this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2025
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In a perfect world, I could appreciate the concept. At the end of the day, I do need to buy stuff, and I'd rather know about the available options. If I'm definitely not going to buy diapers but I'm definitely going to buy a new keyboard in the next month or two, I'd rather see keyboard ads than diaper ads.
But that's only in theory. In practice, "targeted" ads are invariably sleazy scams. You bet I use uBO.
When have ads ever shown you the best available options? What you see is offers from the companies with the biggest advertising budget - not the ones with the best products or lowest prices
That's kind of the problem that targeted ads are intended to solve, in theory.
Without ads, how else are you going to discover stuff? How does an unknown startup make people know about its product? Word of mouth can only get you so far, and if you don't have the reach you're locked out.
Targeted ads make advertising cheaper, because you don't have to waste money advertising to people who aren't even in your target demographic. It's supposed to make it possible for newcomers with a good product to establish themselves in the market without starting out with an astronomical marketing budget.
But as I already said, it only works in a dream. On TV or on billboards, you only see the huge budget ads. Coca-cola et al. But on the web with targeted ads, you get spam ads. So many fake products, scam websites, get-rich-quick schemes, etc etc, that the advertising space itself is devalued because just by having your name there you look like a scammer.
But what choice is left? If you're a new company making a cool product, how do you make it so that people know about it? For a lot of cases, targeted ads are the only affordable option.
This is something that people don’t seem to understand. If it’s being advertised it’s a shit product.
But when you go to the actual shop website and try to find the thing you need, it's suddenly showing you bs and stupid filtering and bad categories, even if they do have an item you want.