Many problems in Science and Engineering give rise to linear integral equations of the first kind with a smooth kernel. Discretization of the integral operator yields a matrix, whose singular values cluster at the origin. We describe the approximation of such matrices by adaptive cross approximation, which avoids forming the entire matrix. The choice of the number of steps of adaptive cross approximation is discussed. The discretized right-hand side represents data that commonly are contaminated by measurement error. Solution of the linear system of equations so obtained is not meaningful because the matrix determined by adaptive cross approximation is rank-deficient. We remedy this difficulty by using Tikhonov regularization and discuss how a fairly general regularization matrix can be used. Computed examples illustrate that the use of a regularization matrix different from the identity can improve the quality of the computed approximate solutions significantly.