online advertising gone wild

Jan 18, 2015

Screen Shot 2015-01-18 at 12.59.37 AMI posted earlier about Warby Parker (the site I visited for glasses frames) and how it feels like they are trolling me… their ad appearing on every other website I visit. Another example… I love Zappos.com, and obviously they love me too because that pair of boots I looked at but didn’t buy? Zappos continues to show that exact pair to me over and over and over again. I hop on Facebook and right there they are… those same darned boots!

See that image on the left? See all the advertising technology platforms being used? (The items with lines through them are only the ad platforms I block.) You might think the website doing all that tracking would be some slimy site trying to sell me some ocean front property in Indiana, but no! The site that is gleaning all those details about me and my browsing habits is Forbes.com. It’s pretty much what everyone is doing — you must know the habits of your prospects so you can sell, sell, SELL!

I find it funny that the same people who continue to post that outdated hoax on Facebook (the one about FB being a publicly traded company and denying permission to use photos they posted) have no clue that in today’s online world those images they CHOSE to share are pretty irrelevant when you think about all the other unprotected information about them being shared and sold. If they only knew…

Here’s an example of what is NOT a tracking pixel:

Coco takes a selfie