I am a 28 year old South African male living in Waterford, Ireland. I enjoy photography, reading, movies, travel and tea. My work is also something I enjoy; web-application development. I am 5′11″ high, average build, I like to wear comfortable clothes and have no interest in fashion or clothing brands beyond their utility and reliability. I don’t smoke but I do drink, normally the odd beer, Carlsberg please not Heineken, but mostly good whiskey. I am in a committed relationship, want children and hope to buy a house in the next few years.

Advertisers, what are you going to send me based on that information that I don’t already know about or have? Camera deals? No thanks, I’m doing fine there. Travel deals? Sure but every other travel deal I have ever seen has been rubbish, how can you do better? Technical books on web-development? Sorry, I don’t read them. Savings on beer and whiskey? You can beat the local Tesco that is undercutting to sell me other things can you? Didn’t think so.

Everything I am interested in I first read about on a friend’s blog or hear about direct from someone. Everything I need in life is already quite well sorted out. If it isn’t then I go out and find it. An advertisement has never ever fulfilled that role. Not once in 28 years.

I don’t get targeted advertising.

So when I read about how social networks, with there deep data mines of personal data on me, are going to revolutionise targeted advertising, I don’t get it.

Is the rest of the world idling their time away looking for something, just anything, to spend money on? “Give me something to swipe for!”

So it seems. Idle spending must be what all the targeted adverts are after. The hope to snap up a few bucks here and there

Professionally I get it. Every user application I have ever worked on has “demographic data mining potential.” People are always talking about “monetizing that personal data” and “demographically pinpointing recommendations” etc. but I have never seen it work. Amazon doesn’t get it right, Google AdSense doesn’t get it right, Facebook certainly doesn’t get it right.

My bank knows a lot about me, a lot more than Facebook ever will. And yet my bank has never sent me something I wanted. They send me loan offers and yet with a glance at my bank balance you’d see a loan is the last thing I want. They send me car finance deals. I already have car finance with them. I’ve looked and I can’t find anything else I want from my bank. So they can data mine my personal data all they want. It isn’t going to target their adverts any better.

There has to be a deep change in targeted advertising for it to become in any way useful to people like me. I hope I am not in the minority, it makes me worry that people are out there idly clicking on “People also bought this” links on Amazon.