Big Brother is watching, and he wants to sell me crap

Ok, so I’m sure we’re all by now used to the experience of searching for info about something online, then seeing banner ads for that thing everywhere on other websites we visit. Especially if we use a certain search engine that rhymes with “floogle” and are signed in. But even not signed in, we’re still being tracked. So we install Adblocker and try not to think about our every online activity being followed.

So Monday I stop at a Guitar Center store. I haven’t been there in maybe a couple years-- I play a little guitar but I’m not a gearhead. Last time I went I bought a six-pack of sets of strings for my acoustic, replace strings every few months, so I just now ran out. So I make my Guitar Center purchase, and then yesterday I open the Spotify app to listen to some music at work. And a sound commercial/banner ad comes up for…Guitar Center.

Good thing I wasn’t shopping at an adult novelties store!

Right, since the Internet isn’t overflowing with porn.

When you shop online at a Dulcimer Nexus website, it puts cookies in your computer. So when you fire up your doodle search engine, it looks at the cookies and fires up some appropriate ads for you to see.

My point was, I didn’t realize shopping at brick 'n mortar stores and sharing customer info with them would be so closely and instantly connected with my online identity, but now I see I was naive.

There was something on the news recently about how your smartphone tracks where you are, when you’re there, etc, etc. Maybe that’s how you got linked to the brick-n-mortar?

Or it just may have been a coincidence.

Nope. I went looking at laser cutters and plasma cutters for work and had targeted ads about them for weeks. I went to a shaving website to look at razors and now I’m inundated with Harry’s and Dollar Shave Club ads.

You browsed on-line for cutters, or just physically went and looked at some?

This can certainly be it. Or, even if maybe the OP was surfing around the net for guitar parts/strings it’ll do that cookie thing. Hell, on my iPhone, there’s a switch for every app to turn location sharing on/off, and a switch to limit Ad Tracking.

I don’t see how buying something at a brick & mortar shop will present you with ads on your browser.

Or like Leaffan says, total coincidence.

Are you trying to say my tinfoil hat is too tight? :wink:

FairyChatMom, that’s what a coworker suggested when I mentioned it, but I think the explanation is more simple and slightly less stalkery- GC has my name, address, email and CC info; Spotify has my name, address and email, but not CC since I signed up for the free ad-laden service. They both share my info with a third-party marketer, who matches me up and serves me the GC ad on Spotify.

I guess I can look at it as, hey, I only see ads for stuff I’m interested in- how convenient! Problem is, they’re behind the curve- they’re showing me ads for places I’ve already shopped or things I already purchased. They need to develop algorithms to anticipate what I’m going to buy next, based on what I’ve already bought. I’m sure somebody’s working on that right now…

If you give any bricks and mortar business your email, that gets hooked in with the rest of your online dossier and can influence the ads you see.

What I find confusing is why anyone would think otherwise.
The other thing I’ve noticed is it’s now pretty rare for me to visit a bricks and mortar store without somehow interacting online at least slightly with them first. Perhaps I map-apped them to see how to drive there. Or looked at an online review of them.

Either way, Big Brother knows I’m interested in that place before I even show up. And doing that online checking now feels so natural that I don’t even think of myself as doing it. How many of us remember the last time we glanced at our watch to check the time? Nobody; we just do it without thinking or recording the fact we did it. It’s mostly ditto for searching and checking stuff online.

Online. However, a lot of large box stores are using a combination of your phone’s wifi and other means to see exactly what you are looking at while in the physical location and then sending coupons or other inducements. Here is an article about it.

They need to add a checkbox on those targeted ads to, in essence, say “Dummy - I already purchased this and won’t be buying it anymore for a long time, so stop wasting your ad-money”.
It is a bit amusing when I get targeted ads selling heavy truck tractors or rebuilt locomotives, but still (the joys of being a scale vehicle modeler…)

Did you use your phone or a computer to look up the address of the store, or for directions to get there?

I’ve noticed this a lot too, and I’m not sure whether to be more annoyed or amused. Annoyed, because very occasionally I find out about a good deal or something I hadn’t heard about from advertising, and stuff I just bought and will not buy again for awhile don’t count. But on the other hand, I guess it’s better than endless ads for things I actively dislike.

This is becoming a lot more common. One of the companies that collects information about what you buy online, and in brick and mortar stores, is Acxiom.

They’re partnered with Facebook now. According to that article, loyalty cards are one of the ways they can track what you buy in physical stores. They know to link your loyalty card info to your Facebook account if they have the same phone number.