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Users Know Advertisers Watch Them, and Hate It
Chris Blanc tips an Ars writeup on a survey of consumer attitudes toward targeted advertising. The results of the survey, conducted for TRUSTe, confirm that advertisers are in a tough spot. "[The survey company] randomly selected 1,015 nationally representative adults... Although only 40 percent of the group was familiar with the term 'behavioral targeting,' most users were well aware of the practice. 57 percent reported that they weren't comfortable their activities [were being] tracked for advertising purposes, even if the information couldn't be tied to their names or real-life identities. Simultaneously, 72 percent of those surveyed said that they find online advertising annoying when the ads are not relevant to their needs..."
You do realize that blocking the easy-to-block ads will just make them create more annoying ones, right? (see: interstitials)
Anyway, if you don't like ads, don't use ad-supported sites. It's that simple. If you like the site, leave the ads on and support the creator. Don't be childish about it.
...and while you're at it... check in every now and then what gets white-listed and wonder how much longer it's going to be effective for.
not true.
I "bought into" a package of a particular flavor of jones soda because it tastes like a drink that's exceedingly expensive to import. (it's sold in the asian district for about 25 cents an OUNCE)
the soda was 40 cents less a can than the pepsi products on the same aisle.
nothing to do with marketing, it's called a competitive product -- something foreign to the US economy for a long time because the vast majority of producers who pull that "capitalism" crap are bought out and shut down by the incumbents.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
So, 57% of users don't like their online activities being watched so that advertisers can learn more about them and 72% of users don't like seeing advertising that is not relevant to them.
However, the only way an advertiser can know what is and isn't relevant to a group of users is to observe the user's activities and learn from them!
The more information an advertiser has about you the less non-relevant advertising they will give you. In the end, it's a trade off. Either maintain your privacy and see more crappy ads, or let them have your information and you'll get ads you're more interested in.
Quantum Physics a.k.a. sub-molecular statistics
The point of advertising is to get me to want something I don't need (because if I needed it, I could not wait around for an advertiser to "educate me about his valuable product/service"). That is, by definition, a waste of my time.
That's not always the case, because you have to know that something, or at least surmise that it might exist before you go seek it out. The iPod is a good example - it was a new type of product that the market was ready for (a portable MP3 player), but without Apple's advertising, I doubt many people would have discovered it on their own. You would have had to of guessed that such a device is possible (if you were not one of the geeky types that already knew about the iPod's precedessors), then figured out that Apple (yes, that Apple, the computer company) was making them. Of course, by word of mouth we'd likely be in a similar spot today, but I'm sure Apple's advertising benefitted both sides - Apple made a pile of money, and people were delighted by a cool device that they wished they could have bought even sooner.
Another example would be something like a 2TB harddrive. I want one, but at this time they don't exist (that I'm aware of). Once they hit the market, a well placed ad will get me to click on it and check it out and possibly even make a purchase. I would discover them on my own eventually, but I already want one, and the ad would be doing me a service by letting me know about them quicker that I would have found them otherwise.
Of course, I do agree that the vast majority of advertising is useless, particularly the "branding" types of ads by huge companies everyone has heard of.