So, lately, I’ve been getting a lot of one particular ad. It’s an ad for a company that sells… airplanes. Because that’s totally the sort of thing you put ads for online, to try to lure in some of those impulse airplane-buyers.
Why?! I’m not particularly interested in airplanes. I don’t think I’ve searched up anything airplane-related in the past few years, or clicked on any airplane-related links. And even if I did want a plane, it shouldn’t be hard for an advertiser to get enough demographic information about me to know that there’s no way, no how that I can afford one.
I mean, a lot of the ads I get make sense. Ads for clothes? Yeah, everyone wears clothes, they probably don’t even bother to try to target those. Women’s clothes? Even if they know I’m male, there’s a good chance I might buy for a woman I know. Something like a 3d printer? That one’s obviously targeted, but makes sense: Even though I can’t justify buying one right now, I’ve left enough traces on the Internet to make it clear that I’d be interested.
Did you click on any of the ads? I’ve found that if I click on an ad, all of my ads get replaced with that thing I clicked on. They assume you’re interested.
Sometimes I think these companies are “grasping for straws” for anybody to look at them, just like the mass mailing junk mail or the cold call telemarketer hoping 1 out of a 1000 will bite.
I delete my cookies and history almost every day so I get a lot of ads that don’t make any sense why I get them, like yesterday I got ads for “cute bras for women over 50”. Being a man and my wife isn’t 50 the ad didn’t apply to me. But the algorithm says they need to put an ad there so maybe advertising companies instruct the internet to put ANY ad there as long as an ad is placed.
I don’t know, must be something in your search history that thinks you are interested.
I actually use this to my advantage. I have several old cars and when looking up parts I get ads for car parts, duh! But I found if I keep looking and not buying the ads get better as far as discounts, etc… Found if I wait long enough 1 company that I get parts from will offer me a 25% discount on parts.
Perhaps one day you were looking at a page. It was one of those “jumpy” pages and you went to click on one thing but inadvertantly clicked on another…for airplanes. I also see pages that are (perhaps intentionally) laid out badly. You click on one space and whoa, I didn’t click on that ad! TBH I’ve done it half a dozen times in HERE because the ad at the bottom is near the Post Quick Reply. Oh and don’t forget…if you google on your phone, it tattles to your laptop. If nothing else, it might be extrapolating from the fact that you clicked on some luxury items.
Oh, sure, I realize that activity on any device can be linked to the same person, if you’re not super-vigilant at covering your tracks. I’ve even seen evidence suggesting that They link me (at least tenuously) to the shared substitute-teacher accounts used at various school districts (an impressive feat of data mining, to be sure, but not completely out of the question for the All-Seeing Google).
Actually, I guess that might be the explanation, if some other substitute teacher really is searching to buy an airplane… but I doubt that. Very few substitute teachers would be in the “enough disposable income to buy a plane” demographic, especially since the shutdown started. And any evidence linking me to those sub accounts, or the sub accounts to other subs, must also be getting stale, with none of us having logged in to those accounts in the past month and a half.
I suppose I also can’t rule out the possibility of a misclicked ad sometime in the past, but that happens to me only very rarely, and even when it does, my computer is slow enough that I can usually close the offending page before it has a chance to load anything.
I had a similar situation. In my case, my main email is @gmail.
A friend mentioned in an email last week that he’d made sour dough bread.
Within a day I started getting banner ads for “sourdough baking tips”, “best sourdoughs in your area” etc. Not just “bread making”, but specifically only sourdough.
I’ve never once searched for sourdough or anything else related to bread or bread making, only read his email. I checked with my family here (at the same IP address) and neither had anyone else.
Maybe someone casually mentioned “airplanes” or “flying” in an email and you never noticed? (But big brother Google sees all).
It’s probably more a case of your profile being somewhat similar to somebody else who was interested in airplanes. It’s just like Netflix recommending me seemingly random movies, not because they are similar to things I watched, but because they were watched by people who also watched something else I watched.
While we’re at it, can we figure out why the Entertainment Weekly website keeps asking if I’d like to join Dumbledore’s Army? It seems a little late to be recruiting for it now.
On a slightly related note, I’m always amazed by these commercials, usually on mid-day schlock like Dr. Phil, for a company that purchases your structured settlement and gives you a one-time payment (minus a hefty fee, I’m sure).
The thing is, the number of Americans currently receiving structured settlements can’t be more than a few tens of thousands, tops. It seems like this company is casting an exceptionally wide net to catch an exceptionally small number of fish.
