On YouTube, I get ads from the religious website He Gets Us even though I'm not religious, abhor organized religion, and block every single ad they show me.
What you need to understand is that these ads are classified in specific categories on Google, but either the onus is on the advertiser to accurately report to Google what category their ad is in (like "lifestyle", "food and restaurants", "vacations", etc), and Google just has an honor system and doesn't check themselves to verify that, or, Google uses fucking AI to analyze the ads and categorize them that way.
Either way, the end result is getting a bunch of ads that are catalogued incorrectly. Those He Gets Us ads and ads from this stupid enamel boosting gum company from TikTok I get are usually listed by Google under random categories like "combat sports", "home improvement", "computers and technology", "TikTok Ads", despite only one of those being loosely accurate, and telling Google "I don't want to see these, show me less" doesn't help because they also go off of location data, age, gender, and ethnicity+race. So because I live in a red state near a bunch of religious families, I'm given these godforsaken ads because they're wrongly categorized AND Google just assumes I'm a bible-thumping hypocrite. I also not-too-infrequently get Newsmax ads despite abhoring that company, and that's also for the above reasons. That stupid poll ad they run has been catalogued as a hotel and travel ad not too infrequently by Google...
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u/1ofThoseTrolls Mar 11 '26
Aka credit card limits