First, that does not happen in my case; I don't see ads. I do not decide I want something by not knowing what I want in the first place, seeing an ad and deciding I want that. I first learn of something after I have decided I want to consider getting a type of thing and then decide to go look for it. Until then, I do not see the ads.
I don't agree with their business model because I don't agree with their personal data mining and collection in the first place.
I do not believe it will have a benevolent end, in the end and I see the "targeted" ad aspect as simply a means of trying to convince people to accept it - "for their own good". It;s not. It's strictly for google and FB "good".
I block the ad ads, but there’s still plenty of advertising that comes through if you “like” pages. For instance in recent weeks I’ve found out about a new collection from Iron Maiden, some new Nick Cave projects, and a cool Queen documentary on Bio channel, all from “liking” properly. Not “ads” in the purest sense of the word, but they get into my feed and I like that.
Data mining is a part of our post computer chipped world. Every transaction you participate in, in meat space or on the web, creates data that gets mined, and a truly significant chunk of that data gets tracked right to you. It’s something all businesses wanted to do before computers but the amount of data generated and analysis wanted was just too much to be done by hand for most places. Now in the computerized world programs get written and weeks worth of data can be crunched in dozens of ways in an overnight batch.
The targeted ads aren’t for us, they’re for advertisers. The holy grail of advertising is only spending money to reach people that actually will buy and wouldn’t have otherwise. Targeted advertising is the first half of that. Of course FB and Google do it strictly for their own good, they’re in business strictly for their good. When my company sells you our enterprise level communication software we don’t do it for your good, or for your customers’ good, we do it for our good. Now it just might help you out, and it might even help out your customers, but that’s NOT why we sold it to you. That’s called business. Doing stuff strictly for the customers’ good is called charity, it doesn’t pay as well.