I don't know why but the way I look at this is that all the websites share our data anyway with the big company like Google, Facebook and they harvest on our data. Which eventually helps us only.
I would like to throw an example here.
A few of my friends during the start of this year(2020) wanted to go camping. So I did a few google searches, visited some event sites famous around India but was not yet sure which camping location should be good for booking. So on the next day, Instagram started showing me ads of more camping sites open for events of New Year with nice photos, proper reviews, etc. Ultimately I found one good site and booked it at a good price. So in this example/story, personalized ads helped me.
Instagram doesn't have the option to turn off personalized ads as far as I know. It just has the option to disable a single ad that shows up and the user can just report it that they don't like it or its come very frequently. Else you will keep seeing these ads for a long time. I always turn off personalized ads option for all the sites I use and do so for new sites whenever I see an option for it. But it is not available for Instagram.
I feel these ads play with our judgment and many times end up manipulating our decision about one product/service. Plus the main disadvantage of all this is that all the websites are just sharing our personal data with other websites one way or another.
You can say its just peace of mind for me by not seeing ads of my search history. Or just a small step for a better data privacy policy. I feel each website should have the option of turn off Personalized ads.
Thank You, Keep sharing your thoughts on my tweet meanwhile I will try to enable commenting feature here.
Some reference:
How to turn off personalized ads: https://helpdeskgeek.com/how-to/how-to-stop-personalized-ads-and-search-results-in-google-and-facebook/
Read about Facbook pixel: https://digiday.com/marketing/wtf-what-are-facebooks-first-party-cookies-pixel/
Image Credit: https://helpdeskgeek.com/