The Uncanny Valley of Internet Advertising

If you ask an Internet ad guy to defend himself—to explain why you, dear Web surfer, should feel comfortable letting him serve you ads based on everything you do online—you’ll likely hear two arguments.

First, he’ll tell you that targeted ads are simply the cost of doing business on the Web. It takes billions to build and maintain sites like Google and Facebook, and you don’t pay a dime to use them. Parting with some of your private information—and agreeing to tolerate, if not always click on, some ads—is your end of the bargain.

But it’s the ad guy’s second argument that’s supposed to clinch the deal. That argument goes like this: Don’t worry, you’ll like the ads! This is the grand promise of Internet marketing. When they work like they should, ad gurus say, Web ads won’t annoy you with pitches for stuff you’d never buy but instead will delight you by introducing you to products and services that you never knew you really wanted.

Over the years I’ve spoken to many marketing and privacy people at big tech companies, and they all tell some version of this story. Before the Internet, advertising was broken. Companies would waste billions to broadcast messages to people who weren’t interested in their wares, and because we all understood that most ads weren’t selling stuff we’d ever buy, we’d ignore most of the pitches sent our way. The Internet promised to change all that, transforming the enormous advertising industry from something that was mostly wasteful into a hyperefficient, hypereffective commercial matchmaker. It’s a great theory. And then you launch your browser, load up any site, and you’re bombarded with the ugly reality. Why are Internet ads so crappy? Why are they so often so creepy? Other than those tiny text ads that show up alongside your search results—which have truly revolutionized the ad business—most commercials you see online don’t seem to know anything at all about you or what you might buy.