> that behavior will hurt the economy as a whole.

I don't quite follow... Advertisers want their product sold. Consumers want to buy whichever product is most suitable for their needs (based on both price and performance), ad networks have every incentive to connect these two.

In an ideal world an ad network would show me 10 ads for products I want to buy (ie. new shoes, ice cream, etc). I would have confidence that those products are the exact ones I want and that any more research would only show up inferior (worse value) products.

The ad network gets to take no profit margin - since if it did, I could find that same product cheaper elsewhere.

This leads to an equilibrium where the ad network shows mostly the perfect products - and charges a small margin - where the margin size is set to be slightly below my willingness to shop around for a better deal.

Personalized pricing just represents different users estimated willingness to shop around - but if the model is correct, even those paying a higher price are happy with the situation or else they'd shop around.

Ad networks have every incentive to lie to consumers to get a sale. If the strength of the economy is measured in total sales, that's great. If the strength of the economy is measured by consumer satisfaction, not so much.

An ideal ad network would not show you a product ideal for you, but a misleading ad for the lowest-cost product you'll buy for the most expensive price, with 95% of the difference pocketed by the ad network.

What is the incentive for ad networks to suit you to whichever product best fits your needs? On price, if an ad network knew how much you needed something, why isn't their incentive to show you the the highest confidence-weighted price you'd pay rather than the absolute best deal?

e.g. if they know you absolutely need to get on a flight (dying family member or something), what is their incentive to find you the best one rather than gouging you? And if they sell that information to other groups so everyone knows to gouge you?

Informing the target that a product exists is a small part of advertising. It's important for the small players, but for the big advertising spenders it's much more about communicating values, trustworthiness, emotions. Building a brand image, and maintaining brand awareness

Just the fact that you are running an advertising campaign of a certain size used to be a signal in itself. Same with advertising in or for subcommunities. That signal is heavily dilluted by targeted advertising

Similarly, personalized pricing is removing signal from the price. Sure, price was always a noisy signal, but better a noisy signal than no signal

>In an ideal world an ad network would show me 10 ads for products I want to buy

Ideal for who? What if you don't want to buy anything, much less have all of your personal information hoovered up and sold/shared/exfiltrated around to everyone in the world for the benefit of the advertisers that have no value for you?