I come home, and my father:
- smoked?
- No, I stood where I smoked.
- Yes, I look, you and sat there, where they drank, and lay there, where they were engaged in sex ...
Bearded joke
From translator
Advertising targeting is not always directed personally at a specific user. Often, advertising is targeted to a group of users who have certain common features. Which leads to the fact that, as in the old joke, you see an advertisement for cigarettes, not because you smoke, but because you were standing next to those who were interested in cigarettes.
The author talks about the many techniques of advertising targeting and draws unexpected conclusions that this is not so bad. You just need to work more on the transparency of such mechanisms to eliminate abuses.
How do advertising snoops follow your trail on the Internet?
Have you ever thought about how packs of advertisements find you, despite using incognito mode, different devices or when you have not even looked for such a product before? Let's consider their possibilities.
Cookies
You enter the site and it stores cookies in your browser. When you return here, you will be identified by the use of cookies, and the site will show you the products you’ve previously viewed. An old trick, but it’s important to understand what comes next.
You enter the site and it stores cookies from a third-party advertising network. Then you go to another site containing ads from the same network. They see your cookies and show ads based on what you’ve previously viewed. This is called
"retargeting" or "remarketing .
"Accounts
You open Google and are looking for a product or website that helps Google fill your profile with your interests. Then you use your Google account to log in somewhere, and see ads based on your profile (
in your account settings, you can disable advertising personalization, if you wish).
You are logged in on Facebook. Then you go to the site where the Facebook tracking pixel is set or the Like button, which allows Facebook to know that you were here. After that, an advertisement based on what you’ve viewed earlier will be displayed in your feed on the social network. At the same time, Facebook does not allow site owners to allocate you specifically for such advertising and does not sell your data to them. Advertising starts for groups of users who have visited the site in the last 30 days. Such groups are called "audiences."
You go to the site and create an account on it. They upload their clients email list to Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. for advertising targeting. Then, when you go to one of these sites, you will see ads there based on what you’ve seen before.
Prints
You turn on incognito mode, which limits the use of such things as cookies. Instead, the ad network records other information about your system: your browser, IP address, operating system, screen resolution, time zone, etc. This is called fingerprinting. Then you go to the site where ads from this network are shown. They recognize the imprint of your system (albeit with a certain error), and you again see ads based on your previous views, despite the fact that you used the incognito mode.
You log in to the same account from different browsers or from different devices. The owner of the service, where you log in, associates various fingerprints with your account. Ads for your account can now follow you from device to device, from browser to browser.
You use several devices and never log into the same account on different devices, but you connect all of them to the same WiFi network at the same time and use them to visit websites that work with the same advertising network. Oops! Your devices are connected.
Applications
You have installed the app on your smartphone. Applications do not use cookies, but your smartphone sends a unique device identifier to the application developer. Then you open another application and see ads based on data from the application you used earlier.
You installed the app on your smartphone, and then logged into one of your accounts. Guess: now your device ID is associated with this account. After that, you see ads based on information about applications installed on your smartphone when you use the same account on your computer. Mobile devices allow you to disable or reset the ad identifier. This will not stop the display of advertisements, but will reduce its level of personalization.
Similar audience
You never went to a specific site, but other people did. By accessing Facebook, you see ads for visitors to this site, because your profile is similar to the profiles of these people, and the advertisement is aimed at the whole group, which is called “similar audience”.
You use the voice box asking for something. Then you visit the site that uses the ad network provided by the assistant developer, and you see ads based on your voice prompts. In some cases, the voice assistant can turn on without recourse to him, as his speech recognition system may be wrong. These are quite rare cases, but they can expand the history of your voice requests.
You have never visited a certain site, but you use the same IP address with the people who did this (for example, with neighbors connected to the same router of the provider). As a result, you will see ads from this site, as you are in a group using the same IP address.
You have never visited a certain site, but were in close proximity to the people who did this, while you were all logged in to the service that has access to your geolocation. As a result, you will see ads from this site, as it is aimed at the whole group.
findings
After all this, you may be surprised to hear that I do not consider personalized advertising as such a serious problem as it is sometimes presented. This does not mean that I am a supporter of the status quo: we could achieve greater transparency in the issues of advertising targeting, notifying and giving choices to people whose information about their behavior is recorded, preserved and disseminated. But it must be remembered that for a variety of products and services the best price for all is zero, since it allows you to attract a larger number of participants. In such cases, advertising is often the best way to monetize. In addition, personalized advertising is also the best way for many new and niche companies to find their customers. Ideas that could never become viable without the Internet can now gain a critical mass of potential customers through online advertising.
Targeted advertising is not a new phenomenon. Buying a newspaper or magazine? Congratulations, you enter the prototype of a similar audience. And coupons in supermarkets? This is retargeting based on past purchases collected by a store or bank.
So, while advertising is sometimes frustrating, there are more important things to worry about: such as political campaigns based on voter suppression, or attention-impaired applications, or global decisions regarding the online world that are moving from election committees to non-elected meeting rooms. Next time we will discuss this in more detail.