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

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

#251

Post by cglace »

sergiotapia wrote: post #213
zubi wrote: 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…

This happened yesterday, bought some margherita pizza at 3pm, was talking about how much a little pizza oven would cost to make it crispy and if it would come out the same. At 6pm a youtube ad on the tv showed us a pizza oven. we need better legislation. advertising is a cancer on the entire earth.

Sounds terrible.

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

#252

Post by tiborsaas »

It's probably just coincidence. This week I was only thinking about something and there was an ad about exactly that product on Facebook, like 5 minutes later. I laughed out loud, since it was impossible.

There were two explanations:

- they are stealing my thoughts with 5G.

- random things are random and I don't remember 99% of the ads where I couldn't correlate them to other events.

(yes, there's a middle ground somewhere that they know the subjects that I'm interested in and sometimes someone throws a bullseye)

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

#253

Post by pftburger »

sct202 wrote: post #67

In America, some stores seem to share rewards member information to product companies so they can target their ads on other platforms. For example, I paid for a very specific candy from CVS using my credit card, but used my partner's CVS rewards member number and they got ads on facebook for that candy while I haven't seen a thing.

ANY bonus card is basically paying you to be tracked.

It’s the core mechanic.

Even here in privacy conscious Germany the largest bonus card, payback Punkte, is simply giving you a 1% back just to get you to log your own purchase.

Why else would they do it? Because they like you?

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

#254

Post by pas »

II2II wrote: post #155
washadjeffmad wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many purchases are recurring consumables. Food, clothing, medicine, office supplies, car parts- none of it lasts forever. What does it cost to be reminded that you can buy more? Also, completely unrelatedly, if you saw some armchair internet rando claim they'd debunked a major and long-standing business strategy of market sector leader, how seriously would you take them?

> What does it cost to be reminded that you can buy more? At a certain point in my life, one where I sought fewer material comforts (and had less media exposure), I used to claim that advertising won't convince me to buy anything but it may convince me not to. There is a very fine line between persuasion and overstepping ethical boundaries.

Sure, but for most people that line is not so fine.

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

#255

Post by neuronic »

KaseKun wrote: post #210
zubi wrote: 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…

Unfortunately, though this is an excellent story, this is just an example of a bias known as "frequency illusion". It happens with a lot of things, like seeing the clock at 11:11 more than you do at 11:09. Or seeing lots of your make/model car but being blind to the hundred of other variants on the road. How many times have you opened up your laptop and not seen a Facebook add for something you just did, or something…

No it's not. There has been more than one instance when me or friends talked about topics and a day later we get weird ads for it on Instagram.

Adtech is creepy and dystopian.

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

#256

Post by Buttons840 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #107
baybal2 wrote: 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.

I've bought 3 mechanical keyboards in my life. 2 were within a week of each other because the first was defective and returned.

Thus far, the clearest signal for answering the question "will I buy a mechanical keyboard in the next few days?" is "did I just buy mechanical keyboard?"

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

#257

Post by m-i-l »

I had a similar super-creepy and definitely not just a co-incidence experience a while back, which I shared on HN[0]. Short summary is that it was almost certainly the result of Google buying my credit card transaction data from Mastercard and using it to personalise my Google news feed.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20884687

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

#258

Post by bingojess »

beforeolives wrote: post #85
fileeditview wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Visa marketing I guess this is one of the things that just has to be forbidden by law.

In the UK there are data science groups at banks that target specifically extremely wealthy customers based on their transactions and balances. I think that they only focus on wealthy customers right now because they haven't scaled up properly but the plan is to eventually expand to everyone.

This has happened since banks started selling investment products, wealth managers simply pull up a list of cash heavy accounts who haven't opted out of marketing where they can push investment products. Think is biz model private bankers and 'Wealth Management' arms at banks are built upon

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

#259

Post by quenix »

newswasboring wrote: post #216
KaseKun wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, though this is an excellent story, this is just an example of a bias known as "frequency illusion". It happens with a lot of things, like seeing the clock at 11:11 more than you do at 11:09. Or seeing lots of your make/model car but being blind to the hundred of other variants on the road. How many times have you opened up your laptop and not seen a Facebook add for something you just did, or something…

I understand you have used Occam's razor to come to this conclusion. And its a perfectly valid point. But, this particular story has been repeated so many times around me that I am genuinely suspicious. But alas, the only way to know would be to look at the code. And even then we might not understand because its a blackbox type system which is ill understood by even its designers.

The "11:11 on the clock" story has also been repeated by millions of people for decades. That many people fall prey to a cognitive bias does not make it any less of a bias.

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

#260

Post by fraud »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #250
KaseKun wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, though this is an excellent story, this is just an example of a bias known as "frequency illusion". It happens with a lot of things, like seeing the clock at 11:11 more than you do at 11:09. Or seeing lots of your make/model car but being blind to the hundred of other variants on the road. How many times have you opened up your laptop and not seen a Facebook add for something you just did, or something…

Bullshit, Facebook was found around 2015-2016 to be draining iPhone batteries with background audio sessions. While they may have gotten more efficient with their methods it wouldn't be surprising if they were still recording audio. There's a moral hazard that incentivizes any company that can do so to bug user's homes for advertising purposes. IMO it should be illegal.

My issue with the whole idea of background recording for advertising is that it would be incredibly costly to store this data, transcribe the audio and turn it into anything even remotely meaningful for advertisers. I also don’t know a lot on this subject so if anyone has better info that’d be great.
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