I guess the promise of online advertising is supposed to be that, by looking at my cookies and tracking my browsing habits, marketers will be able to show me ads that are relevant to me. That sounds great! Sign me up!

On the other hand, we get dire predictions that this sort of tracking will allow evil and all-powerful corporations to track and predict our every movement. “While we would like to offer you the position, I’m afraid we can’t due to the website you visited last Tuesday night…”

Unsurprisingly, reality seems to be somewhere in the boring middle. I bought a new Roku box last weekend, and now I see ads for Roku everywhere I go. Good work, guys–advertising dollars well spent!