- socketwrencher
- Apr 10, 2012
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Be still and know.
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Maybe this is common knowledge but I have no idea how this works:
I went to a website which I'd never been to before and there were 6 ads on the page, all of them for products and/or websites that I'd visited in the past week. This website deals with an industry that I've never checked out on the internet.
I get that when I go to a site, they collect my data. What I don't get is how they use that data to arrange with another website, which I don't see how they could anticipate my visiting, to post relevant ads if/when I show up on that site.
Maybe this is something my browser (Firefox) is doing?
Thanks so much for any clarification.
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Dec 17, 2014 17:32
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- Adbot
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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May 22, 2024 07:38
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- socketwrencher
- Apr 10, 2012
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Be still and know.
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Using Google Ads as an example, but other ad networks would work the same.
The site you visited would be using Google ads, as would countless others. So if you're browsing pet rock sites, and those sites use Google Ads, Google will record that information. Later on when you're browsing German Dungeon Porn that also has Google Ads, they use their previous knowledge of your browsing habits to show pet rocks.
And then you visit some other site that uses an ad network that allows flash ads or has some other exploit, and then you get free keyloggers and poo poo installed and you probably should just be using Adblock and not worrying about it.
Thanks O and O, I appreciate this. Now I'm trying to figure out how you knew about German Dungeon Porn...
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Dec 17, 2014 17:56
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- socketwrencher
- Apr 10, 2012
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Be still and know.
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Cheers caiman. Will download now.
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Dec 17, 2014 18:18
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- socketwrencher
- Apr 10, 2012
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Be still and know.
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I always had the "well thats how they must work" mindset towards ads, but I realized I dont actually know at all. It is startling sometimes, however.
What really trips me out is Google autocomplete, especially on my phone. If I were paranoid I'd think its actually listening for keywords in conversations I just had with someone (not on the phone, just in person). Just yesterday I searched for something I've never searched before - some bar I've never heard of where a friend's band we were just talking about was going to play - and I typed three letters (I seriously think it was "lol") and it autocompleted with LOLAS SALLOON FT WORTH TEXAS. Really google? Wow
Whoa, that's wild. Have you seen the British tv show Black Mirror? Kind of a Twilight Zone-ish vibe with a tech slant.
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Dec 17, 2014 19:49
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- socketwrencher
- Apr 10, 2012
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Be still and know.
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Very cool, I'm going to download this. Thanks!
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Dec 22, 2014 20:59
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- Adbot
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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May 22, 2024 07:38
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- socketwrencher
- Apr 10, 2012
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Be still and know.
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There are essentially 2 ways and advertiser buys ad space on a website. The simplest way is just the advertiser buying directly from the website and not caring really who you are but that isn't interesting.
Increasingly ads are bought through ad exchanges (heading towards 50% of ad spend now). The journey starts when you go to an advertiser's website. As you are browsing the website you will be firing pixels (traditionally invisible images but other methods can be used) that allow the advertisers ad buying platform to identify you and where you have been on their site.
At this point the buying platform essentially has a record of what pages you've been to on the advertisers site alongside an ID that's unique to their platform. With this information they put users into buckets of people they want to target and people they don't based on whether they purchased or just browsed for example.
Now when you browse sites with advertising on most of them are sending requests out to ad exchanges. These exchanges receiving the incoming request from the publisher and then hold an auction where 10s or 100s of platforms can all compete to show you the ad. When the request comes out the platforms are able to identify you by the ID they set previously and decide what bid to place on you.
When it comes to deciding what products to show in the ad most platforms are really simple. As you browse the advertisers site they store the last product you looked at in a cookie on your browser. Once they've bought the ad slot they will then look up that cookie and decide on other products based on that ID. There are more sophisticated platforms now that can tie that information back into your previous purchase history and show much better personalised recommendations.
Now I admit that there is a potentially creepy element to this as there is a lot of data being generated that could build up a profile of you. It's for this reason that ad companies take significant steps to avoid tying in personal information. With the platform I work on it's a major issue if we're accidentally passed an email address or name. It would be an instant sacking offence if somebody did try and work out who somebody is. Where we use advertisers purchase history we are mapping their anonymous customer identifier to ours - we never see any personal info.
So interesting, thanks. Your company seems to have more integrity re: not seeking personal customer information than I suspect most other companies have. Maybe that's a false assumption.
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Dec 22, 2014 21:03
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Dec 17, 2014 17:32
