Yep, me too. I just moved - I expect to keep seeing ads for moving companies and u-store-it type of places for several more weeks now.
I hired that company like, three weeks ago. Obviously stopped searching around that time.
I get that a lot too. They seem to think I need more snowblowers. No, one is enough.
But much targeting is mis-targeted. My ISP, the local telecom monopoly, is based two zip codes away, with major operations in the next county, and we’re mostly ruggedly rural up here. I see many adverts aimed at locales other than mine, and picturing people and places that don’t exist nearby, while offering totally irrelevant products or services. That likely means Big Data hasn’t nailed me down yet. Whew.
Thanks for the suggestion, but while I’m curious about what’s happening, I don’t want to go that far. While I’d rather get targeted ads rather than ridiculous ones, it’s only a mild annoyance. As I said, I’m more curious about this than complaining.
In any case, I give Facebook a lot of direct input on my preferences, likes, and dislikes. There’s my profile, the links I click, the posts I share, and the feedback I give on ads I find irrelevant. None of this seems to have much effect.
And I find it very interesting that, while some people do get appropriate ads (even if only after they’ve bought something), a lot of people find their ads as useless as I do mine. Given the concerns expressed about Facebook knowing “everything about you,” I’m amazed that their algorithms seem to work so poorly for a lot of people, especially for something with direct financial impacts like advertising.
I quite enjoy the really stupid ones; my recent favourite was the ad for a Christian DVD series aimed at kids. I’m atheist and the closest I have to children is houseplants and axolotls. Mostly they’re magazine and newspaper subscriptions at the moment.
On the ‘advertising stuff you already bought’ line, I also once got ads for discount train tickets, for the same day I’d bought a train ticket to the airport. Ya know what, I’ll skip my holiday in Indonesia, I’ll get a single to Grimsby instead, why not?
One of the reasons they are a $600 billion dollar company is probably because their algorithms are much better at telling them what you want than you are. So there isn’t really too much of a mystery here; if you’re still curious what’s happening, the answer is AdBlock and your browser tracker settings.
Have you tried the “Why am I seeing this?” option when you get an irrelevant ad? That might give you more info.
this is why ad-blockers exist.
Well, look, anyone can say that, and it may even be true. But is there some point where, upon disregarding yet another string of seemingly-irrelevant ads, it’s okay to wonder, hey, wait; is it possible that these are as irrelevant as they seem? I mean, granted, maybe they’re getting it right — but, as far as I can tell, they keep getting it wrong. Is there any way to find out whether they’re getting it wrong?
Sorry, I’m just not buying that explanation. As I said, I give them plenty of direct feedback on Facebook itself, which seems to be entirely ignored.
If you’re suggesting this, I imagine you’ve never actually clicked on that link. It’s entirely uninformative. What it says, for all ads, is:
Sample additional reasons given for various sites:
[Advertiser] is trying to reach people whose primary language is English (UK) or English (US)
[Advertiser] is trying to reach people over 18 [or 25] years old.
[Advertiser] is trying to reach people who interacted with their Facebook page [which I never did, for the advertiser in question]
[Advertiser] is trying to reach people whose location is Panama [for generic products that have absolutely nothing to do with Panama. I suspect these advertisers are advertising in many countries, I see few if any ads actually targeted to Panama.]
I don’t see any evidence that these ads are targeted except in the very broadest terms.
I’ve purchased FB ads and its incredible how tightly you can focus ads. For my distillery we would send coupons to people in our demographic who lived within a 1 mile radius of a store we were doing a tasting at who had interest in alcohol or locally produced products and they worked well.
I think there are 3 possibilities if you’re not seeing ads relevant to you. The first is that the companies who would be relevant to you (like the birding example above) don’t advertise on facebook so you can’t see their ads there. The second is companies with large advertising budgets are “targeting” everyone so facebook is sending you a nonrelavent ad on purpose (an example would be the moving companies “targeting” people who just moved). Lastly, you’ve managed to hide your interest from facebook by liking everything and clicking everything or clicking nothing or using other ways to mask yourself, this is harder to do than you think since facebook buys external data and ads it to your profile. I would guess mistargeted ads are 40% #1, 50% #2 and at most 10% #3.
I do get some, but those are ones I’ve actually taken tours with before or liked their pages. But I don’t see ads for other tour companies, that are larger and presumably also advertising. (One would think someone who liked another tour company’s page would be a prime market for them.) I just checked, and some of those pages have been liked by some of my Facebook friends. I’ll be interested to see if now that I’ve searched on them directly whether I start seeing their ads.
The ads I do get seem to be ones that are broad focus ones, with little targeting besides “English speaking adult.”
That’s not it, since I do click on or like things that interest me, but not everything.
To be clear, what I’m talking about is the ads I see served to me in my news feed. I just checked my “Suggested Groups,” and nearly every one of those is appropriate: they’re for nature sites, bird tours, my neighborhood in the Bronx, Ireland (because my brother took some recent tours there), a comedian my other brother links to and I’ve clicked on sometimes, and so on.
So Facebook clearly knows enough about me to show me Groups that are appropriate. It just doesn’t seem to use that knowledge to target the ads that appear in my news feed.
Facebook is TERRIBLE at figuring out who I am and what I want*.
I pretty much only get amazon adds for weird quirky unrelated things. Since I don’t know what they are, I sometimes click on them. Which just leads to weirder other quirky things next time.
Ok, I am pulling up my mobile Facebook now. First Amazon adds are for:
- Wedge-it, the ultimate door stopper
- Oki Microline Turbo dot-matrix printer. haven’t seen one of these in about 25 years.
- A bone implanter kit for dental implantologists. I still don’t know what this is. I am not a dentist and don’t have any in my family.
- Spiky Sensory Finger Rings
- Brass Bullet Sharpener
- Glass Valve connector stopcock stopper for vaccum desiccator.
The list goes on.
I have NEVER bought anything through Facebook ad. I would probably cut off my pinky toe first.
*To be fair, i am still working on that as well.
Man, your ads are way more interesting than mine. 
Well, I’ve done some rummaging around in the lower levels of Facebook settings, and found out where some of the more puzzling ads are coming from. Apparently I once clicked on a page for a role-playing game, so it was in my preferences despite telling Facebook over and over that such ads were irrelevant to me. There was some other weird shit in there that I can’t remember having ever clicked on, at least not for years. The preferences ranged from very broad (“Tourism,” “Life,” “Face” [WTF?], “Hobby,” “Emotion,”) to very specific (Monterrey Bay Aquarium, Cooperstown, New York, Kentucky Sports Betting Now [again, WTF?]). It didn’t really seem to make a lot of sense. I can’t imagine how they could generate accurate targeted ads from this hodgepodge.
Anyway, I rooted out some of the stranger stuff. Let’s see if things improve.
About a year ago Facebook kept showing me Mazda ads… in Spanish. And they got it half right. I was considering buying a Mazda at the time (and have since purchased one). But I don’t speak Spanish beyond a basic high school level. I have no idea why their algorithm was showing me Spanish language ads.
Regarding the “people you may know” feature, there was one time it got almost creepy with its recommendation. An old college roommate posted an old group photo that contained both me and the girl I was dating at the time. Facebook’s facial recognition figured out who we were – he said it automatically tagged us and simply asked him to confirm the tags – even though we were all around 19 in the photo and in our mid 30s when he posted it. Then Facebook started suggesting ex-girlfriend as a person I may know, presumably because we appeared in the same photo. The only mutual friend we have is the roommate.
Pulling up my news feed on my phone I see ads for:
[ol]
[li]Hefty garbage bags[/li][li]The California Lottery[/li][li]AbbVie, which appears to be a drug company[/li][li]The Mondavi Center, a theatrical venue at UC Davis.[/li][li]Mini Cooper[/li][li]Barilla pasta[/li][/ol]
I actually put garbage bags on my shopping list a few days ago, but it’s an analog paper list, so I see how they’d know that and am guessing it’s a coincidence.
The lottery one is probably based purely on my location.
AbbVie, no idea.
The Mondavi Center is probably the best targeted one; I have seen shows there before, and I very likely “checked in” there in the past.
A Mini was a distant second choice when I was considering my now current car. So not terribly targeted, except I’m not planning on replacing my Miata any time soon.
I actually cooked pasta last night and am sitting at my desk eating leftover pasta as a type this. But I didn’t post anything about it. I’m pretty sure I do have cooking listed as an interest in my profile, so I’m guessing that ad was target at me just because of that.
Facebook is pretty far off the mark. I remember in my mid-to-late twenties it was showing me engagement rings when I was single, then divorce lawyer ads when I was newly dating my now-husband, then baby stuff when we got serious enough to decide we were gonna be DINKs together. Lately they’ve been showing me a lot of bras for women with big boobs and small ribcages (I have neither) and impractical swimsuits with seashells and other crap sewn on (these days, if it doesn’t work under a wetsuit for scuba diving, I’m not buying.) Instagram has been better with their millennial infomercial ads for clever new products and services that at least tempt me, like vegan meal delivery companies, special low-cut socks that actually disappear inside flats without sliding off your heels (supposedly), and beach towels that sand doesn’t stick to (ditto). Though they also show me the big boob bra ads, so.
The problem is that ads work. This is pretty much undisputed and backed by reams of research.
The other problem is that there is very little known about what kinds of ads work.
People in charge of advertising budgets are scared shitless to create any facts around ads. They really don’t want to know, or they know already that the only part of advertising that works is name recognition.
The result is is that there is nearly 0 data on targeted advertising. Facebook may know that you are a mother of 2 boys with a median household income who likes chicklit and striped t-shirts: Nobody is buying ads targeted at you.
All that data and nobody does anything with it: Big Data is just a buzzword.
The ads I’m getting don’t grow up together with my children (this should be fucking algorithm 101) Instead they keep showing me ads for the things I bought 2 months ago. Ads for car rentals at destinations where I just dropped of the rental.
Does anyone buy the same laptop twice? Why am I not seeing ads for laptop bags/ extra batteries? Because nobody that sells laptop bags thinks to target people that just bought a laptop. When I do buy the laptop bag, I find out there is plenty advertising budget for bags. It is just not targeted at people who bought laptops. It is targeted at people who just bought a laptop bag.
The book recommendations at Amazon are amazing: they will predict with 100% accuracy what book I will never, ever pick up.
I believe the “recommendations” are just the bestsellers of that week whose publisher paid the most. (I don’t believe it is even theoretically possible to write a algorithm that ends up recommending “50 Shades” to me).
Facebook and Google might know their shit (I doubt it) but their customers sure as shit don’t.
I don’t do FB, generally eschew social media, don’t shop on line and avoid/remove cookies wherever possible; I presume that all my email gets analysed and the sites I visit are logged in some way, but that’s something I don’t know how to avoid. I don’t see much that is targeted - at least not very successfully. I do, however, see a lot of the MSN newsfeed (because I like a translator app on Edge), and they have got one thing about me absolutely nailed down. This is from today’s Ad selection:
**Belfast Singles: 3 Online Dating Sites That Actually Work
Meet single women near Belfast
This City-Builder Game lets You Play through the Ages in Belfast**
I am over 500 km from Belfast. I have not been to Northern Ireland - ever. I do not know anyone in Northern Ireland. To the best of my recollection I have never even emailed anyone in Northern Ireland. I might add that I’m over 60 and have been married for over 30 years, but that feels a bit nitpicky, really.
So yeah, I do hide, I seem to do so quite well, but I would love to know how they tracked me down to Belfast.
j
Is it possible your internet connection is routed through a proxy server in Balfast? This sort of thing happens to me when I surf the internet at work. I’m located in northern California, but the actual connection from my company’s internal network to the external internet is apparently in San Diego. Since these ads get your location from your IP address, and they are seeing the address of the company’s proxy server rather than my computer, they end up determining my location as San Diego.
Even at home though they often don’t get my actual city right and instead fill in the name of another nearby city. So I’ll get stuff like “New rule for Rancho Cordova residents could save you money on insurance”, and I’m like “Too bad I don’t live in Rancho Cordova.”
The funny one is when they decide I’m in Represa, and give me the “Meet single women in Represa” ad. Why’s that funny? Represa isn’t really a town in the normal sense. It’s merely the address of Folsom Prison. The only people who actually live in Represa are inmates (and all male inmates, for that matter).
Well, this is regular home internet, so there’s no obvious reason why it would; but then again, I don’t know enough to say that isn’t happening. But if you are right about that, lucky old Belfast women - there must br an awful lot of potential dates finding out about you!
j
PS - loved the bit about Folsom Prison - laughed out loud.
I missed the edit window, but I was wrong about that last bit. Apparently the prison opened a women’s facility in 2013. So technically I could meet single women in Represa, not that I’d want to.
I know ads must work, or they wouldn’t be spending the money. But does anyone really click on an internet ad? (before you answer, of course people do. And some reply to Nigerian prince’s emails too)
I was taught not to in the early days of the World Wide Web, and don’t think I have clicked on one ad in the 25 years since. If I want to buy a garden hose, I’ll search for a website that has garden hoses. I’ll skip the websites that come up first (which I believe are paying to be there) and start poking around after that. Or type in a retailer that I know of, like Home Depot or Ace Hardware. For books I go to Amazon.com I would never click on an add that showed up for “hoses at Home Depot, on sale now!” I do see ads on some websites that are obviously tailored to my recent searches. They tend to offend me.