Case in point: the FTC last week dinged pregnancy app Premom (and its owner Easy Healthcare Corporation) $200,000 because the app was sharing sensitive medical and pregnancy data with Google and “China-based marketing and analytics firms.” Not only was it sharing this data and doing a poor job tracking how it was being used, the app bullshitting users into thinking the data was secure
The article goes on to ponder that $200,000 could be a drop in the bucket compared to what the company mode off its “product”. Why get all heated up about Tiktok when local indusries can hand it all to “China-based marketing”.
The one that really freaks me out is, my wife will be looking for something on her phone (lets say area rugs) and for the next week or two I will be getting ads on my phone from places like ruggable.
The end buyer is the Italian restaurant that bid the most to be placed at the top of the search results list when someone who is only 3 miles away from the restaurant used Google Maps to search for “Italian food near me.” They paid for an ad and hope it brings in business.
Sometimes, it’s not just about making money. The Cambridge Analytica scandal was about using Facebook user data to target voters of a certain psychological profile in order to influence their voting behavior.
Yes and no. IIRC Cambridge was a consulting firm, so they made a tidy bundle advising assorted political campaigns about voter preferences and trends the data gave them.
That’s what I meant when I said it’s not “just” about making money. There is money being made down the line, but the end buyer in that situation, the Ted Cruz campaign for example, was not using that data to make money.
One possibility would be that you’re one of the people that it doesn’t really work all that well on. I’ve heard other people talk of ads that seem very targeted towards them. A podcaster I listen to says that Instagram seems to do a really good job at recommending things that they would want to buy,.
The other thing is just that it doesn’t have to work all that well. It just has to be slightly better to be profitable. So perhaps there is a difference that shows up if you actually were to catalog it, but it’s not really noticeable.
And, yes, there is the possibility that the data will be used for other reasons. That’s the main reason I block this stuff. I don’t generally watch ads, so whether they target me isn’t really too relevant.
To be clear, it’s not that I think advertising doesn’t really work all that well on me; sure, I’d like to think that I’m a shrewd little engine of willpower or whatever — but even trying my hardest to see myself in the worst possible light, even assuming arguendo that I’m just too dumb to see what’s really going on and that any confidence on my part is just overconfidence that swindlers can exploit, I still can’t help but routinely gasp: holy shit, this ad has nothing to do with me; it’s not that it’s unconvincing, it’s that it’s weirdly irrelevant.
I’m now getting an ad for a dog bed; I don’t own a dog. I’m getting an ad for a full-mouth dental implant; also a miss. I’m getting one telling me about solar-panel incentives in Massachusetts; I don’t live there.
Am I unusual in this, or do other folks hereabouts still get all sorts of ads that make no damn sense?
Do you clear your cookies fairly often, not log into any Google or Facebook accounts, not use Chrome, use an adblocker, turned off any “personalized ads” settings or use an Apple device to do your browsing?
I’d say a good chunk of your response is the answer to your question. It’s not so much that the ads make no sense, it’s that you’re already doing things pretty much correctly to avoid personally tailored ads in the first place.
If you’re using an iPhone or iPad and want even less of a chance of a personalized ads (if you care), go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking > Allow Apps to Request to Track, and make sure it’s off (the default setting is off, so it probably already is).
Then Settings > Privacy & Security > Apple Advertising > turn off Personalized Ads.
The last few weeks I’m seeing ads for a sweatshirt with the classic “Charlie Brown Peanuts” orange with black zigzag. I have no idea why the seller thinks I’d care about that.
A number of years ago, my wife and I crashed an industry party during Ad Week in NYC (the story of how we accomplished that is actually pretty good, but too long to relate here).
The party was sponsored by The Rubicon Project and Peerset, and they both did a little presentation about what they do.
I knew then that we were doomed.
Hehehe, a new level of oddness in ad selection happened to me today. While looking at reviews of a synth I’m looking at, along with the ads for midi chord packs (which don’t make any damn sense to me), I got an ad for a study program for the Canadian English Language Proficiency Index Program.
Similar to my interest in having a baby, I’m not planning to even visit Canada anytime soon, much less become a citizen and need to pass that test. I watched the whole thing because I had no idea what the CELPIP was (they only referred to it by acronym), and was hoping they’d tell me what the hell they were talking about. Nope! I had to look it up afterward.
I frequently comment on Facebook about how, because I am logged into Facebook at work, that all the Google searches I do at work trying to figure out what a company does that one of our clients paid money to fills my Facebook feed with ads for these products, even though I am not at all interested in them. Those companies paid Facebook good money to target those ads to me based on my browsing history on a different machine; I highly doubt they will ever stop, because Facebook has little way of knowing whether they’re actually working. Individual companies might stop paying for ads targeted in that way, but Facebook will presumably always offer the service and will not stop it specifically for my account based on how those websites end up in my browsing history.
It may be good money, but I doubt it was much. I dont know how much an advertiser pays for ads to be pushed that way, but I have a feeling it was very little per person. I mean, they are spreading the ad to probably millions of viewers, and expect a tiny amount of response to those ads, so the cost of having it appear for you was probably near nil in the big picture.
This was Target. It was not based on browser history, it was based on her purchase history at Target and they were applying correlations with other products based on other customers’ purchases.
Microsoft Edge sends your photo viewing information back to the company so that they can target you with ads. I’m sure they are selling that data to marketing companies.
There is a way to disable the “feature”. I disabled it even though it’s not my browser.
I turn everything off on set up of a new PC at work except “Find my PC”.
But I digress.
I’m using Firefox, so I suspect Facebook is selling my information.