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Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

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231–240 of 494 posts

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#231
Prescription data, at least in the US, is not very private. Many entities know that you met a doctor and they know when the doctor prescribes. Between PBMs, subrogation, wholesalers, and other factors, marketers are easily able to de-anonymize your identity for targeting purposes.

In my family’s case, my wife’s hospital admission and prescription was sufficient to correctly identify her as likely 10-12 weeks pregnant. Their confidence in that was sufficient to yield us a Fedex’d box containing congratulations and starter kits of enfamil, on her due date. Since they don’t read your records, just infer from events, they didn’t know that she had miscarried, and nearly died in the process.

I know this, because Enfamil identified the list used to target her, and I bought it for my zip code. I also learned that my neighbor 4 doors down has type 2 diabetes, and has expressed interest in a BMW or Audi at the end of her then-current lease. (She went Audi btw)

When people lecture you about various observational biases, you’re being paranoid, etc, they are full of shit. The marketing machine is way more wired up into everyday life than you can imagine.

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#233
If you purchased in the US using a discount card (eg: GoodRx), they get transaction level data from the pharmacy and can use that to retarget / market to you. It’s not PHI / HIPAA protected since it’s not flowing through insurance and is transaction data.

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#234
post #29

Opt out of VISA marketing https://marketingreportoptout.visa.com/OPTOUT/request.do Second, disable GPS, and cellphone tower ID reporting (root needed.) So Google can't correlate you with sales records. At the moment, there is no way to disable Google AGPS spying on the stock Android. Third, block Google apps from reading your IMEI/IMSI/serial number, so they can't get AGPS data from your cellphone provider if it sell…

This is the dumbest ad strategy ever. Why on earth would ads about a product you just bought be effective marketing material. This is like how you get a million ads about dishwashers the day after you Google around and buy one. At least wait for a short duration of time to let the target run out of medicine before adversiting new stuff.

The strategy is extremely effective, especially for high-priced but rarely purchased items like dishwashers, cars, flooring, etc.

Consider: one of the hardest parts about advertising is figuring out when someone is ready to buy the product. That is why car companies bombard ads everywhere, just to catch you in the rare moment when you may be buying a car. Lets guess that maybe the odds of a random person wanting to buy a dishwasher is 1 in a million.

Now consider someone who has just bought a dishwasher. What are the odds they need a new one or a second one? Maybe the one they bought is a few cm too tall/wide/deep. Maybe it came broken on arrival. What are the odds here? I have no data, but I would guess like 1 in ten thousand.

The odds of you buying a dishwasher and then needing to buy another are much better than the odds of someone wanting to buy a dishwasher in the first place, because the hard part is finding people who want to buy a dishwasher.

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#235
post #203

March 2020, heydays of coronavirus paranoia. I came back home from somewhere, put my keys onto the dining table and went to the bathroom to clean up. My girlfriend, upon seeing the key-chain on the table started reproaching me for being careless about hygiene. When I returned from the bathroom I saw her washing the key-chain in the kitchen sink. This time I got angry and asked how come she hadn't thought that the usb…

FB ad tech is rudimentary if it only showed you ads to replace your USB stick and no dating sites.

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#236
I see Voltaren ads a lot and I mean really a ton since about two or three months. I purge my browser sessions daily and I notice that they reliably come after watching fitness videos (Training Pal and similar). I guess they target people with sports injuries.

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I want to give the ad networks additional information and make their advertising more efficient? Given they exist, I’m perfectly okay with advertisers wasting money on badly targeted ads.

Then again, could be fun to screw with them a bit. I wonder what would happen if you just kept clicking I already bought this on everything that pops up. Or better yet, just write a script that clicks it every time one of those ads appears. I wonder if it's possible to go through every single item they advertise and what would happen if you did.

If you want to stick it to the man there is: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adnauseam/

That clicks all adds for you. Maybe it can be modified somehow to click already bought item?

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#238
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit cards are such an American thing though. Here in UK pretty much everyone uses debit cards with no rewards. I actually have a credit card just for emergencies but it offers no rewards either.

In order to bootstrap adoption of CCs, the banks pushed for a law in the 60s that put all the fraud liability on the banks, not the card users (and, to a lesser extent, not on the merchants). Your CC purchases are quite protected and it's easy to dispute a charge (apparently a very big deal in the phone and online sex businesses). As debit cards became popular here (well after Europe) the banks push them hard on peop…

So here's the thing - I don't understand the liability thing. At least here in the UK I have disputed transactions on my debit card several times and every single time the charges were reversed during the phone call, I had the money back instantly. Is that only available for credit cards in the US?

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#239
post #203

March 2020, heydays of coronavirus paranoia. I came back home from somewhere, put my keys onto the dining table and went to the bathroom to clean up. My girlfriend, upon seeing the key-chain on the table started reproaching me for being careless about hygiene. When I returned from the bathroom I saw her washing the key-chain in the kitchen sink. This time I got angry and asked how come she hadn't thought that the usb…

What is the hypothesis? FB listening through a phone? The (closed?) Laptop? Alexa?

Re: Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

#240
post #203

March 2020, heydays of coronavirus paranoia. I came back home from somewhere, put my keys onto the dining table and went to the bathroom to clean up. My girlfriend, upon seeing the key-chain on the table started reproaching me for being careless about hygiene. When I returned from the bathroom I saw her washing the key-chain in the kitchen sink. This time I got angry and asked how come she hadn't thought that the usb…

I don't know the timing of the events you describe, obviously. Is it possible that after you got angry at your girlfriend, she searched on the web for "waterproof USB keys", thereby associating your IP/system with that search?
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