> It's crazy to me that there is a multi-billion dollar industry focused on trying to guess what ads I might be interested in, using lots of privacy-invading techniques that I do my best to counter. Did they ever think to just ask me? I might not care much about ads if it was as simple as declaring the categories I might be interested in, at least if I could be convinced that that's all I would see and that the crazy privacy violations would stop
I could be wrong here, but I think it's because marketing folks believe that they know you better than you know yourself. That certainly seems the case with salespeople, whose role is to pitch something that may not be desired right away.
It's not a matter of people thinking they know better, but a matter of people seeing which approach makes them more money. Internet advertising is based on a bidding system which is highly tracked.
Advertisers may be bidding too highly on "targeted" demographics, but that's outside the issues of organizations like New York Times. Its in NYT's best interest to get the highest bids possible.
They may have been monitoring the difference in ad prices between highly targeted and not, and decided the difference no longer worth it.
I could be wrong here, but I think it's because marketing folks believe that they know you better than you know yourself. That certainly seems the case with salespeople, whose role is to pitch something that may not be desired right away.