[rush340]

The cable company and newspaper would absolutely love to do that if it were possible on their technology.

If you put an ad on TV, the cable company is wasting valuable time showing your ad to a ton of people who will never purchase your product (I wonder how many hours of my childhood was spent in front of things like diabetes ads, funeral home ads, depression medication ads). Same goes for newspapers.

If they could somehow target ads based on who's watching, the ads would be massively more effective and they could charge a lot more for showing ads.

By targeting ads and charging so much more for ad time, some companies can even afford to offer their services for free, which massively increases the audience, which brings in more money, which gives them the budget to build a bigger, better service, which increases their audience, which brings them more money, etc etc

And that's how you end up with Facebook and Google.

Obviously the problem is that this isn't transparent. Many people don't know why they get all of this complex technology for free. It's not explained when you sign up for a new account.

[Aaargh20318]

> If they could somehow target ads based on who's watching, the ads would be massively more effective

They already can, and do. They know what the audience of their shows is and schedule the ads accordingly. Don’t show ads for funeral homes during Saturday morning cartoons. Hell, this is how we got the whole concept of a soap opera: soap ads during shows targeted specifically at housewives.

You advertise cars during car shows, tools during DIY shows, toys during cartoons, etc.