Quick question: when was the last time you saw an ad on Facebook that seemed so hilariously off-base from your interests that you remarked on it to your friends?

Probably recently. Facebook has conditioned us to expect ads that relate to our interests to the point where people are surprised when the ads aren’t relevant.

But compare the attitude most of us take to seeing ads on Facebook to ads we see on the rest of the web. Based on the recent concerns about Google’s new universal privacy policy, it seems people are fine with seeing relevant ads in one place but absolutely not in another.

As Seth Godin wrote recently, we don’t care about privacy — we care about the illusion of privacy. We’d rather think it’s a happy coincidence that we continue to receive coupons for our favorite yogurt in Target’s weekly circular than be consciously aware that we’re being strategically advertised to.

I, for one, am appreciative of our data-driven online advertising culture. Advertising is just a way for companies to communicate with consumers about products the company thinks they might find useful. Thanks to great innovation in the online advertising space, most ads you see online are individualized — by zip code, estimated income range, likely gender, or, most controversially, by what other websites you’ve visited or if you’ve recently visited a particular advertiser’s website.

The controversy about ad targeting in general has continued to be front and center this week, with an article in The Atlantic bemoaning the prevalence of targeted political ads on partisan websites as keeping “people within the boundaries of the things they once read and thoughts they once had.” But ad targeting isn’t perfect, and it’s quite possible to see non-conservative ads on conservative websites.

In fact, almost everyone’s jobs are reliant on the market (i.e., other people) finding value in the work their employer does, whether it’s Proctor and Gamble or a non-profit. If sales go up, the company will need to hire more employees or use more services/supplies to meet that demand. And if those organizations can reach out to people who could be interested in their “products” more efficiently — whether they make Febreze or raise money for children’s cancer research — we all benefit.

But to be sure that relevant ads are beneficial, let’s walk through two examples.

1) I see an ad for Lakers tickets. I don’t follow basketball or live in LA, so I don’t pay attention to this ad. I don’t click on it. I don’t get any value out of this ad.

2) I see an ad from Amazon.com advertising a book that has a high reader correlation with a book I’ve recently bought from Amazon. I click on the link, read the reviews, buy the book, and love it. I have benefited from seeing this ad. On top of that, it’s made an efficiency improvement in my life: rather than spending an hour or two at the bookstore and perhaps stumbling upon this book, I’ve bought it in a matter of maybe ten minutes and had it shipped to my house. (Putting aside the fact that I personally love meandering through bookstores, this ad has still made an improvement in utility over the other ad.)

And because advertisers can be assured that their ads are only going to be seen by the people most likely to be interested in their products, they’re more likely to advertise. Considering this, it’s no wonder that online advertising is projected to surpass print advertising in 2012.

Targeted advertising is also a major reason why we are able to enjoy a wealth of news, information and entertainment online free of charge. Never before have we all had such an enormous amount of content at our fingertips. But “free” content is never free, and if it comes at the cost of me (gasp!) seeing an ad for something I might like, that’s a trade-off I’m willing to make.