I have categorically refused to build a web business based on advertising revenue. Eventually I had to ask myself “why”, and this is what I came up with – I find advertising repugnant, EXCEPT when it’s about something I want.

A little light went off in my head – I know how to hack google adsense to display ads based on a given keyword. I know how to use greasemonkey to edit the pages I’m browsing. And I know how to get my recent search history out of google. Why not combine these – a greasemonkey script that rewrites google adsense to be ads for products matching my recent search history? It could even be customized with a keyword list of my own devising.

I can’t imagine google would object – the ads will still be there, they’ll just be better.

Thoughts?