So, it's been a really long time since I viewed GameDev without an Ad Blocker enabled, and I'm curious whether it's a general experience that a lot of the ads don't seem very relevant to game developers (let alone relevant to me).

These are the banner ads I received from the first three pages I clicked on, which are 0/3 in terms of relevance to me (I'm not married, don't own a home, don't own a car), and relevance to game development:

Mine are all pretty relevant to my interests - I imagine this is down to how well Google has profiled you, rather than a GDN based selection?

I have the Google Ad profile turned off and in the past I've had ads for blenders (the appliance) appear in threads about using Blender (the software). There's a thread right now in the lounge that at the moment is NSFW on page 2.

There should be a small "i" icon, next to the arrow when you hover your mouse. Use this to set your personal ad settings.

I am a Blender user and often find myself correcting the advert on the subject.

As a artist I often need to research objects for modeling, to prevent these searches from confusing the adverts I use incognito mode; for searches unrelated to my own interests.

1 hour ago, kseh said:

I have the Google Ad profile turned off and in the past I've had ads for blenders (the appliance) appear in threads about using Blender (the software). There's a thread right now in the lounge that at the moment is NSFW on page 2.

The adds by amazon that appear in-between comments in the forums reads the topic to advertise content. So if the topic is a bit NSFW and you don't prevent google from showing those adverts, you can get them here on Gamedev.

If however you get a lot of click here adverts, you won addverts, words appearing highlighted links, a lot of NSFW adverts. Then you need to get a better anti virus, because that is malware.

It's more a matter of the topic or thread contents. Here's a cute one from the Graphics forum. Need-guidance-on-pixel-art

On this thread I see an advert for Simple Cleansing facial wipes. It's not the first time I've seen completely unrelated ads on here.

Amazon is provided a default search term, and they use the page content, but what I've noticed is once they identify the page content they'll put priority on finding related products that you've recently viewed, with priority A being what you've viewed on Amazon.com, priority B being what you've viewed elsewhere, and priority C being products you've purchased or items related to products you've purchased both online and offline (your offline purchases are integrated into the Big Data world of online advertising.. it's impossible to get away from some form of tracking unless you go live in the woods off the grid). 

All GameDev.net can do (i.e. what we do) is provide Amazon with the category(ies) we want them to pull from, but if they have strong data on you they're going to use it to get you to be a consumer despite us telling them we only want them to select items related to the page and/or games and game development (@kseh "toys" fall under "games").

Ultimately it's a problem with the nature of ad networks, but we aren't in a position where we can get away from them right now.

5 minutes ago, khawk said:

(your offline purchases are integrated into the Big Data world of online advertising.. it's impossible to get away from some form of tracking unless you go live in the woods off the grid). 

This will sound lame. I find that just giving in to the advert participation works for the best.

If you opt out it's like they bombard you with random adverts, at least by taking part you get to have some control over what appears on screen.

Honestly the adverts on gamedev has always been about games or my own interest. When I suspect malware I often check it by visiting gamedev and checking to see if my adverts changed.

I did notice that when I re-installed my browser there was a short time where I got traveling adverts even after I synced my profile; it stopped after a day or two. 

16 hours ago, khawk said:

they use the page content, but what I've noticed is once they identify the page content they'll put priority on finding related products that you've recently viewed, with priority A being what you've viewed on Amazon.com, priority B being what you've viewed elsewhere, and priority C being products you've purchased or items related to products you've purchased both online and offline

I can tell you categorically that Amazon ads on this site are not using my user data. Firstly, because I see so many weird ads that are not remotely related to what I would ever buy. (e.g. Rifle scopes! I can't even legally own a rifle, and nor can anyone else sharing my IP address.)

Secondly, because today it's served up exactly the same ads to me as it did to Hodgman (screenshot is where I've scrolled up to see what it's got, and Hodgman's post is below):

So no, this is not the profiling - this is content-based at best. I don't think the tracking and profiling is working at all. Unless Hodgman is secretly working from my office, it's not even going off IP addresses.

I'm not bothered about seeing the ads; it's just a shame if they're not relevant because you'd think the site would get more revenue with more click-throughs.