Online advertising. We all love to hate it, but in some ways it’s a necessity because it helps pay the bills. Imagine the cost of visiting all of your favorite websites if they were not ad-supported. That being said, the fact that ads are a necessarily evil doesn’t make them any less evil.

Remember the online advertising of the ’90s? That was brutal stuff – pop-ups, pop-unders, and enough flashing banner ads on a page to make a person’s head spin. Some websites were about a 50/50 split between ads and content, it seemed. Online advertising has gotten much more tasteful after the dot-com bubble and the end of the “Wild West” era of the web, that’s for sure.

I was actually inspired to write this post following my observations when I recently switched from Mozilla Firefox to Google Chrome. I’d been a loyal Firefox user since 2006, and I couldn’t imagine parting with the wildly-popular AdBlock Plus extension. As a result of AdBlock Plus, I had barely seen any web ads during my entire college experience. Most browsers already blocked pop-ups at the time, but AdBlock plus took it a step further by blocking all ads – banners, Flash, and the like.

I didn’t imagine that I’d be able to handle Chrome as my primary browser. Without a reliable ad-blocking extension available (at the time), I couldn’t picture going back to an ad-filled browsing experience. To my surprise, though, online advertising generally seems to have improved over the past half-decade. Most ads are tasteful and out-of-the-way – they aren’t annoyingly flashy and don’t detract greatly from the browsing experience. Thus, even though I found an ad-blocking extension for Chrome recently, I haven’t bothered with it because the ads no longer bother me like they used to – with one exception.

Here’s the one thing that really bothers me about online ads… Facebook. In general, the idea of leveraging the social graph for targeted advertising makes sense. In practice, though, the results are decidedly mixed. I’ve gone through stretches where all I will see are advertisements for online dating sites – and not the more reputable ones, either. Though I get a good mix of ads once in awhile, those ads are by far the most prevalent. I understand why – relationship status is one of the easiest things on the social graph to market to. People’s tastes in music or TV shows are undoubtedly more of a niche area to target. Thus, Facebook probably has the easiest time selling and showing ads for online dating.

So, while I see the logic behind the situation, it doesn’t become any less annoying. It may be easy for Facebook to market online dating to me, but the ease of that targeted ad isn’t going to increase my likelihood to click it. In fact, the overexposure to that particular category of ad is probably going to send me in the opposite direction.

Facebook could take a bold step and try to target users more deeply, but this is obviously a risky move. The ad space for online dating sites is simple to sell and show. Moving toward more niche-based targeting would increase Facebook’s difficulty in generating sufficient ad impressions. The payoff could be huge, though, and it could help realize the vast promise and potential that exists in monetizing the social graph. If I’m going to see ads anyways, I’d much rather see ones that are geared towards my actual interests in needs. I want to see ads that will actually motivate me to click and find out more about what’s being advertised.

That sounds great, but there is certainly the other side of the coin as well: privacy. People have varying degrees of skepticism about Facebook and their use of our data, and that skepticism has certainly been earned. This likely provides a second explanation as to why Facebook has been slow to move forward on more targeted advertising. This certainly is something that should be handled with care and an eye towards privacy concerns. I do think making this opt-in could go a long way towards making the concept feasible. If you want targeted ads that might be useful, opt-in to sharing components of your social graph. Otherwise, you will get the same annoying and repetitive ads that you get now, but your privacy will be more protected.

Ultimately, though, I do think targeted advertising is only going to grow from here. The question is not “if,” but “how soon.” It’s a double-edged sword, without a doubt. Let’s face it, though: advertisers already have plenty of information about us. In my personal opinion, the bottom line is that targeted advertising is a giant leap forward from the ugly, ad-infested websites of the web’s early days.