ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage • Hacker News Board

Re: ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage

#41

Post by Maken » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 6:19 PM UTC

WarmWash wrote: post #18

ryanmcbride wrote: post #13

Everything with ads is garbage. All the time. It poses no benefit to humanity even a little bit.

Except for socialising the entire internet age, giving poor people in 3rd world slums the same access to the same platforms as the richest 0.001%. No one likes to acknowledge this, but there is an alternate timeline where only the rich kid in school has a Google account, reddit account, meta account, and almost all content is still produced by massive media conglomerates. Ads suck and everyone hates them, but don't l…

Ads didn't give us Wikipedia. The vast majority of blogs and forums were not for profit. Specialised media outlets were always subscription-based. Large amounts of valuable information like research papers, technical documentation and curated databases were paywalled.

The content that ad-based websites brought was mostly clickbait designed around serving these ads.

Re: ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage

#42

Post by jabart » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 6:19 PM UTC

We can't use ChatGPT Ads because ChatGPT banned our company for ads for political content even though we are a CRM/Compliance tool for campaigns and the only ad we had was the autogenerated ChatGPT one they made. No chance at an appeal either. We had this issue with Bing Ads but microsoft fixed it and even personally called to apologize about the mixup.

Re: ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage

#43

Post by demibabs » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 6:21 PM UTC

nikole9696 wrote: post #12

I have no idea why anyone would click on any ad anywhere other than by accident, not knowing if the link might take them to some malware site these days.

Sometimes (I especially notice this on the App Store, but sometimes Google), companies bid on their own name. So you'll search something like "Discord" and the first result will be an ad for Discord, and then below is the organic results which has them first anyways.

Re: ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage

#44

Post by howunfortunate » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 6:22 PM UTC

jandhdhshhh wrote: post #32

Speaking as a consumer, I’ve always found ad targeting to be way off for Google, YouTube or even facebook. The few times I got ads I ChatGPT it was also off. It’s kinda ironic that with all that AI, they choose not to use any of that intelligence to target ads better. It makes you wonder what all those engineers are working on if not the main revenue driver.

It may be that you just aren't a big spender.

My experience with performance adtech was that 95% of the energy went into targeting whales, with a focus on products that drive massive revenue (mobile gaming, gambling, crypto). It's truly insane what these whales are spending.

Sure, there's still a lot of money in the 5%, especially for a surface like ChatGPT where people are making retail decisions. But I'm not particularly shocked if they're a little behind.

Re: ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage

#45

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 6:22 PM UTC

beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #38

ryandvm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads are responsible for the enshitification of everything. Literally everything. - Why is online news just partisan rage-baiting? Ads - Why is real journalism dying? Ads - Why are your web search results less helpful? Ads - Why are recipes 2,000 words long? Ads - Why is social media engineered for scroll-maxxing? - Why is your car/TV/refrigerator spamming you? - Why are pharmaceuticals so expensive? - Why is your pop…

> Why is real journalism dying? Ads This is not really true. Ads, especially the classifieds, were often the only way that newspapers and news organizations stayed afloat aside from public funding. What happened was the major ad-tech companies captured the revenue and the subscriber data that came from ads and viewers that would normally go to those organizations. "Real journalism" often didn't make much if not any m…

[deleted]

Re: ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage

#46

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 6:23 PM UTC

jandhdhshhh wrote: post #32

Speaking as a consumer, I’ve always found ad targeting to be way off for Google, YouTube or even facebook. The few times I got ads I ChatGPT it was also off. It’s kinda ironic that with all that AI, they choose not to use any of that intelligence to target ads better. It makes you wonder what all those engineers are working on if not the main revenue driver.

[deleted]

Re: ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage

#47

Post by necovek » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 6:23 PM UTC

efficax wrote: post #7

giancarlostoro wrote: post #5

If I were Mark Zuckerberg I would be salivating waiting for a call from Sam Altman.

facebook ad targeting is also garbage. They have my entire history since 2004 and they still sometimes: think I'm a woman, think I need things for a newborn, think I'm in the market for "short men clothing" (I'm 6'0"), and so on. Sometimes I get ads for farm equipment (I am a lifelong city dweller).

Now let's be honest: short men clothing is basically modern, "slim fit" clothing; you get that fashionable bare-ankles look with short pants.

And again, who does not want to drive a tractor in their city when they hit the pothole? Or at least to re-plow half of the city just because of the stupid buildings they put in there?

Re: ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage

#48

Post by throwup238 » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 6:23 PM UTC

MengerSponge wrote: post #39

jandhdhshhh wrote: post #32

Speaking as a consumer, I’ve always found ad targeting to be way off for Google, YouTube or even facebook. The few times I got ads I ChatGPT it was also off. It’s kinda ironic that with all that AI, they choose not to use any of that intelligence to target ads better. It makes you wonder what all those engineers are working on if not the main revenue driver.

I understand why it's hard, but it's very funny to get ads for a product I've bought for weeks/months after completing the purchase. I looked for rain boots, and I bought a pair of rain boots. Getting ads for rain boots now isn't going to drive any purchasing, right? Meta or Alphabet get paid still, so the advertisers are getting hosed.

You might return them and get another brand. Even that little positive signal is often worth the wasted impressions because most of the other signals are either so weak or so competitive.

Re: ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage

#49

Post by symfrog » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 6:25 PM UTC

I have run many ad campaigns across various platforms, and I have come away with 2 main thoughts:

1. Click fraud is rampant, and the ad platforms seem to not care in the least as long as they can drain your budget.

2. The ad bidding process is completely opaque, and no auditing seems to be done, my inclination is that there is large scale fraud here too.

Re: ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage

#50

Post by howunfortunate » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 6:25 PM UTC

ryanmcbride wrote: post #13

Everything with ads is garbage. All the time. It poses no benefit to humanity even a little bit.

I'd really like for some country to ban all ads, even if just for a while, so people could observe the quasi-experiment.

My personal bet would be the country would suffer for it quite a lot, similar to places that have banned e.g. loans, but it'd be very cool if I were wrong!