"Thanks Ed. Your first response was as subtle as a bucket of manure in hot summer."
Yes, maybe a little :)
"I suspect you only put cookies on your web site because someone pays you to do it for them. That sounds more plausible to me than all the cobblers about hob nobs."
Did you read my answers? Replace hob-nobs with ginger biscuits if you prefer.
"Ok but there is money involved for someone. Do advertisers pay to put their ads on here?"
Yes, that is what advertising is... The advertiser pays for a space on the website (more or less). Unless you want to pay instead? :)
The cookies are more for the first instance of tracking whether you're on the site, how long and where you've come from etc. We can then say to advertisers that we have 1.5m visitors a month, for example. A bit like saying to TV advertisers "We have 8 million people watching at 8pm".
The second instance might be re-marketing, where an company/advertiser gives you a cookie when you go to their site. When you come to our site you might see ads from that company. I always think that's better than getting ads seemingly at random.
"I can honestly say that in all the years I've used the internet, I've never responded to any of those ads on any web site and I've never responded to any emails that may have been sent from them."
Quite possibly. Ads aren't always a bad thing though. From a company you like they can be quite useful.