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Study Says Targeted Ads Gettin' a Lil' Creepy
eldavojohn writes "Ever load up a completely random webpage to see an advertisement at the top for products related to what you're reading about? What about the advertisement with binoculars that says your green denim jacket doesn't really go with your eyes? Well, a recent marketing study (PDF) is saying that making a highly visible advertisement content aware is too much for consumers. It seems that to optimize clicks and purchases you should use a highly visible ad or a more diminutive ad that is content-aware, but not both. For marketers, this report talks about the consumer having this crazy notion of privacy and at some point they start to feel like you're crossing the line."
Researchers have recently discovered gamblers like money, scholars spend lots of time reading and fishermen are often on boats.
like this classic example
http://www.ntk.net/2001/07/06/dohburn.gif
Diminutive is better.
But in general, if I have to see ads at all I'd prefer them to be relevant for me.
About the time I added "Brooks Brothers" to my 'interests' sections on Facebook and started getting Brooks Brothers ads on every website that I visited after that, is when I started to feel violated. Not sure why FB kept trying to sell me Jewish dating websites, when my profile clearly indicated that I was not Jewish... an Anglo-Norman name, 'Zen Buddhist' as my religion... seems like they missed the mark with that one. However, now I just run ABP and I don't ever have to see ads anymore either, and I took out nearly all the information from my FB profile. I'd just get rid of it if not for the fact it's my main method of keeping in contact with a lot of people I'm actually kind of fond of. It still feels very stalkerish.
Ad: ... you know what goes great with an article on Slashdot? A cup of tea with synthetically prepared xanthine derivatives. It'll calm your central nervous system, cardiac muscles and bronchodilators. That'll help you deal with annoying posts and ads.
Hey, dimethylxanthine
Lol, privacy on the internet, come on consumers.
I barely even notice most adverts really. It's either some annoying pop-up style advert that annoys me enough to close the window down immediately (so I don't really look at what is being advertised) or I just filter them out like I filter out background noise.
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
"Ever load up a completely random webpage to see an advertisement at the top for products related to what you're reading about?"
No. Thanks Adblock!
Ever load up a completely random webpage to see an advertisement
Not in many years.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
http://xkcd.com/713/
I've always felt that these ads aren't just intrusive, they're -lying- to me. There isn't actually a ton of hot women in this town looking for a nerd to comfort them at night. It's ridiculous. In fact, for that scenario, there's -nowhere on earth-.
It got to the point a few years ago where I just ignored anything that had the name of my town. Why? Because I found a 'news article' that said the writer was from my town. This confused the hell out of me, because it was extremely unlikely. Then I realized the 'article' was just a fake and was really an advertisement.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
"Our results show privacy matters in something of a subtle way in online advertising," says Goldfarb. "Sometimes privacy violations are fine, sometimes they're not." :)
Nice to see what costumers like to project onto consumer rights
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Surely everyone already knew this? In any case, they wont be going away any time soon. Just look how much money Google makes off targeted advertisements.
.. are the ones relating to nothing on the page you are currently on, but stuff you have recently been looking at.
For instance, I just bought a puppy recently.. and quite frequently now I'll see ads for obedience training.. while looking at computer parts.
I'm actually perfectly cool with how this is pulled off.. but it is still a little weird!
I skimmed over the paper and I'm not sure it's privacy that reduced the effectiveness. I think it's more out of annoyance.
Lets say there are two types of people that click on ads: People that are actually interested in get more information provided by the ad and people that just click on the ad on an impulse.
Yes I've had that annoying advert, that looks as though its got exactly what you want "Advanced Vina lessons in Leeds". When you click on it it is the Leeds section of some classified site, with two adverts; one for a used Sofa and another for gardening services!
People do not like the idea that you come to their most private place, their home, unasked and uninvited, and try to force them to buy your junk. Who would have tought that they do not like that idea?
Now, you say, ads have been our companions for decades, if not centuries. Why suddenly that rejection? We should be use to them by now. And yes, we are. But these ads are different.
So far, we had ads that yelled at you, in the equivalent of a street hawker. He yells out what goods he has, come and get 'em! That's basically what TV and radio ads are like. They do not talk to YOU. They talk to, well, anyone listening. Targeted ads are more like the guy at your door trying to sell you some magazine subscription, only that he also happens to know a lot about you. He knows your hobbies and he offers you magazines related to your hobbies, with the undertone of "this has to interest you, I know it".
And people don't like strangers to know their private details. Especially if those strangers try to sell them something.
And people don't buy from people they don't like.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ever tried to search for something linux related, and found tens of mailing list aggregation sites, each one differing from others slightly, but mostly in URL and placement and quantity of AdSense ads?
Is there some way to blacklist such sites and share blacklist info through some firefox extension?
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
Back in the '90s everyone surfed nekkid, and you didn't have to worry about them guessing the green denim jacket.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I actually like ads to be catered to my tastes, it seems like a more useful use of screen real estate. So if there was some sort of central repository, say Google, that housed what ads fit my shopping habits, I'd be for it. However then there are the cons. I don't really want them sending me ads for things that might be private. So I searched something for a health concern, I need to be able to remove that from my "ad profile". But if they want to show me ads for all the new video games coming out, things for my favorite sports teams, movies I might like, etc; I have no problem with them profiling me for those.
I am finding it kind of annoying/spooky that the same ad seems to follow me around to different websites via DoubleClick. Yes I was looking up information on stock photography, now stop showing me the exact same ad twenty billion times on 50 different websites. I am not going to click it.
Sometimes I wonder if people are so dense even a good whooshing wouldn't get through.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Almost as irritating are the shopping sites that sell the same products, at the same prices, with the same inventory, but different site names and slightly different layouts or colour schemes for the stores. It's highly irritating when you search for a particular product, and have to wade through all of those.
Best I can tell, these sites operate from one place (looks like Florida), but have "operators" all over, whose contribution is to take orders by phone and pass them on to the "parent" store.
Because of this irritating practice, I refuse to buy anything from any of these stores, even if they should have the best price or availability.
I like the targeted ads that are a little too dumb, like you get targeted ads for the company you work for. It's like they say "Hey! We see you work for this company, would you be interested in buying products from that company!?"
The ones at Engadet are pretty bad, surf from like an apple store you get ads for apple products. Or you get ads trying to sell you internet access from your provider.
I remember the feeling of paranoia wash over me when I first began receiving the penis enlargement emails.
The paranoia has returned, but mostly because of the herky-jerky ads showing pictures of my penis and the names of ex-girlfriends.
You guys getting those?
i've been noticing this on Pandora.
i'll glance down at my iphone and notice adds that are just way too taylored to either me or the song.
the creepy part is when i send an email to a friend saying i need new trim and to repaint parts of my house, then start getting adds for house paint.
the funny one was when listening to pink floyd's the wall, and they starts adds for a new private school for my kids shortly after the line, "Teacher, leave those kids alone".
but yeah, they've long past up creepy.
Like that would happen.
I have made it a point in my life to let advertisers know if I see their unwanted ad when surfing, I refuse to click the ad and will most likely not deal with the company the advertisement is for in the future. I use ABP also. If the masses as a whole would just stop clicking the ads, and make it a point to block as much as possible, maybe the marketing scum that thinks this stuff up will finally get a clue. -- "Couldn't get a clue during 'Clue Mating Season' in a field of horny clues."
They'll know when they cross the line... or rather, they'll find out...
I remember browsing Amazon for wheel rims at some point, and one of the suggestions for "other people who viewed this product also bought" was a fleshlight, picture and all. Needless to say, I stopped browsing wheel rims... didn't want to become associated with one of those people :-P
Tastes and cultures change over time. As more advertisers practice targeted advertising, the more we will get used to it. I'll bet at some point, we'll even start to get offended by ads that should be targeted but aren't. You can say now that you abhor these ads, but all things change with time. Not too long ago, americans weren't comfortable with top-level athletes wearing logos. We used to think rock music was edgy. We used to think NPR was ad-free.
Birth is the leading cause of death.
and a blacklisted hosts file, or whatever, just a word of warning.
Be prepared the next time you browse the web on a strangers machine, or a public machine.
It happened to me recently, and it scared the crap out of me. Adverts EVERYWHERE and some of them were shouting at me.
I would liken it to a BBC viewer having to sit through American cable television for an hour.
It's not pleasant.
That kind of thing happens a lot, actually, if you actually look at the ads. Mind you, keyword matching has never yet given me a single ad I was interested in, but I still occasionally look at the ads because of gems like these:
- I'm looking up the lyrics of a goth kinda song, you know, about death and suicide, and it mentions eternal sleep. An ad on the side dutifully offers to sell me sleeping pills. (Not only morbid, but I really don't think that they want to become known as the company desperate enough for a sale that they'll even offer to sell a means to commit suicide to depressed teens.)
- I'm looking up the meaning of the word "insipid." Of course, a lot of the words in the definition have to do with taste and cuisine. An ad on the side (or was it two?) point me at some traditional Jewish cuisine cookbook. (I figure having that as an illustration for "insipid" in the dictionary isn't exactly an inspiration to buy it, you know?)
- I'm looking up the meaning of the word "sycophant". An ad on the side points at some book for children about how one can become president. (I guess it would explain Dubya;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If only, on a gaming page: [bigfont]"I herd u liek mudkips. My pokemanz. Let me show you them."[/bigfont]
Seems you missed the point. Targetted works, super targetted doesn't. Advertising housing to me when my mail box is filled with housing related mails works. Advertising that a girl is living next door who sells services I might be interested in considering the images I am downloading... well that is just creepy.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
That's a good idea. There are recommendation sites for music (last.fm), films (filmaster.com) and so on. There should be an equivalent for search results. I.e. if you blacklist expertsexchange and scribd, then it finds other people who did the same and uses their preferences to modify your search results.
Google had a thing where you could delete search results for a while, but I don't know if it did anything like that and it seems to have disappeared.
http://www.givemebackmygoogle.com/
Google, without affiliate links. (Also skims a lot of aggregator sites)
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
The targeted ads have gotten much more accurate.
I've noticed that I don't get penis enlargement ads any more. (*shoots cuffs*)
You are welcome on my lawn.
About a month ago I went to the Serif web site to read about their DrawPlus software. Since then, I'd estimate that around 25% of web sites I visit have an advert of some kind for DrawPlus.
Now, I assume this is cookie-related. But who baked the cookie? Maybe it was Serif. Maybe it was Google, because I used Google to search for DrawPlus. But it feels a little creepy when you look at a product once and then get nagged to buy it all the time.
How about when you share a computer, like my wife and I do? We don't close the other person's session, we just open a new tab. I almost wish didn't run adblock. What demographic does titanium billet, computer parts, + (whatever girly stuff my wife is into at the time) put you in?
Nevermind, I'm on Slashdot. Duh!
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
No substance, just a rant. And yet, it seems to resonate with some people here at /. The fact is, if something is free** it is either paid for by advertising or tax dollars. The following are a couple of my favorite free things: my content on the internet (with the exception of netflix). If you hate advertising that much, be prepared for the alternative when you get your wish,. Pay-walls everywhere.
Are you lonely?
Have you spent half your life in bars pursuing sins of the flesh?
Are you sitting in a bean bag chair naked eating Cheetos?
Do you have the urge to get up and send me a thousand dollars?
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
I actually *would* love them. If they didn't suck.
I'm willing to acknowledge the fact that virtually everything I get 'for free' from the internet is, ultimately, either created by people for free, or by people getting paid through advertising revenue.
I don't go out of my way to block ads because ads support the websites I love. Even running a personal site has costs associated with it. If someone can recoup some of that with a banner-ad; more power to them.
And if the banner-ad could be stuff I actually want.....wow, even better. Now I'm shopping for things I need, while supporting the websites I like, win-win.
But, in practice, those ads always suck. Here is how it goes.
1.) Decide I need a new X
2.) Find a new X on the internet
3.) Order X
4.) Spend the next month or so seeing ads about X, something I'm not interested in, because I just purchased one.
It's annoying. Far more annoying than random ads. I just purchased a new bed, I don't need a new bed anymore. Not for *years*. If the ads were smart enough to wait 5-6 years and remind me of the age of my bed, that would be awesome. But showing me ads, particularly, ones for THE SAME product I purchased, it's just stupid.
I was looking for replacement temple pads for a pair of glasses. Now I get sidebar ads about eyeglasses, sunglasses, precriptions, Lasix, you name it. I'm not a candidate for Lasix, but the ads keep coming. I found the pads, but the ads keep coming. I even have new glasses coming, but the ads also keep coming.
I was looking for a new electric shaver. Guess what ads are coming up now? No, not shavers for the blind, but close.
It is apparent that anything you search for more than once seems to come up as an ad for you sooner rather than later. And it's not just creepy. For me, it hurts the advertiser.
Not just the Google ads that offer to find you the best price on root.apk (funny), but the ads that clearly knew you were searching for something. It makes my wife wonder how they know that. When I try to explain, she rejects such a notion as just plain 'wrong'. Then she gets it. And it is even more 'wrong' to her. I pointed out to her that I was seeing ads for a women's clothing chain pretty regularly a couple of months ago. Since I don't crossdress, she gave me a pass. And realized she had been looking at both their site and a competitor's looking for a particular piece of clothing. She's creeped out.
I get entirely turned off by these, and the retailers that sponsor them I avoid if possible. I can tell you that their return rate on me is less than .01% over the years, since this is not really a new phenomenon. That's a tenth of what they hope for. And good riddance.
We may have to have this fight in the courts. At some point, we may want to tell advertisers that they can collect a lot of data on us, but sharing or selling it without our permission is unacceptable. We may even want to tell them how long they can keep it. But Congress may not do this for us. After all, they get paid by the corporations.
So we may see that corporate campaign finance reform is the first step. As in NO corporate campaign financing.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I remember finding it a bit creepy/amusing when I was having an argument through gmail with my ex and ads for counseling and relationship therapy were appearing.
Wait a few months and it'll go away. Consumers on the internet get used to any invasion of privacy really fast these days.
We need a "+1 -- nice sig" moderation.
That's what popped up in the RSS feed item for the article.
So you pay for it either way, with or without blinkenbanners.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
"Ever load up a completely random webpage to see an advertisement at the top for products related to what you're reading about?
They can place an ad on a page related to what the page is about? How do they do that? They must be running a keylogger on my PC!
No substance, just a rant. And yet, it seems to resonate with some people here at /. The fact is, if something is free** it is either paid for by advertising or tax dollars. The following are a couple of my favorite free things: my content on the internet (with the exception of netflix). If you hate advertising that much, be prepared for the alternative when you get your wish,. Pay-walls everywhere.
Pay-walls on content will only be there if the site is being run for profit. People running a site about a topic, for the love of the topic, will not mind paying the pennies that hosting really costs. And if a site gets really popular, whilst remaining amateur, voluntary donations can easily cover hosting costs.
And if you feel that that is just a rant with no substance, you clearly don't understand what is written between the lines.
Car analogies break down.
Thanks to Track-me-not, I lead the market demographic for Green Wasabi Thimble Machines.
Oh sure, it violates Google TOS. I weep not.
http://cs.nyu.edu/trackmenot/
You have to go into the plugin and manually enable it fyi.
Well, three types. While I use ABP and NoScript on my computers, on the iPad and iPhone it's not so easy. So occasionally I'll drag a finger somewhere or take too long and *boop*, I'm on some ad site.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
And if you think that a site that gains popularity only cost pennies to run or is easily covered by donations, you clearly have never run, or known anyone who has run, a major site.
Upon finishing, websites that I also go directly to, started showing ads for B&H and the cameras that I was looking at. I also started seeing "sale" prices from other camera vendors for the cameras I was looking at.
I'm thinking it's Google.Who else has access to my browser's URL bar? Doesn't whatever I type there pass though Google? And we know that's how Google is getting so damn rich: targeted advertising.
Browsers I use: Firefox and Chrome.
Oh, Adblock doesn't block everything. Some websites have found a way around it - it's as though the ad is part of their content or something.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
I recently bought a 2nd LED LCD TV and must have done a fair bit of searching. I keep getting ads that specifically show the TV model that I already bought. I guess there is no easy way to tell big brother that I already bought it!
Huh? There are ads on the net?
What are ads again?
— An AdBlock Plus user.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I actually *would* love them. If they didn't suck.
I'm getting to a stage where ALL ads, whether targeted or not, have a tendency to occupy such a large proportion of my screen-space that I almost have no choice (for sanity's sake) to adopt a ruthless approach of filtering them all out.
Thanks to adblock, flashblock and an extensive hosts file, I now see very few ads at all, where I would have been happy to accept a limited amount to offset the costs of hosting the content in which I'm interested. The marketroids are sabotaging their own interests with their policy of saturation advertising, and they only have themselves to blame if people are physically tuning them out.
Banner ads on websites only generate revenue if you click through to them. Often, only if you buy something through the referral link.
I tend to block ads on my netbook, because it's slow enough to load pages already, but generally I don't use ad blockers. Yet I can't remember any time I've ever clicked through to one, and I've definitely never ever bought anything through one.
If that fits your pattern, you're actually doing them a favour by blocking the adverts- at least that way they don't have to serve you the ad, eating up their bandwidth and such.
Relatedly, I'd be a lot more sympathetic to ads if they didn't seem to go out of their way to be annoying. Ads with sound effects are evil, and anything resource guzzling (like a heavy Flash ad or similar) is just cruel to anyone surfing on a low power device, or anyone who pays for their downloads by volume (such as mobile users). If they showed more restraint in their ad design, I'm sure a lot fewer people would feel the need to block them.
What if the ad was also the product? And, if there weren't laws (there are, thankfully, in the USA) against mailing and billing for things without the recipient's permission, we'd all have FASRADs, whether we wanted to or not.
I'm a little scared, disgusted and disappointed. It seems we're already moving towards a future like that with thrusters on full.
On a related topic, I wish more ads were disabled due to what it knew about me. For example, you might like ads while you are searching for a new bed, and then ALL bedding ads disabled after you had purchased.
My real pet peeve is for ads that really should know better. For example, I get Facebook ads related to my upcoming wedding (cue the /. peanut gallery) because my relationship status is 'engaged', which I like. However, I also still get ads for "the best dating site for singles". If I'm not single, why do they want to advertise to me?
Perhaps the term should be un-targeted ads, directing pointless ads away from me. The advertiser gets better eyeballs on their ad, and I get more relevent ads. Everyone wins.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
What's really creepy is Slashdot allowing/profiting from the RSS fecal spewage that is Newsmax.
I bought a Stephen Sondheim album from Amazon for my sister about 7 years ago. They still e-mail me everytime they get a new album or new sheet music or pretty much anything else related to musicals or showtunes. I don't even like musicals. I had the item sent giftwrapped, seems at a minimum they could filter out giftwrapped items from the algorithm they use to spam the crap out of me.
Thanks to adblock, flashblock and an extensive hosts file, I now see very few ads at all, where I would have been happy to accept a limited amount to offset the costs of hosting the content in which I'm interested. The marketroids are sabotaging their own interests with their policy of saturation advertising, and they only have themselves to blame if people are physically tuning them out.
Yeah... but with respect, you're not typical.
Not saying that you're necessarily wrong- or right- just that you can't say much about the great unwashed masses' habits based on one atypical geek's behaviour.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2006/20061019.jpg
And oblig Penny Arcade
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
I find it amusing when research groups drone on about this or that, in the end the Marketing groups that are pushing millions of dollars in advertising a month know when so much as a fraction of a point changes in conversion rates, either direction.
Online marketing seems to be very reactionary and any group I've worked with that have managed to stay successful know their numbers VERY well. The only way that too-targeted of ads won't work is if people don't click on it.
The marketing-departments don't give a flying rats ass about privacy, morality or ethics. They ONLY care about what will convert your click to a conversion, and nothing more.
Paying more or less for that marketing data is only useful or valuable to them if you give them your eyes, or money.
For them to coach where a marketing department should put their budget is laughable, and if a marketing group is having to even ask that question, they aren't making their decisions based on performance, they are making it based on assumptions and feelings which will be nothing more than a Fail-Boat marketing campaign, and likely has no clue what they are doing and won't stay/survive in that market long.
I was shopping for a telescope mount a couple of weeks ago. Suddenly I found an ad following me around the net. I went to /. and saw it. Went to BoingBoing there it was again. Kind of makes me want to purchase it somewhere else. Not only that it seems to me to defeat the purpose of most ads. I had already done my research and found where I wanted to purchase for a good price. The ads were showing up after I made my decision so they were pretty much wasting their money.
For more information about advertising in the modern age look up Age of Persuasion. I attempt to listen in whenever I remember its on, because this program offers an amusing and informative perspective of advertising. And as the programs slogan states, we live in the Age of Persuasion.
Banner ads on websites only generate revenue if you click through to them.
Depends on the type of ad. Some only pay for clicks. Some pay for impressions, meaning as long as you load the page with the ad the person will make money.
the optimizegoogle extension for firefox allows you to remove sites from showing up in the results (though they don't prevent google from sending them back) I do it a lot with expertsexchange, about.com and a host of freesoftware sites...
I prefer the way without blinkenbanners. However, there should not be the government involved. My solution? Pay content through the ISPs. Instead of the web content provider paying for traffic, he should be paid for traffic. After all, content providers are what makes the web useful for content users, and therefore create the market for ISPs. The money the content provider gets for his money would, of course, coming from those getting the content. More exactly, through their internet bill.
Yes, I don't mind paying for content, if I can do so hassle-free. No registration, no exchange of bank account or credit card numbers, no paypal, just my normal internet bill. I pay my ISP, the ISP passes the money on (after taking his cut), and the content provider's ISP pays it to the content provider (again, after taking his cut).
OK, but wouldn't web content providers then try to serve as many bytes as possible per visit? Well, probably, but on one hand, their pipe has a certain maximum bandwidth (they would still pay for the availability of bandwidth, of course), and also their servers can only serve so much (more or better servers cost money, as well), and on the other hand, if their content loads too slowly (and turns out too costly), less people will visit their site, which again reduces revenue. So ultimately the market will regulate that.
Of course content provider would be anyone putting up stuff (any http server would qualify), no matter whether it's a big company or a small private web server. Whether it's worthwhile content would be decided by the market (since sites which don't attract users don't generate revenue to the site owner).
There could be pages who explicitly won't want to pay; those could be put into a special IP range (probably hard for IPv4, since most addresses are already assigned, but probably possible for IPv6; I think 1800::/16 would be a nice option), and probably should also get a special TLD which is exclusively assigned to those IPs (say, .free).
Now I'm realistic enough that I know the chances of implementing this in the real word are close to zero, but that's what I think it would work like in an ideal work.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Would love to see one of those NoPiracy.org ads that have been popping up here on Slashdot to show up suddenly on a site like The Pirate Bay.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
Or they're just plain stupid:
1. I get an email from someone with an Asian name, and I get a bunch of martial-arts ads.
2. I search for information on a Broadway musical, and the ads for me are targeted at gays.
My impression is that currently most Apple stories boil down to "Apple restricts what you can do with your iWhatever."
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I sent Amazon a nasty letter because I started receiving email about items that I had merely *clicked* on. To me this seems a little too much, and it's exactly the same as a brick and mortar store having a sales person ask who you are when entering the store and then follow you through the aisles as you browse. I asked them to stop and they didn't even have a flag they could set in my profile. Instead, they 'advised' me not to sign into their site.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Hmm. Well, 5-6 years might be a bit too much turnover for most companies. However what if they're showing you ads for accessories related to your purchase. If you bought a bed, you don't need another, but you might still need:
a) A new sheet set
b) A mattress (if you just bought a frame)
c) Pillow covers
d) Fabric-protectors. Pillow tops. etc etc
One more reason to not use iPad and iPhone.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Online advertising is a piece of crap as it is.
Let's ignore how creepy they get. Those ads are generally not creative, not interesting, and rarely go beyond "BUY THIS" (almost literally).
Look at TV ads, they tend to be creative to catch the audience's attention. Everyone has been amused or even entertained by a TV ad, and even at times those ads went into pop culture from being campy, imaginative or inspired, or just hilarious.
Not the case with Internet ads, they are just in the middle, doesn't expose the product (would you buy food from internet ads?) and it's simply not appealing. Its only purpose is being very annoying and hope you click by accident.
I use twitpic to upload some sort of game development blog, and I was showing a friend some of my progress on his computer, and the ads came to full force(he doesn't have adblock like I do). I was even afraid to scroll (laptop touchpad thingy) because I really didn't want to leave any of my friend's ID on those creepy "free antivirus scan" ads by virtue of failing to scroll (got finger damage and my fingers like to stop during actions, thus I get a lot of clicks when I want to scroll in touchpads).
Really, showing ads nowadays only serves to "sponsor" sites you like a lot. They fail as an advertisement medium entirely.
The experience I have had of amateurs running web sites as part of a hobby is that compared to what they spend on their hobby, the website's financial costs are a tiny fraction. Relatively it is "pennies", or at least that is how it is seen.
Have I known people running a genuinely major website? Well, I don't know Bezos, Zuckerberg, or even Taco. But what does major mean? Were you trying to define the terms of debate just so you could "win"? The amateur sites I have known of have been reasonable major in their niche, and considering how democratising the web is compared to other media forms (like TV), a minor player on the web is equal (in some respects) to the big boys.
As my sibling AC post points out, Wikipedia. If profit isn't being creamed off, then it does appear that you can run a major site on donations alone.
Car analogies break down.