I like customized ads. All my life I hated advertising. It was really weird when I started my own business and started to get postcards for things related to my business and I found myself actually enjoying them. Furthermore, I don't get the aversion to tracking cookies. I just don't see a likely downside to it, though I've heard theoretical ones like what if the U.S. becomes a communist dictatorship some day.
That said, my targeted ads online still haven't nailed it. Half the time they're for something I just bought. Like, I just bought a watch on Amazon, so now on Facebook I see ads for watches for three weeks. Too late. (Of course the example is fake. Nobody buys watches anymore.) Anyway, half the time they're too late, the other half they're just too off the mark. For example, I'm thinking of moving. So I research apartments in that city. So Facebook shows me ads for apartments for the city I'm still in.
The best ads for me have been the ones based on AdSense -- that is, the text of the page that I'm on. I'm reading an article about how to use a hammer, and at the bottom is an ad for a hammer. No tracking cookies required, and yet a better match.
Not if you've already converted. Those are likely wasted impressions that drag down numbers, not improve them.
Often what can happen is you can have retargeting lists setup that populate automatically, but depending on how they are implemented, how frequently they are updated, etc., they may have set things up as exclusion lists properly (or even just removed people from the retargeting list). Likewise, that data may not carry over super well across devices in all cases.
This stuff can be a headache to setup and maintain, particularly at scale, and I think a lot of people don't realize the complexity of what is involved when they haven't done it themselves.
One of the arguments that ad companies employ to justify their tracking activities is that current ads are not customized enough. It goes like this: hey, do you remember the time when the ads we showed you were so obviously hilariously off the mark? We admit that this is a glaring failure on our part and we would very much like to correct it. To do it we need even more personal information from you! Only then we will be able to show you the ads that are ideally aligned to your interests and needs.
I'd say this is total bullshit. The incentives are just fundamentally misaligned. Perfectly customized ads will just perfectly employ your hidden biases to trick you into buying things you don't need.
That said, my targeted ads online still haven't nailed it. Half the time they're for something I just bought. Like, I just bought a watch on Amazon, so now on Facebook I see ads for watches for three weeks. Too late. (Of course the example is fake. Nobody buys watches anymore.) Anyway, half the time they're too late, the other half they're just too off the mark. For example, I'm thinking of moving. So I research apartments in that city. So Facebook shows me ads for apartments for the city I'm still in.
The best ads for me have been the ones based on AdSense -- that is, the text of the page that I'm on. I'm reading an article about how to use a hammer, and at the bottom is an ad for a hammer. No tracking cookies required, and yet a better match.