Retargeting Ads Stalk You For Weeks After You Shop

eldavojohn writes "The New York Times is reporting on a new kind of web ad that takes products you were looking at purchasing on one site and continually advertising them in front of you at subsequent sites. After looking at shoes at Zappos, a mother in Montreal noticed the shoes followed her: 'For days or weeks, every site I went to seemed to be showing me ads for those shoes. It is a pretty clever marketing tool. But it's a little creepy, especially if you don't know what's going on.' The spreading ploy is called 'retargeting ads' and really are just a good demonstration of how an old technology (all they use are leftover browser cookies) are truly invasive and privacy violating. Opponents are clamoring for government regulation to protect the consumer and one writer mentioned a consumer 'do not track' list — adding that retailers really show little fear of turning off customers with their invasion."

Comments

It seems a bit wrong-headed

[mutube]

So... You look at something, decide you *don't* want to buy it... and then they continue to advertise it to you in case what? You change your mind?

????

Profit

Re:It seems a bit wrong-headed

[sammy baby]

For certain items and types of purchases, it makes sense. Maybe I'm looking at purchasing a new TV, then decide to hold off for a bit. But because I happened to browse for one on Overstock.com, I might keep seeing ads for it everyplace that Overstock runs ads. In this case, it makes sense: I was about to make something of an impulse buy, and after seeing the ad repeatedly, I may be induced to do go through with it later.

But in other cases, it's annoying as hell and makes no sense at all. I'm in the middle of renovating my house, and was recently looking at ceiling fans and vessel sinks online. Now I can't click on a site without seeing ads for sinks and fans, despite the fact that I made my selection and purchased them weeks ago.

Re:It seems a bit wrong-headed

[dyingtolive]

Genuine question: Do you ever get ads for a new shift key? Yours seems broken. :)

Re:It seems a bit wrong-headed

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worse than that. I have been getting google ads in my POSTS to various forums, including slashdot!

Slightly off-topic, but have you considered getting a trailer hitch at ehitch.com? I understand you can get a great deal there.

Re:It seems a bit wrong-headed

[sammy baby]

Oh man, the "Tiny wireless camera!!!" ads? I remember them from the late 90s. I think that they were just flat out ubiquitous, as opposed to following specific people around.

The worst part of those ads was the pervyness. The ads would blare "for security," but they all ran with pictures of half-dressed women.

Re:It seems a bit wrong-headed

[Viperpete]

The circumstances in which I have been annoyed have been when I made online purchases for my 4 and 10 year old nieces and now constantly see ads for that demographic which as a 36 year old male with no children, I find tiresome. Also, every time one of my home user IT customers needs a new piece of equipment and I do the research for them forever after I see ads for stuff I already have or never want.

Since I do much more research and pricing of stuff for other people, I always end up seeing ads for demographics that I am not a part of. I pretty much constantly use Adblock and CookieSafe nowadays.

Re:It seems a bit wrong-headed

[maxwell demon]

Or use an ad blocker. Or do both.

Re:It seems a bit wrong-headed

[stonewallred]

How bout setting your browser to clear cookies, run ABP and no script, and never see any ads? Works fine for me.

Re:It seems a bit wrong-headed

[tverbeek]

I find it a bit amusing. A couple months ago I ordered a pizza online from Pizza Shack. For the next few weeks I kept seeing adverts for Pizza Shack everywhere, including my own GoogleAd-using site.* Last month I had a coupon for Papa Fred's so I ordered one from them. The pizza adverts suddenly changed to Papa Fred's. This weekend I looked up the phone number of my local MahJong franchise (which doesn't take online orders). Guess whose banner advert I'm seeing in the window next to this one....

*This is a little frustrating because I'd rather see the adverts that my visitors are seeing, to give me a sense of their experience on the site... I know, I know... that's missing the point of targeted advertising.

Re:It seems a bit wrong-headed

[Hadlock]

Heh, I just clicked on the link for your reply in my email, even clicked on the parent link (went to my post) but it didn't come up. I had to use Firefox to see your post. Normally I use chrome + "smug adblock user post" blocker and don't see posts about how cool adblock is.
 
Not tempted to turn on smug adblock users blocker all the time ;).

Re:It seems a bit wrong-headed

[sammy baby]

Use an ad blocker? I'd have one less thing to complain about, and bitching and moaning are two of my favorite pastimes.

creepy. but

[Geoffrey.landis]

I agree it's creepy, but Opponents are clamoring for government regulation to protect the consumer bothers me a bit. Really, I'm not at all sure that the government should be regulating in the internet at this picky level of detail.

Re:creepy. but

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not at all sure that the government should be regulating in the internet at this picky level of detail.

Consumers have no technical way to protect themselves. Block cookies and there are a thousand other ways to track them (web bugs, LSO cookies, etc. etc.). Block those and the vendors will find another solution.

The only solution is legal: Give consumers legal authority to stop vendors from tracking them, and penalties if that's violated.

We've all been trained to memorize the meme that government regulation is bad. Fine if you want to believe it, and sometimes the meme is true, but sometimes, bad or not, the regulation is worse than the alternative.

Re:creepy. but

[Errol backfiring]

I'm not at all sure that the government should be regulating in the internet at this picky level of detail.

I think people should not be haunted with ads by any technique. So this is not nitpicking, it is just regulation of how much privacy invading is allowed. And in my opinion this kind of automated man-hunt should be forbidden.

Re:creepy. but

[Mr2cents]

Yes. This will work because the internet is completely situated in one country. Also, legislation (and enforcement of -) doesn't cost a thing.

Re:creepy. but

[Luckyo]

You're afraid of government protecting you from this sort of behaviour more then you are afraid of potential misuse of this kind informational centralization and sharing by private sector companies?
Most people would call that tinfoil, because that's hip and fashionable, just like most anti-government pro private sector rhetoric. Most sensible people would call that either "clueless" or "stupid". Seriously, which one has happened more often, and who has screwed you over more in the last couple of decades?

Indeed. Common sense is a bitch when it runs counter to what mass media likes to rave about, isn't it?

Re:creepy. but

[Sporkinum]

I know I am a bad citizen, but since I adblock, DVR tv and skip commercials, I spend way less money. If you don't see they shiny, you aren't tempted to buy it.
I blame the recession on Tivos and adblockers. ;)

Re:creepy. but

[scot4875]

This isn't some sort of anti-piracy legislation, where Allofmp3.com or the Pirate Bay can just move their servers if needed.

These are real companies, selling real stuff, with real distributors and the vast majority will have a physical presence in the US. If they want to continue to do business in the US, they would need to follow the rules, just like everyone else.

Your point about costs still stands, but overall I see nothing wrong with putting tools in the hands of the public to force these invasive assholes to back off.

--Jeremy

Re:creepy. but

[green1]

Actually, I think the fact that I never see commercials on TV, or ads online might cause me to be MORE likely to buy things.

I have never bought something based on seeing an ad, however when I see a particularly annoying ad I DO make a note not to buy anything from that particular company. So while in the absence of ads I base my purchasing decisions solely on my own requirements and the merits of the product itself, when I have seen advertising I also include the annoying nature of the company's marketing department in the decision.
So while an ad can never convince me TO buy something, ads frequently convince me NOT to buy a specific thing.

Re:creepy. but

[mldi]

Head-On! Apply directly to forehead! Head-On! Head-On! Head-On! Apply to forehead! Head-On!

Sorry. That's the first ad that came to mind that was so annoying I actually cringe when I see it in real life. It upholds your point.

To add to the discussion, if I make a purchase of anything over $15-$20, I probably do at least a little bit of research on it first. If that's an audio CD, it's probably just a few general reviews. The more expensive the item the more research (TV hunting literally took 6 weeks) unless time is of the essence (car broke down and you need a new one NOW). I most definitely rarely buy something worth more than $15-$20 on a whim. And that's only based on TV ads.

Internet ads are a breed that are far worse by nature, but at least they're blockable for the most part. The only times I leave them on is when I feel the site is worthy of advertising revenue and when the ads aren't super annoying or intrusive. Example: /.

Re:creepy. but

[guanxi]

Really? It's just a meme? Have you ever looked at the process by which a bill becomes law? Have you ever seen a regulatory agency, and how that law becomes policy? Have you ever read the news about cops enforcing the law, people getting tangled up in regulations? Do you even vote? The only guarantee with a regulation is that this incredibly messy process is what's going to pick the winners and losers.

Can you name a mechanism or institution that is not "messy"? Have you seen the way corporations work? The "free market"? In theory, they all work efficiently, as do government regulations. In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice.

But in reality, everything is messy; it's the nature of human institutions. If our criteria is neatness, we might as well quit (or welcome our robotic overlords). Unfortunately, there's nothing inherently good or bad about the government or any of the alternatives. Problems seem simpler if we make absolute statements like, 'government -- bad', but they aren't realistic. In the end, we have to make messy decisions in a messy world.

Adblock

[Anonymous Coward]

If you just use adblock this isn't a problem ...

Anti-advertising...

[chiark]

I booked a ferry crossing from the UK to France through Brittany Ferries' website, and since then I've often been presented with adverts for Brittany Ferries. It is actually putting me off, and has made me install Adblock plus. I don't mind adverts: I know that they're needed to try and monetise this crazy thing. What I do object to is being stalked by an advert for something that I've already bought the product for! So, well done, that's me now out of the internet advertising audience. I suspect I'm not the only one who has been pushed over the edge by this...

Re:Anti-advertising...

[wagadog]

and, yet, they've gotten your attention sufficiently to get you to repeat their name! No such thing as bad publicity!

And...dare I say it to a chiark? You are like putty in their hands. ssh into their site next time. :)

Re:Anti-advertising...

[captainpanic]

Interesting to see how intrusive advertisements actually accomplish the exact opposite: a certain hatred against the company behind it...

I have similar experiences - some types of advertisement are just too annoying, and I will make an effort never to buy anything from that company ever again. (And I have a longer memory than the internet itself).

It all makes me wonder what kind of people can be digitally bullied into buying something online.

Re:Anti-advertising...

[dyingtolive]

Frankly, advertisers don't care. They've gotten reaction out of you such that you remember the names of those companies, and will for the rest of your life. It doesn't matter if you're swearing off their products, so long as you can't forget their brand. This is the ape-shit bananas mentality that goes into advertisement. That's why you don't see effective advertising, but just "fire and forget" advertising that focuses on getting the name out there as much as possible.

Source: Marketing Ex-girlfriend.

Re:Anti-advertising...

[ScrewMaster]

Interesting to see how intrusive advertisements actually accomplish the exact opposite: a certain hatred against the company behind it...

I have similar experiences - some types of advertisement are just too annoying, and I will make an effort never to buy anything from that company ever again. (And I have a longer memory than the internet itself).

It all makes me wonder what kind of people can be digitally bullied into buying something online.

The problem is one of metrics. Generally it's not the actual advertiser that has set up a system to generate and serve ads, they just pay another company for the service. So there's a disconnect between the people receiving (and being irritated by) the advertisements, and the company actually providing the goods and services. Ideally, the vendor would check up on what their flunkies are doing: maybe then they'd say, "Hey, enough of that, you're pissing off potential customers!" But odds are the ad company just returns some simple stats on number of ads served and where, and that vendor company just says, 'Good job." Personally, I think they've been sold a bill of goods: this might work in the short term but eventually people will either a. block the things or b. simply tune them out. That's what I do anyways, on both counts.

People who buy this kind of advertising need to be more aware of the effect it is having on customers (and potential customers.) The "no such thing as bad publicity" mantra may be true in some circles, but when it comes to online advertising it's a big negative, since most people are predisposed to dislike such ads anyway. You have to strike a balance when it comes to advertising. Television, by and large, has gone overboard: they're so damn commercial-laden now that I'd rather torrent commercial-free episodes of my favorite shows even though I'm paying AT&T for the privilege (yeah, I can commercial-skip with the DVR, but I like to just hit "play" and forget about it, plus which their WinCE-based DVR software is decidedly flaky.) I also find that it's a lot easier to become immersed in the storyline if I'm not dealing with constant interruptions.

A lot of cable channels are acting like this is still old-time broadcast television, where the user had no ability to record or skip anything, and at best could just turn down the volume on a commercial. Those days are gone: I pay to watch these shows, and I really couldn't care less about someone's ad revenue especially when it ruins the experience for me. When it comes to the Web, I'll tolerate ads (even though I will never, as a matter of principle, buy anything from one of them) until they start to really get on my nerves. Then my eyeballs will disappear off your radar just like that.

Google appears to understand this balance and has been phenomenally successful because of it: their ads are simple and unobtrusive, and their service is worth the trade-off. Push it too far, however, and people will seek out ways to avoid viewing them: the tools are there. This user-tracking business sounds like one of those times, if the reaction of people here on Slashdot is any indication.

Re:Anti-advertising...

[tverbeek]

The publicity has to be pretty damn bad (Bhopal-/Valdez-/Deepwater-level bad) for the negative associations to trump the value of simple name recognition. After reading the story above I am now aware of exactly one company that provides ferry service between northwest France and the south of England. If I ever find myself in Portsmouth with a desire to get to Caen, that name will come back to me, probably without me remembering why I know it.

Yes.

[Securityemo]

The primary use (for the user) of cookies are session cookies. If it wasn't for session cookies, I would just disable them. Maybe you could add a "whitelist this site for cookies y/n?" query right after "do you want to save the password for this site"?

Re:Yes.

[wannabgeek]

There is an addon for Firefox CookieMonster which does exactly that.

Re:Yes.

[maxwell demon]

What would be nice is having "tab sessions": Opening a tab and declaring it to be a separate session. When closing that tab, the session ends, and all session cookies set from that tab are deleted. Or maybe do it on a window level (so that several tabs can share the same session). Indeed, for my usage of Firefox, even automatically treating each window as a separate session would work great.

EVEN sillier

[SmallFurryCreature]

So I look at a product, BUY it, then am constantly targeted with ads urging me to buy it.

WTF?

Re:EVEN sillier

[morgan_greywolf]

For certain products, that makes absolute sense. Take, for example, network-attached storage devices. If you bought one, you might buy others.

Re:EVEN sillier

[BrokenHalo]

Whether or not it makes sense, there is absolutely no point in attempting to regulate what marketroids do by means of legislation. There are really only two options:

(1) Kill all marketroids. (My preferred option, but unfortunately not supported by our legal system.)
(2) Make it impossible for them to track you, i.e. manually clearing cookies/history and using whatever browser extensions or hosts file entries that make you happy. User education is the key here; far too many users are woefully ill-equipped to survive in a modern online environment. There seems to be a totally misguided expectation that because you are using a computer in your own home that you are somehow insulated from the nasties that get perpetrated in the world "out there".

Re:Silly

[BobMcD]

If I just bought something, why would they think I'm going to buy it again? If it was a perishable product or one that is periodically used up, that's understandable, but good shoes generally last at least a year or so.

I prefer it, actually, to the approach used by television. There must not be a lot of brand loyalty in feminine hygiene products, but I'm fairly certain that they're wasting their ad dollars trying to woo me.

Ads for things I have bought is one step closer to ads for things I might actually buy, and is a step away from ads that I'd rather not even think about.

Therefore - good thing.

Besides, if you've already been to the site and made your decision, what's the harm, exactly?

Not that scary

[Lord_Dweomer]

Disclaimer: I manage paid search campaigns for a living. This is really not that big a deal. At its basest level this checks whether you visited a given page (usually a conversion event) and shows you an ad based on that. Reality is people like them because they boost conversion rates majorly. And every provider just about uses them, including Google. Don't like? Adblock ftw.

Re: Not that scary

[Lord_Dweomer]

And just to add (since I typed that last bit from my phone on the train)...

This has been around for a while. It is picking up steam now of course because people are getting more advanced in their advertising. But at the end of the day this is what a lot of people on /. have asked for in the past...less irrelevant ads that bug the crap out of them. Well, you got your wish. These are targeted based on your actions and thus will be of more interest to you. The people who decide they don't want ads AT ALL have likely already blocked them in some manner, and thus should not be weighing in on this discussion to just gripe about something that no longer applies to them.

Also, for all you people who love receiving Amazon's emails with suggested products for you to buy--guess what? This is the display advertising equivalent. And I can't stress enough how easy this is to foil. Don't like? Block ads, or just wipe cookies when your browser closes as most of these systems are cookie-based in their tracking and the ones that use Flash zombie cookies are getting sued to hell in a handbasket now.

Re: Not that scary

[cain]

people like them because they boost conversion rates majorly...

*People* don't like them - advertisers and marketing scum like them.

Conversion Rates: "In internet marketing, conversion rate is the ratio of visitors who convert casual content views or website visits into desired actions based on subtle or direct requests from marketers, advertisers, and content creators. ..."

Blech. I am not a number! I am a free man! Adblock FTW, indeed.

Re: Not that scary

[YrWrstNtmr]

Reality is people like them because they boost conversion rates majorly.

'people' like them? No...advertisers and marketers like them. "People" don't care about boosted conversion rates.

Re: Not that scary

[Anonymous Coward]

As it turns out, boosted conversion rates mean that yes, people do "like" them, because they click on them.

It's frustrating to see people get angered by advertising techniques when the only reason for them (animated ads, retargeted ads, et cetera) is that *they work*. We wouldn't use them if they didn't. The advertisers aren't to blame -- it's the consumer behavior that drives that ad format.

Re: Not that scary

[Lord_Dweomer]

I was actually referring to the people that click them and then buy more stuff--but its cute how you speak for everybody in the world, I'm sure they appreciate that.

Look, we wouldn't be using them if they weren't effective, and they wouldn't be effective if everybody hated them with as much baseless passion as you do. So guess who's wrong?

Re: Not that scary

[TheGratefulNet]

I hate the very concept of this phrase (never heard 'CR' used before and I feel that much more dirty for knowing what it means, now).

there really are 2 kinds of people in the world. those that add value to the world via their creativity and talents; and then all the rest, comprised mainly of salesman, marketeers and politicians.

yes, there is an inherent disconnect between those 2 groups.

Re: Not that scary

[Lord_Dweomer]

You have the ability to opt out of emails from Amazon quite easily. No third party tools needed. They are not being obnoxious dicks, they are being smart marketers. They only do it because it works, which means people respond and LIKE it. I get those emails all the time, and guess what? They make me aware of products that I am interested in that I might otherwise not have been aware of.

Don't like it? Don't be an ass and whine--just opt out at the bottom of the email. Really. Not. That. Difficult.

Re: Not that scary

[TheGratefulNet]

Not all marketers are deceptive, unethical people, just like you can't generalize any profession.

in my 30 years in the software field, I never once met a sales/marketing guy you could trust. "shake hands and you have to count your fingers" is the usual sentiment felt after dealing with such people.

if you could 'do' you would have. because you can't, you 'sell'. we know that; and yes, we do judge you for it; and not in a good way, either.

Re: Not that scary

[ScrewMaster]

salesman, marketeers and politicians.

Oddly similar personality types, when you get right down to it. The term "sociopath" is most commonly applied.

Re: Not that scary

[14erCleaner]

Don't like? Adblock ftw.

Definitely. Whenever I see /. stories like this one, I feel kind of left out. Sort of like the kid whose parents don't let him watch TV, when the other kids are talking about their favorite shows.

Re: Not that scary

[Lord_Dweomer]

"some people click on them. usually feeble old grannies, young kids who don't know (yet) any better and imbeciles who will never learn and the odd republican here and there."

What about all your fellow slashdotters? You realize this site survives because of ads right? SOMEBODY must be clicking on those ads about servers, geek toys, etc.

And what about ads on sites like Ars Technica, or any industry website? Are those people all feeble old grannies and young kids who don't know any better? Also, what does someone's political affiliation have to do with anything?

Man, when /. posts a story on advertising all the whackos come out of the woodwork.

Re: Not that scary

[PaulMeigh]

if you could 'do' you would have. because you can't, you 'sell'. we know that; and yes, we do judge you for it; and not in a good way, either.

'Selling' pays your salary, allowing you to 'do'. It's not easy, and many engineers cannot 'do' it.

Re: Not that scary

[sjames]

It doesn't prove that they LIKE it, just that it works. There is a difference.

Re: Not that scary

[scot4875]

Man, when /. posts a story on advertising all the whackos come out of the woodwork.

Ahh, so the truth finally comes out; anybody who has gotten fed up with the unethical (yes, unethical) nature of modern advertising is a whacko.

There couldn't possibly be *any* legitimate gripes against the advertising industry, right? Exploiting human psychology to sell shit is absolutely, without question, beyond reproach.

--Jeremy

FireFox extenstion Ghostery addresses this

[capedgirardeau]

I have found using Ghostery added on to FireFox has cut down on a lot of this sort of cross site tracking for me.

http://www.ghostery.com/

LG phones do this

[Brandee07]

I once bought an out-of-contract LG phone, whose screen broke a week after purchase. No, I didn't drop it. Neither AT&T nor LG would repair/replace it, so I went online and searched around and found that this model phone (the Neon) had a notoriously fragile screen, and that no one was able to get repairs for it, so I ended up chucking my useless $80 hunk of plastic in the trash.

After this twenty minutes of googling, I was plagued by LG Neon ads for weeks. Every third or fourth website I visited had an ad trying to sell me the very phone that broke on me. It made me more and more angry every time I saw it. Without the constant reminder of my wasted money, I may have eventually forgotten about it, but now I will never, ever purchase anything by LG again, and I tell people who are looking for a new phone to get something - anything - else.

Annoying marketing.

[MaWeiTao]

What I find exceedingly obnoxious is when I do purchase something and for weeks afterwards I'll get promotions for similar things, if not the same exact altogether.

I'm curious to know how effective this sort of thing actually is. All those people in the marketing department and consultants will desperately insist it works. But given my own experiences and observations it just creates information overload and the vast majority of people end up ignoring most of what they say. Unfortunately, the very people who do marketing are the ones also supplying the statistics on whether it has been effective or not. They're not going to furnish information that renders them inessential. So they only disclose what seems to work and make some rather absurd suppositions.

There's no such thing as too much advertising to these guys. Expect things to get even more invasive.

Re:Annoying marketing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Advertising isn't done by a bunch of people who guess at what works -- we have hard numbers that show that in the short term, this type of advertisement is incredibly effective. We don't make the numbers up, either (in fact, since it's our customers that bring the data on how many people click through the ads/buy the product/et cetera, we wouldn't even have the opportunity to do so).

Now, I wouldn't be at all surprised if there are long-term consequences that we don't really understand, but... that's not what sells ads. If we can figure out a way to quantify brand effects like that, we can model ads around it. But as it is, our customers want to see rapid results, and this is an easy way to deliver them.

It's important to realize that these types of advertisement are the free market at work. An open environment tends toward the most cost-effective, short-term-gain structure, and these ads are an example of that. No amount of moralizing will change that. If you want change, you need to regulate the market.

I've noticed this.

[shadowrat]

I've noticed that almost everywhere i keep seeing ads for McDonald's. They are on websites that i go to. They are on tv. They are on the radio. I think i heard one on Pandora. They are even printed on billboards on the interstate through nebraska when i drive through there. That's pretty creepy that they KNOW i'm coming through nebraska and manage to print a billboard just for me.

What i don't get is i don't even like McDonald's. I hardly ever go there, yet they keep showing me all these ads. weird.

solution

[jridley]

Firefox with noscript and CsFire, and don't save cookies.

When even this fails, I contemplate running Portable Firefox and having it reload from a scratch image every time I start it up.

Re:You get what you pay for.

[KnownIssues]

I'm sure yours is a very popular opinion within this community, but I think it is unrealistic and impractical. It's quite reasonable for an average person to fail to understand the magic that can happen in the Internet. And the Internet certainly doesn't behave in an easily understandable, intuitive manner. We are the literate elite of the modern age and the average person is part of the illiterate, unwashed masses. The average person is no more stupid or incapable of intelligent thought than those unfortunate enough to be in the lower class in the middle ages.

Why berate them for failing to understand the subtleties of cookies and caches simply because you happen to have an inhuman interest in the technical depths of your computer? I consider myself to be pretty computer literate and I would be pretty freaked (and disturbed) to find an ad following me around.

I've tried the experiment of flushing cookies and cache and I don't know about you, but I found it to make the browsing experience completely unusable. I went right back to allowing all cookies. There's a reason cookies were developed as a feature of browsing and it's because they offer a useful service. If you disable its use for evil, you also disable its use for good.

So Appallingly Creepy

[beadfulthings]

I don't know of any online retailers where you can shop without getting a cookie or two to handle your shopping cart and sundries--what they like to call your "overall shopping experience." I was appalled when Overstock.com began following me--seemingly everywhere. They showed up at local and national news sites, a couple of humor sites--enough to make me feel as though I was being tailed in some kind of poorly done spy movie. And they always showed particular, specific items I'd been looking at. Adblock didn't seem to make a difference. I was ticked enough that when they sent me a "survey," I told them off. That resulted in two e-mails and a phone call to my husband, whose credit card I used in making the small purchase I did make. The gist of the communications was that they really wanted me to think this was "normal" and that "all websites" do it. Cleaning out my cookies helped with the immediate persecution complex, and installing and browsing with Ghostery (ghostery.com) in tandem with Adblock in my Firefox seems to have eliminated the problem for any other sites that are doing it. The solution, of course, is just not to shop at places that offend you and to tell them why you're taking your business elsewhere.

Stop looking

[smittyman]

Since Firefox and Adblock (/ghostery) has been around i wonder why people still spent all the energy on adds. As long as you look, click, discuss, hate, love them they have the desired effect and the money flows. Just /ignore / block as Spam is here to stay.

If a site is too intrusive there are most likely 10-100 alternatives to visit. Rather spend my time on that.

Enjoy this not so intrusive /. website where we can even turn the spam off (hear hear! :)

Re:Silly

[characterZer0]

Brand loyalty does not really play into feminine hygiene products, because as soon as a woman finds a product she likes, they discontinue it.

New != New

[RobTerrell]

I don't want to sound like an argle-fargling old timer with an onion on my belt, but for christ's sake, since when is "new to a montreal mother" new for /. ? Ad retargetting has been around for YEARS.

Small advertisers in particular love it, because it makes them look huge: "Hey, wow, these guys advertise on CNN.com!" Yep, they do! Only for you at this particular moment in time, but they do.

Lesser of two evils..

[aero2600-5]

Full disclosure: I work for a company that uses these types of ads.

We use Akamai to serve up these kinds of ads. Believe it or not, most internet traffic goes through Akamai at some point, so when they decide to cookie you, they can find you just about anywhere. From the advertiser's point of view, it makes sense. Only between 2% and 5% of visits result in sales. So, by hitting you with these ads, they're trying to get a second chance at that business.

But if the question whether is whether I'd rather see an ad for some random diet that doesn't work, or some other scam, or to see an ad for a website that I willingly chose to go to, I'll take the latter any day.

As for the particular case of that woman and the pair of shoes, I wouldn't advertise for a particular pair of shoes, but then again, being a shoe company, they may have a better insight into the shopping mind of a woman.

Just be glad that these ads are being served up based on some fact. The fact that you visited that site previously. I think that's better than them trying to build a profile of me based on sites I've visited, and then trying to sell me running gear or viagra.

~Aero2600

Works well for me.

[netsavior]

I buy computers on overstock.com very often...they have corporate small form factor desktops they are very stable and very cheap: ~ $150 for a P4 3.0 and come with a licensed copy of XP so it really is right for gifting PCs to kids and tech-illiterates in my life... I look at these PCs probably 4x a month to see if one is on deep clearance, but now I don't have to... since half the sites I go to, they conveniently show me the current price of the PCs I care about in the form of a personalized overstock banner.

I am a consumer whore, but man I really appreciate this kind of advertising: showing me relevant marketing information that I find useful, instead of randomized results based on content

This happened to me. Twice.

[jackpot777]

And I don't just think it's products. The first time I noticed it was this spring. My wife and I had a long weekend in Boston, and for weeks afterwards I was receiving banner ads to buy Red Sox tickets (as a Yankees fan, ain't happening if they're not there). We didn't reserve the hotel room online, but we did do a lot of online tourism thanks to Google Maps StreetView. More recently, I was looking for a backup battery for my iPhone. An external portable charger that could top up the 'phone and then rechange itself either by wall socket or 12v in-car. My Google Desktop shows me I looked at TheNerds.net at a few, and I eventually bought the Griffin PowerJolt Reserve at Target. Every ad for TheNerds I've seen since has the PowerJolt on it. OK already, it's good, I just didn't buy it from you!

happens on slashdot

[mjwalshe]

a while back I was up for a job with an online womens wear company Asos - I checked out there site to get a feel for what they did and for several weeks I got ads for high heels and leggings on slashdot which was a bit jaring the first time it happened.

Re:Silly

[TheGratefulNet]

sounds like she should be looking for another job

Re:Alternatives?

[maxwell demon]

Well, I don't have problems with ads which are selected based on the content of the page I'm looking at (assuming it's not annoying in any other way; unfortunately so many ads are that I've given up manual ad blocking and use AdBlock Plus to automatically block all ads). Note that the content of the page is most likely interesting for me (otherwise I probably wouldn't look at it). If advertisers would stop trying to track me and would stop making ads annoying (and sites would stop putting ads in the middle of articles), I'd happily stop using AdBlock Plus.