bandwagon without weighing the pros and cons of such a system. The future generations will prefer targeted ads.