Targeted Ads Effectiveness

Why isn't "e) targeted ads don't work as well as ads agencies want you to believe" a possibility?

95% of ads are not using targeting based on your personal interests. Advertisers don't just upload ads and let them go. They add the targeting themselves and start wide open so that they can optimize after seeing the actual performance amongst different groups and cohorts. Far cheaper and more effective. Ad networks might add their own algorithms but they definitely aren't going to stop advertisers from spending money otherwise.

Ads don't need to track folks to be targeted and effective =).

this problem is the same for other ad platforms.i only want to target people on those sites that have contextual meaning to my offerings and not creepily offer them a chevy truck when they're on a cosmetics page simply because they once searched for "chevy".these ad platforms maximize impressions and clicks, not conversions - metrics that are good for them but usually annoying, misleading and meaningless for real ROI. and there's not much you can do about it, by design.

Most ads are not that targeted. That's a fallacy that seems to come up on HN but the reality is that most ads you see are generic large buys across very wide populations. Targeting costs more and the increased acquisition costs don't always pay off for every product. Also most ad systems will always fallback to show you an ad no matter how lacking the targeting is, because a filled ad slot is better than an empty one.

This is false dillema created by advertisers. Ads don't have to be targeted to be revelant.Now they are trying to create some magic algorithms to determine user interests and serve same ads everwhere, independent of current page context (including vacuum cleaner you bought last week, but maybe you need another?). But why they won't do the obvious thing, serving ads revelant to the page they are shown on..?

No...targeted advertising only enriches ad platforms not the buyers of the ads.https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-2/

They are not "as good". Advertiser are addicted to demo, behavioural and interest targeting because that is what Google and Facebook gave them.

"The ads aren't relevant" could just as well be an argument for better ad targeting.

It's a continuum. Better targeted ads are worth more than less-well-targeted ads. They do the best they can, and they keep trying to get better. Their targeting may be lousy, but it's still good enough for them to get paid.