Thursday, October 2, 2014
Facebook Ads
I've recently been paying more attention to the ads I get on the sidebars of Facebook. They seem like they are catered specifically to me - but how does Facebook know my interests and other things I view, not just on Facebook itself but on lots of other online sites? I've had ads for specific shoes I've searched for on Nordstrom.com, different brands of makeup I've looked at on Sephora, and even office chairs I researched for my job. I know it's all for the sake of advertising but it just seems wrong to me that somewhere somebody knows everything I'm looking at and doing! This is one of those cases where media can go too far. It's not like I have anything to hide, but I don't want websites taking information from me without my knowing. It just makes me think that people are going to go further and further to find out things about us to cater advertising specifically to us. When is this going too far? Is it ever going to stop? This is one part of media that I definitely do not care for! I guess it can come in handy every so often, but I don't want to see ads for step-stools for the next six months just because I looked it up one time....
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I noticed the same thing about a year ago and asked one of my very computer savvy friends about it. It was a shock to me that the computer could create patterns out of my every day use and then use those to advertise to me! Although, it may help when I want to find the same type of shirt, I agree that is has gone too far! Next thing you know, we'll have virtual advertisements in stores that know our names! (That is an idea off of a movie called, "Minority Report" with Tom Cruise). Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI completely agree! When I first noticed Facebook advertising clothing lines I'd googled or types of shoes I'd been shopping for online, I was incredibly creeped out. My friend who was engaged at the time and I were were talking about it and hers was advertising all sorts of wedding dresses and venues in her area. We couldn't believe how catered (like you said) these ads were to our individual profiles. Though these were trivial things, it makes me wonder how private and secure important information is on the web.
ReplyDeleteYeah I agree too... targeted advertising has gone too far. I was looking for ties for my husbands birthday 6 months ago, and I still get tie ads. Seriously??... My pandora ads are very similar, advertising college programs and pregnancy programs. How does it know I'm a young, female college student?? It's crazy to think that the internet can track your browsing to target you, and personally it freaks me out more than anything. Not once have I actually pursued online marketing anyway so it's more annoying than anything.
ReplyDeleteBig Brother is coming! Haha, just kidding. But what you said made me think of that. I had never thought of the ads on Facebook this way. I thought it was cool that they were meeting our likes - cause seriously I hated having random things that did NOT match my morals. But seriously, why do we even have to have ads?
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