Here's Why Ads For That Shoe You Almost Bought Are Following You Online Across Websites

Ever had the feeling you were being watched online? Not the kind you get when you¡¯re worried someone¡¯s looking over your shoulder at the porn you¡¯re currently viewing. No, more like Google and Facebook and all the other websites you visit are colluding and sharing information about what you do online.

Well in a way, they actually are. It¡¯s not a giant conspiracy to spy on you, no. They¡¯re just sharing data as far as which ad banner to show you.

Remember that time you looked up a particular smartphone on Flipkart, or a t-shirt on Amazon? Even if you never bought it, you¡¯re still going to see ads for similar products all over the place for weeks after. It¡¯s happened to me too; I¡¯ve had my girlfriend browse for lingerie on my laptop one night, only to have the entire Enamor and La Senza catalogues chase me around Facebook and news websites for a month. This is a pretty common experience for most of you. And it¡¯s a digital marketing tactic called ¡°retargeting ads¡±

Here's how they get you

Behavioral retargeting has been in use in the online ad industry for close to a decade now, and it¡¯s a pretty lucrative tactic for both the companies advertising and websites displaying those ads. What happens is that, when you visit any website, it attaches a ¡°cookie¡± to your browser. This cookie is a piece of identifying code that follows your activities online. It sees what products you¡¯re considering buying, what holidays you seems to like, what kind of games you play. All of this is technically anonymous when it¡¯s sent back to the website, just an activity log attached to a random user. But with that data, the website can then target you with ads it¡¯s purchased from retargeting agencies, tailoring the ones you see based on info from the cookie and what it has available.

Now, imagine you¡¯re a hardcore gamer visiting a news website for the latest updates in the gaming world. You¡¯d be fine seeing advertisements for new PC hardware, console games, maybe an ad from Netflix, and you might even click on any of those. But if you were instead shown an ad for home furniture or socks, that¡¯d be pretty weird right? And that¡¯s why targeted ads are so important. Not only are they much more effective, they¡¯re also less likely to annoy you. That¡¯s also why this kind of digital advertising costs at least three times as much as regular banner ads.

The problem is that, as retargeted ads have gotten more popular over the last few years, the industry has moved towards other more intelligent systems. Now, advertisers don¡¯t just pull data from the websites you visit. Even if you type the name of a product into the search bar of a shopping site without hitting enter, you¡¯re going to see those ads. Search for a holiday destination without looking at any actual holiday packages, and you¡¯ll see that ad. Read more than one review of a particular smartphone, and you¡¯ll probably start seeing those ads.

The only good thing here for you as a consumer, is that it also incentivises companies advertising their products to make them more attractive to you in particular. For instance, if you¡¯ve been looking at a certain dress online, maybe even popped it into the shopping cart, you might find yourself suddenly receiving a discount voucher for it. After all, you probably just needed a little push to buy it. And with the discount, you¡¯re also likely to buy something else too.

Of course there's a catch

It sounds like a win-win situation, but it¡¯s much more controversial. The big problem is that people feel like their privacy is being stripped away from them. After all, you probably use Google and Gmail in your day to day work right? Can you imagine the kind of data the company pulls from cookies there? And yes, that also includes your emails. While no one at Google can just type your name into the server and open up your email without your knowledge, they do have web crawlers parsing through your emails and sending back anonymous data. That means, if you and your partner have been emailing each other links to dinner sets you want to buy, or even just emailing about spoons for whatever conceivable reason, you¡¯re going to see those ads elsewhere.

The legality of this kind of data mining is still in a gray area. Maybe your privacy is not technically being compromised, but it certainly feels like it right? It¡¯s like if the salesman at the shoe store refused to take no for an answer, and then showed up at your workplace, or home, to offer you other options you might want. It¡¯s just not cool.

There are a few ways you can kick that salesman to the curb however. Ad blockers are one way, and a pretty popular one at that. Another way is to interact with an ad¡¯s controls (you can see tiny icons on the top right if you look closer) and indicate you don¡¯t want to see that ad again. Or you could just clear your cookie history from your browser regularly.

Ad blockers of course affect the revenue a website generates. That¡¯s why companies like Adblock Plus are constantly fighting a battle against agencies, as one tries to improve its blocking and the other tries to circumvent it. Perhaps instead we¡¯ll one day be able to reach a balance that doesn¡¯t require a standoff. Maybe donating your PC to a website¡¯s cryptocurreny mining is the solution, just as long as it¡¯s all done above board.