Eh … targeted advertising certainly worked on me. Pretty definitely and pretty much guaranteed better than non-targeted ads.<p>My purchasing decisions tend to be pretty long and drawn out (it will take me months to decide that I want, for example, a camera and then to decide which one I want), but targeted ads have several times caused me to pick up the slack and continue my line of investigation into what to buy.<p>Their aggressiveness is an asset – and they also don’t really annoy me. Comical, sure, but they also remind me: Ah, I wanted to check out those cameras.<p>Obviously it’s a blunt instrument and not a scalpel (we know for to little about how human brains work to make that work – we need the blunt approach), but it’s a different blunt instrument compared to other advertising.