I'm not going to see their ad anyway, and if I did and knew it was targeted, I'd be more likely to find somewhere else to shop. What did we have before targeting existed?
- I thought unobtrusive keyword-based ads in Google searches were okay, when they didn't fill the results page.
- I think context-sensitive ads are fantastic. People reading a boat-building site see ads for boat-building or other related products/services. I would click on these ads.
- Word of mouth, vetted reviews, brand loyalty...all valid, rights-preserving approaches.
Since the lore is that targeting gets higher click-through rates, maybe small businesses could pay a little less for the less skeezy alternatives. Targeted advertising is forever linked in my mind to Zuckerberg's "dumb fucks" email. Facebook/Meta is the biggest offender in this space, and I'm happy to watch it die in a fire.
Literally none of your solutions work for small businesses, as they cannot win the auctions for limited adspace in a world where targeting doesn't exist, and word of mouth only really works for an extremely tiny fraction of small businesses.
Your solution would decimate the millions of small businesses that rely on targeted advertising to get consumers.
Small businesses don't win many advertising auctions anyway. Big brands win, or cheap knockoff brands on Amazon, or Amazon itself (not a small business).
