WFW - Always a target

This month our Words for Wednesday is provided by our friend River over at Drifting through life.

The purpose of the words is to encourage us to write a story, poem, or whatever. Simply pick some of the words or all of the words and then go by River's blog and let her know so we can all enjoy what you have written.

This week's words are:

refocusing, theatrically, unimaginable, olive oil, footrest, relieved
and/or:
roughly, mythology, disconnected, expansive, campfire, singing

My story this week targets Targeted Advertising

Always a target

Online advertising? Some of these THEATRICALLY designed ads are really a pain in the...

I really feel violated, especially after researching a product on our EXPANSIVE world wide web, and all of a sudden every page I go to after that has a banner ad for the exact same product that I was looking at. Targeted advertising is what they call it and to me this is ROUGHLY the same practice as the telemarketers who continue to dial your phone number over and over, even after you have asked for your number to be removed or have added your phone number to the "Do Not Call" list. It's UNIMAGINABLE to think that this may be where some of the telemarketers get your number.

Stopping these online targeted ads is not as simple as kicking back with your feet propped upon your favorite FOOTREST, nor as easy as sitting around a CAMPFIRE holding hands while SINGING Kumbaya and telling fables and fairy tales. But actually getting away from the ads completely is indeed a fairy tale.

Finding the actual place to help get you DISCONNECTED from these targeted advertising nightmares is supposed to be as simple as tapping on the little sideways triangle at the top of the ad, and then selecting the ad choices to opt out of those targeted ads, my problem is figuring out how to hit the triangle without tapping the ad itself.

Targeted Ads are just like a dart thrown at you.

This can be done, but with my hand/eye coordination, the size of my fingers compared to the size of that little triangle, and the closeness of the links, my accomplishing this is sometimes a feat straight out of Greek MYTHOLOGY. And once there most of the time the page opened is more confusing than the ad.

Blocking the targeted ads is possible by opting out through links like the Network Advertising Initiative, or Web Choices. You have to do this on each of your devices and computer too, but the bad thing is when you clean out the stored cookies on your computer or device after that, you have to again go through the process from start to finish, because you are now a target once again.

REFOCUSING the ads is really all you can do, the ads don't go away only the targeted ads. Now rather than seeing the exact same shoe or noise cancelling headphones that you were looking at, now the ads have adjusted to every thing from OLIVE OIL, to those yogurts that help you ladies find relief within a week, I wouldn't be surprised to see a targeted ad that claims drinking castor oil can help a man to get RELIEVED a whole lot quicker than the yogurts.

I'm not suggesting that you drink castor oil, but if you hate targeted ads like I do, I suggest that you opt out through sites like I mentioned earlier, and don't download anything because that's a whole other problem.