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The ads that follow you are called retargeting and the reason why they are used is... because they work! They get dramatically more clicks and conversions than other ads. There are also less obvious retargeting ads where websites trade their audiences with advertisers.

But yes, the ad system is completely broken. It's a complete security nightmare - they track you, in plain text, without telling you, they sell data about you without your consent, they are a great way to deliver exploits to millions of people (and their security policies are a complete joke). There are click-farms everywhere, pricing is not transparent, there are less-than-honest practices against advertisers all over the place, inventory gets sent to networks where they don't belong, then there are the intrusive ads, the dark pattern ads...

It would be nice to have an online ads industry that is safe and secure and honest to fund Internet content, but so much about (mass) advertising is so inherently anti-customer that I don't think that will ever happen. I hope we'll figure out ways to directly pay for content instead.

If you can get a business plan from those observations, yes, you can fix it. The advertising industry seems to be much talentless, despite the image they advertise.

Yes. You can. Google has made some acquisitions lately in this anti-fraud space.

Most of the Valley does not care, and seems to be invested in maintaining and expanding the scale of the fraud. The market will eventually punish this when conditions change to be less frothy. It will be 2000 redux, for similar reasons as to why SV lost so much credibility the last time around (pervasive traffic fraud).

>Another example, ads that follow me. Oh god how I hate these. I visit a website, usually for a product that I already own, and the freaking ad from that company follows me wherever I go. This is money wasted.

Well, they do work for some people. They just have to be managed in a way that doesn't create this annoyance. You cap the frequency or make it so that the offer is actually attractive and useful to the user. Or you limit what it triggers on to only go off when the user does something that signals their intent to become a customer (like adding certain items to their cart and then abandoning without buying).

Many things that people hate about online advertising as a whole is more caused by people mismanaging the ads than is caused by platform problems.

I will never understand the YouTube ads that show 3-4 seconds of black screen and then "allow" (not sure what controls this) the "skip this ad" after 5 seconds.

You (the advertiser) have to capture my interest in the first 10-20 frames of video, and pitch me in 5 seconds. Anything else is a waste of your money.

And YouTube only has one chance as well. He fact I'm seeing this annoying video ad means I have already installed Ad block edge and haven't reloaded the page.

Your move.

I kind of like some of the retargeting ads. The web is a much nicer place when all the ads are for things I care about, rather than "100,000th visitor, click here".

Plus, at least thus far the retargeted ads have all been... friendly? Not obnoxious?

> Another example, ads that follow me. Oh god how I hate these. I visit a website, usually for a product that I already own, and the freaking ad from that company follows me wherever I go. This is money wasted.

Wasted on you, probably not on the majority.

Does the average person like to purchase an item they already own if they see an advertisement for it? Of course not.

Campaigns like this, while frustrating for existing users, aren't there to target us, they're to target someone who filled out the sales form halfway and got distracted.

If I was ever going to buy from New Relic, I wouldn't now - I've seen their retarget ads at least a thousand times. If I didn't care about click fraud, I would have made a point to make sure I cost them a few dollars.

Does the average person like to purchase an item they already own if they see an advertisement for it?

If that item is a car, probably not.

If that item is a type of beer, or a model of razor blades, or a certain liquid to put in your washing machine, sure.

do ad campaign purchasers never calculate roas? You'd be incredibly dumb to think so