How does ad tracking work?

[Simon.P]

I am logged on to my Chromebook as me.
Mrs opens Chrome and is looking for gas hobs. we browse various sites (some direct, some via google - where the images pop up underneath the search bar) including ao.com, appliances direct and currys.
Whilst we are procrastinating which hob to get she picks up her mobile and the ads on her facebook (i don't use it so not sure what happened) the hobs we are looking at are in between all the comments.

Any idea how that happened?!

 

[SEOpie]

The websites you've visited have Facebook Pixels installed which track your visit. These are basically snippets of code which sends user data to Facebook telling them how you interacted with the website (i.e. the pages you visited).

The website owners (or the people who manage their PPC campaigns) have set up remarketing advertising campaigns through Facebook to immediately target people who have visited their website.
Ergo, you see an ad for their page or website to try to persuade you to continue shopping there.

Both Facebook and Google Adwords have this functionality.

 

[nexuser]

To avoid this, when visiting the site click "Deny cookies" button

 

[fisicx]

To avoid this, when visiting the site click "Deny cookies" button

Only if such a button exists. In any case, tracking pixels and other devices no longer use cookies.

 

[nexuser]

Only if such a button exists. In any case, tracking pixels and other devices no longer use cookies.

What do you mean? Fingerprinting or somethnig else?

 

[Graham Tyers]

Here's another one to add to the pile.

We were on holiday last week - rented a place in t'country. Connected to their wifi ( a bog standard Sky broadband with dynamic ip address ) and was instantly shown ads I've never seen before for the exact brand of fancy soaps and cosmetics that were all over the house. So did others in the party.
Google clearly had the wifi SSID in its database and previous guests must have googled for the brand while there.

 

[nexuser]

Here's another one to add to the pile.

We were on holiday last week - rented a place in t'country. Connected to their wifi ( a bog standard Sky broadband with dynamic ip address ) and was instantly shown ads I've never seen before for the exact brand of fancy soaps and cosmetics that were all over the house. So did others in the party.
Google clearly had the wifi SSID in its database and previous guests must have googled for the brand while there.

It could be the default ad for that region