How appropriate to your personal interests are targeted ads you see on Facebook (or other media)?

In My Humble Opinion
41

I see these as bad ads. You’ve already purchased the item and are aware of it. There’s absolutely no reason to advertise it to you again. Maybe, since this one is food, they could wait until they think you’ve used it all–that could make sense. But not right after you purchased it.

42

Anyways, to answer the OP:

I find that targeted ads for me in general are bad. And I don’t mean because I mostly adblock things. I mean because, while they can figure out stuff I’m interested in, they can’t seem to figure out what I would ever actually purchase.

Amazon gets it the closest, in that, while I’ve actually been searching for something, they’ll recommend things in that range. Problem is, they don’t seem to get that, once I do purchase something, I’m not going to buy any more. And I’m unlikely to purchase this “item frequently bought with,” as those are always quite odd and wasteful, to me.

43

I get a lot of “meet older singles” ads with big-breasted, scantily-clad women in their 60s. My wife and I our both in our 30s, but I don’t think fbook knows we’re married. She asks me what I’m searching for to get these ads.

But most of the ads are pretty basic. Can I tell if one is necessarily targeted?

Today:
Mike Bloomberg
Orbit chewing gum
Starbucks
Uber
BuzzFeed
JoJo Rabbit (I’d like to see this)
Comcast
Allstate

Etc. Etc., yawn.

44

Honestly, I’ve managed to train myself to ignore ads that slip thru my ad blockers. I know some pop up, but I only pay attention to whatever site I’m visiting at the time. The periphery doesn’t exist. At least on the PC.

I play lots of free, mindless games on my tablet, and ads pop up all the time there between levels. They range from “What do you think of Trump: great president or the greatest president” type of thing, to meds, or other political causes. As soon as I can hit the little X in the corner, I do. But none are related to anything about me - probably because my mindless games aren’t linked to me in any way - I don’t associate them with FB or any other online identity.

45

I had to go back and make myself look at them on my phone to come up with the above list.