Targeted Adverts...

[fisicx]

....are stupid.

I brought some batteries yesterday and now I see adverts for batteries. I was also doing some work with a new client who sells products exclusively for women. And I'm now seeing adverts for these products (despite my being as far as I can tell a bloke).

All I can think is the marketing companies who sell data are ripping off the buyers. Or the buyers are more stupid than I originally thought.

 

[alan1302]

Same happens on the Facebook Marketplace - Facebook with all it's resources shows you things it think you want purely by seeing what you searched on last time and showing more of it...really hopeless most of the time.

 

[Paul Norman]

It's a great business model for, say, Facebook.

People pay fortunes to show me adverts for the stuff I purchased an hour ago.

 

[fisicx]

Apparently I now need a mammogram and for some strange reason hire a JCB.

 

[Fagin2021]

For anyone who doesn’t know and is puzzled why they’re followed around the web by the same ad’, this is how it works (with Google, not Facebook)...

When you visit a website that has signed up to Google Ads and is running a display campaign, a cookie is placed in your browser that identifies you as a site visitor (whether you bought something or not). Then, when you visit a different site that’s contracted with Google to show adverts (Adsense sites, like our own UKBF), you are shown advertisements from the first site. It’s called re-marketing or re-targeting.

If you click on the ad’, Google charges the advertiser for the click and shares the revenue with the Adsense website publisher. The advertiser isn’t charged anything unless there’s a click. Conversion rates from ’display’ campaigns are usually much lower than from ‘search’ campaigns, as are click costs, so it can be a good way of getting your brand name shown without incurring much cost.

‘Ah-hah’, you say, ‘what if I delete cookies in my browser?’. You’re off the hook with regard to the original website, but Google still has to decide what adverts to show you on the Adsense site (like UKBF). It does this in two ways...

1. If you signed up for a Google Account you probably gave Google a load of information like age, gender and interests. You might have completely forgotten about this, but Google hasn’t.

2. By looking at your search history on Google properties like the SERPS and YouTube, Google will try to determine your demographic data and interests and serve you relevant ads’. Sometimes it gets it right, other times it fails miserably. For example, if you spend a lot of time on outdoor activity sites you might get ads for waterproof clothing and footwear. If you spend the wee hours ogling lingerie sites, don’t be surprised at adverts for ladies swimwear.

Anyone on this site (UKBF) will likely see different adverts to the next person based on their search history. If you click on an advert UKBF will get a share of the revenue from that click.

There are ways for the advertiser to control where his display ads are shown, and avoid click fraud, but that’s another topic.