Online advertisers know you better than you think

2 Responses

1. Hi Jim,
   Here's the situation as i see it. Most of the time i do not like advertising, even on television, it is a nuisance to say the least. But, what about honest advertising selling an honest product? There is good advertising and bad advertising which is designed to mislead people and take advantage of them.
   I took this ad from one of my websites to show you as an example: http://lazerbike.co.nz/. Is that a bad ad? It might be bad or could be good. But, more than likely it's someone who is trying to sell these electric bicycles. I would not have
   known about them but for the advertising on Google adsense. I use the Google chrome brownser. I did not make or develop the Chrome browser, Google did, it's their product, they may have spent millions developing it. They have a right to do with their browser as they see fit. Google survives from advertising income. Google also provides a lot of free no charge items for people. If i did not have honest income from honest advertising i would be in big trouble, it is my only source of income and getting a job is too difficult for me in these times of high unemployment. And i am too old for most work, except what i am doing now. It is not at all unusual for many people to publically display their personal address and phone number and other personal details. Most of the time it is a harmless thing to do, and if you visit some business to buy some personal item like shoes let's say – a good helpful shoe salesman might ask you what kind of work you do and what kind of environment you are going to use the shoes in so he can better help you to get the right type of shoe for your best comfort. It only makes sense to tailor ads to the interest of the online viewer, what's the point in trying to sell meat to a vegetarian? If the internet companies are trying to harvest personal information for the government, that might be a very bad situation, but i don't think it has got that bad yet. The kind of information companies like Google harvest is just for fitting products to the right market, like anybody would do if they were trying to sell their stuff. I believe good honest advertising selling useful honest products is good for the economy of any country, everyone benefits either directly or indirectly. I have bought advertised products and was glad i did, it turned out good for me. But, i have also been stung buying from very bad television advertisers for example. The bad ones need to be punished, sometimes very severely. Even people being interviewed on TV will be asked personal questions like "what do you like to do, where do you work, what city do you live in, etc". For the most part these are harmless questions, and if somebody tries to use the information to do harm, then they need to be severely punished. Harvesting marketing information is something that has been done for a long time in one form or another and it probably helps to lower advertising budgets and cost of goods produced allowing businesses to target customers with products which are relevant to their interest and needs.

2. I use the Chrome extensions Do Not Track Plus and Adblock.

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