For this reason, I think the ultimate ad network would be a combination of Google&#x27;s data, Facebook&#x27;s data, and data from a payment processor (PayPal or Stripe).<p>Google knows what you&#x27;re after, right now.<p>Facebook knows what you&#x27;re into, in general.<p>PayPal&#x2F;Stripe know your propensity to spend money online.<p>I would argue that the perfectly targeted ad will want to know about all of these. Google&#x27;s data &amp; mechanism (search) is probably the most useful; there&#x27;s a pretty good chance someone searching &quot;where to buy X&quot; is looking to buy X. Combined with purchase data and personal preference data, the ability to target would seem near-perfect. Not only would you know whether the user is likely to buy X online, but you would also know what brand of X they might be interested in (eg. if they liked &quot;Dell&quot;), where they would prefer to purchase it from (eg. if they liked &quot;Amazon&quot;), and what bundling might appeal (eg. if they liked &quot;Logitech&quot;).<p>For some people, this is the nightmare scenario. All these big companies putting together their data to algorithmically know what a consumer will buy before the consumer knows what they will buy. I&#x27;m with you, though. I think it would make advertising a lot less annoying, especially if it leads away from &quot;we need your attention!&quot; video ads into hyper-targeted text &amp; images.<p>The underlying assumption, though, is that advertising companies would be more successful if targeting were better. Undoubtedly, a segment of their audience would be in much higher demand than they are now. I suspect that a lot of other segments would be in much lower demand, though. Would Emirates bid as high on Google for &quot;holidays in Europe&quot; if they knew I had never spent online, was elderly, and liked &quot;Cruises&quot; on Facebook?