I am often times amazed by how accurate the ads popped out of my search window. It was not a second ago when I searched "standing desk", after 30 minutes, I start to see all relevant ads about "standing desk" showing up on my browser.
As average internet users, we have some vague understanding of how marketers track consumers behavior and push for appropriate ads. Many of us choose to ignore. Thus, we are seldom told who collects our data and how our data is used. Cookies and trackers, we are told, are the tools for u to meet the right products in advertising. When I want to investigate further, I was scared away from all the technical details.
Tracking services are tools that collect data on a user's browsing activity on the web. Any third-party can insert a tracker into a website with the website's permission. There are many websites that have trackers embedded - for example, all the major news website (Fox News). For example, Microsoft's tracker tracks how often the ads are opened by users, measuring the effectiveness of the ad. Adobe and Amazon put on trackers to collect general analytics for targeted advertising purposes. Optimizely, on the other hand, has a tracker to perform A/B testing to see the which content can reach a better outcome.
Many of the trackers function by matching users' general interests with other products. There is one other method that forces the limits of specificity is called retargeting. It is a marketing technique that presents customers with an advertisement for a product he browsed before, in order to re-engage the customer. For example, if you click on the shoes from Amazon without finishing the transaction, a retargeting application is tasked with finding you and making sure you see the same pair of shoes again.
Finally, ther eis branded videos. The service allows advertisers to place their products inside the video the user is watching. It is not the beginning video of youtube, it is a technique that alter the native content to place a product inside a video that does not orignally includ such advertising!
Source: https://medium.com/swlh/the-strange-accuracy-of-online-ads-a-case-study-on-trackers-on-the-internet-7bbea12ba595
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