The matching is in itself a violation of privacy, at least if you interpret the right of privacy as "The right to be left alone", as former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis put it.
Yes, thats what I was thinking too. For Google, being in the ad business itself necessitates that Google's trajectory will be on shaky ground w.r.t privacy.
The original question was "Is there any way to improve the matching of ads to the viewer without violating their privacy?"
Your answer is that we should match something other than the user, that happens to correlate with user interests. That is, by definition, not matching ads to viewers.
In think either our idea of "by definition" or something else differs.
Viewers get ads matching their interests, as proven by the fact that they are on a related website. I don't see how that isn't "matching ads to viewers"?
Thanks, didn’t know about that.
I wish I had received a better feedback there, though, as I’m deeply interested in the topic and generally it’s quite hard for me to find negative opinions, counterarguments I could work on. I find negative feedback more helpful, if it’s constructive.
I think maybe the problem with the comment was that it started with "I think that’s incorrect" but it reads like a non sequitur. The comment to which yours was replying was claiming that matching ads to viewers is itself a privacy violation but your point seems to have been that it – matching ads to viewers – is unnecessary, which, altho related, is a different point and doesn't follow from you thinking that the other commenter's point is "incorrect".
I think you're right in that "site content" is a good-enough proxy for users/viewers/targets for advertising, tho I also readily understand why advertisers would always like more info with which to target their ads.
