Baiting The Ad Followers

Most of us have had one experience where it seemed like advertisements follow us between / across sites. It feels creepy for a few seconds, then we click on.

Can we document this better? Think of a product you likely would not typically look for. Do a few searches in google and maybe amazon. Click through to a few results. Click around.

Over the next week, pay attention to the ads you see in Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Do you see any of these items in ads? The results are hardly conclusive either way (if you don’t see ads, it does not mean you are not being tracked!), but maybe you can think about a more refined way to conduct such a study.

This is based on my own experience

Yesterday morning I was searching on google and amazon for a travel mug my wife and I like. I only told her about it, never sent links. 12 hours later she sees an ad for a travel mug in instagram.

We targets of ad trackers have no idea how system works. #ExitTheInternet ??

— Alan Levine (@cogdog) January 10, 2020

Example for "Baiting The Ad Followers":
https://twitter.com/cogdog/status/1215637724591349760

Yesterday morning I was searching on google and amazon for a travel mug my wife and I like. I only told her about it, never sent links. 12 hours later she sees an ad for a travel mug in instagram.

We targets of ad trackers have no idea how system works. #ExitTheInternet ??

— Alan Levine (@cogdog) January 10, 2020