This is great in theory, but the potential never seems to have come to fruition in practice. Google tries to figure out what I'm interested in globally, but what it tends to end up with are ideas that are either irrelevant, outdated, or inappropriate for my mood at the moment. In the best case, Google has figured out that I'm currently in the market for a new smartphone, but right _now_ I'm looking at car reviews, and what I want to see are good deals for the cars I'm interested in, not the new Samsung Galaxy model.
Compare this to a popular car review site I use, which seems to manage their own ads. You know what ad I'm shown when reading a review for a car? A deal on purchasing or leasing that car. This is something I'm highly likely to be interested in _now_, and if the deal is good- there's a decent chance I'll click on the ad.
When I'm reading a magazine, ads are often not just NOT an annoyance, but are actually part of the experience, because they're advertising things that are really interesting to the target audience of the magazine. There is a very small handful of websites where I will even glance at the ads not by accident, and none of these are using Google's ad network...
Compare this to a popular car review site I use, which seems to manage their own ads. You know what ad I'm shown when reading a review for a car? A deal on purchasing or leasing that car. This is something I'm highly likely to be interested in _now_, and if the deal is good- there's a decent chance I'll click on the ad.
When I'm reading a magazine, ads are often not just NOT an annoyance, but are actually part of the experience, because they're advertising things that are really interesting to the target audience of the magazine. There is a very small handful of websites where I will even glance at the ads not by accident, and none of these are using Google's ad network...