I find this to be less annoying than ads that have nothing to do with my interest. Some search engines are targeting capabilities including serving ads based on many specific criteria, such as keyword, keyword phrase, time of day, day of week, special events, special promotions, topic, specific page, operating system, browser, company, ISP and domain. Other criteria include such demographic data as age, gender, zip code and so on. For example, Lycos collects the user-declared demographic and psychographic information anonymously and protects user privacy vigorously. The information is collected via personalized services and online communities such as Angelfire and Tripod.
Privacy issues can create challenges for publishers, advertisers and ad networks.
There is a need for a balance between the information needed by the publisher with that of the public's desire to maintain privacy. Other ad networks, such as Engage, use anonymous profiling to target the online audience. They track the web sites that people visit. Other companies practice rewarding self-profiling, people are encourage to register by offering them points that can be redeemed for frequent flyer miles or selected products. Every vendor seems to have a different method for targeting users.