Forum Moderators: skibum
This may result in the advertisers ads showing on sites they would not ever think to include in a site by site buy and may result in the publisher thinking they have very untargeted ads running on their sites when in fact those (or you if you see ads that don't seem to quite fit with your content on your sites when you visit them) people are being served those ads because the person visitng the site has already performed some action that indicates that ad is a good match for that person.
Take a look at Advertising.com clients here: [advertising.com...] visit a bunch of those sites with cookies enabled after you have Advertising.com ads running and you will probably start to see lots of ads for those companies. You'll probaby start seeing ads for baked beans, save the children, tools, and plus size womens clothing regardless of what the topic of your site(s) may be.
It's better than most "contextual" advertising because it is based on the actions people have already taken and not just some text matching algorithm that matches ads with related content but not necessarily interested consumers.
If you find yourself always or frequently seeing the same ads for some company you have no interest in but your kids, friends, significant other or anyone else who used your computer visited recently, that may be why.
