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> ad should be on-topic to the specific web page, not specific to the reader

Amen. I find myself returning to something I said 4 years ago about the limit of acceptable ads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10521930

Target the intent or interest, not the user.

I often find myself researching and looking at sewing supplies and equipment for my partners business.

A by product of these searches and this browsing is that I will often get ad's for products for women. Dresses is fairly common.

If I spend time digging around for sheer fabrics or lace I end up getting served ad's for women's undergarments. I have gotten quite a bit of side eye in office environments because of this!

The problem is that movies, travel, womenes fashion all have the most money to throw at marketing and they get the most play as they result in the biggest payout for the people running the ad's. It isn't any different than beer and cigarets being in EVERY publication that had a male leaning demographic.

> I eventually gave it up.

Sounds like a business opportunity. An ad network where the "user interests" are supplied by the publisher (and maybe user-agent, see below), not by the ad network. The network doesn't need cookies for the user, doesn't track the user at all - the analytics are based exclusively on the data provided by the publisher/ website, not the user.

This way, the publisher might target on the content (plus maybe known user preferences/ past activity on the site, while logged in). Sure, the publisher might also track the anonymous users & supply anonymous profiles, but at that point, why bother? Just use doubleclick like everybody currently does.

You could even imagine integrating with the user agents. If I'm interested in ads for cars, I might willingly supply the information about "what kind of ad I'm interested in". In my own "advertising profile", that I keep under my control. Sounds like having a user-controlled advertising profile is a win for everyone - both users & advertisers. I'm not quite sure why nobody does it.

> Lots of people bought those magazines only for the ads for programming products. Heck, I buy hot rod magazines because they have ads from vendors for parts I need.

Same goes for guitar magazines. Of course interviews are good, but the ads are how most guitar players learned about new pedals and other things we need (or want to need).

And ironically, computer magazine ads used to be the info source when it came to new hardware or software.

The problem is that Internet ads come with the risk of infecting your system with shit nobody wants, 20 trackers completely unrelated to the product being advertised, and the fact that they much too often rely on shady tricks like wobbling or blinking or pretending to be something else just to annoy the fuck out of you enough that you'll click in the hopes of getting rid of it.

That's why ads are such a problem. Not that we don't want ads. What we don't want are the risks and annoyances that the Internet has brought to them.

There were even magazines like Computer Shopper that consisted entirely of ads, and people would pay money to subscribe.

I think your comment is spot on. Have Google et al really missed that, or have they just concluded that individual tracking is better? It seems a pity as focusing on the content being served for ad cues is so obviously how it used to work.

The holy grail of advertising has always been proving that it works.

Delivering one ad that results in a confirmed purchase is much more lucrative than multiple plain page views, or even clicks. The result is twofold:

1- trying to predict who's ready to purchase something, right now.

2- trying to prove someone that's seen an ad actually made a purchase.

This is why Gmail for free made sense from day one. What better way to verify a purchase that by having access to emailed receipts. This is also why Google's been buying credit card purchase histories from Visa/MasterCard/banks etc.

Separately, there's predicting one of the big life events: college, wedding, baby, home purchase. If I'm remembering correctly, getting a jump over competitors on one of these can be worth hundreds of dollars.

There's the story of Target using purchase behavior to try and predict pregnancy, so that they could send targeted / trackable coupons to the expectant mothers. They sent one such packet to a 16 year old girl, who's parents immediately threw a fit about how inappropriate it was, and how dare they accuse their innocent little girl of being promiscuous...

Turns out not only was she pregnant, but Target knew before even the girl realized it.

The kicker: this was circa 1996.

All of this to say, targeted ads might make sense, but proven effectiveness pays more. For that, trackings pretty much required.

Thanks, that was a good read. Especially this! <Turns out not only was she pregnant, but Target knew before even the girl realized it.>

This sounds like a business opportunity for somebody, I guess there reason nobody is doing this is because there's probably a lot more money to be made from spying on users and gathering data on them. It's a pity because it ruins the experience for all concerned. The sooner people become more privacy aware and legislation like GDPR sees wider uptake, the better for internet commerce.

Amazon affiliate is probably the only way. But you need to hand pick everything..

I did resort to hand picking them for Amazon. Unfortunately, that requires constant attention.

Amazon, please let your affiliates at least pick the category! Then use keywords on the web page to pick the product in the category, hopefully at random. Seeing the exact same ad over and over is counterproductive.