> Lastly, we hate tracking. I can't overstate that. They kill profiling we kill ad blocking. Simple as that.
As a nerdy guy, I'd much rather see video game ads than tampon ads. I get the ideological argument against targeted advertising, but the practical arguments for it are pretty compelling, too.
You don't need to be tracked for this to happen though. If ad networks placed video game-related ads on video game-related websites and tampon-related ads on tampon-related websites, then users of both sites would get ad content relevant to their interests.
Consider contexts like news websites, though, with broadly-applicable audiences. Specialty or niche sites do just fine with site-derived advertising targets. Other things do much less well.
There's also the fact that targeted ads result in better CPMs for publishers (since they'll result in better returns-per-view for advertisers), which means that they don't have to deploy as many of them to meet revenue expectations.
As a nerdy guy, I'd much rather see video game ads than tampon ads. I get the ideological argument against targeted advertising, but the practical arguments for it are pretty compelling, too.