zlacker

Well, it may be that I'm biased against that kind of advertising – and that this may be a mutual affair. At least, it doesn't work for me, like most recommendation algorithms. I do feel locked in, I haven't seen anything relevant for years, and businesses are missing out on me as a customer. It may be that this works for things like SaaS-business, but there are various studies suggesting that it does perform worse than traditional advertising in general and that the methodology of the related metrics is at least questionable. Moreover, we lose things like informed markets and shared cultural references as a society. Rather, it incentivises division and polarisation. So, if it introduces significant risks and hurts both customers (at least anecdotally) and businesses, what is strong argument for this, besides building monopolies (which may be arguably bad for the economy as a whole)?

But, I guess, we won't agree on this.

>>masswe+(OP)
Methodology in online advertising exists solely to placate the marketing managers and give them nice graphs.

That doesn't negate the fact that targeted advertising is drastically more cost effective for smaller companies. It's drastically more valuable for sites that provide advertising space. It's a win-win for almost everyone involved.

We're talking about ads, not recommended content here. These are two very different things. You conflated them, to make an argument that has nothing to do with the topic at hand.