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Creepy Ads
This topic was created by Old Handle.
Creepy Ads
So I'm at work. I make a burrito run, and as I'm waiting for me order I peripherally notice three guys in uniforms for a landscaping company. I receive my burrito, and bring it back. I go online and browse my favorite tech website while I eat. But what do I see? An ad for the very same landscaping company.
Now obviously a good part of that was merely coincidence, but not all of it, I suspect. About a month ago, I picture appeared on my screen of a very distinctive sign from a car repair shop just a block from where I work. It's an ad for the same of course. I'm pretty sure that was on this site too.
So congrat's El Reg, your creepy targeted ads are a cut above th rest.
Re: Creepy Ads
It's not ElReg. It's the advertisers that ElReg links to. That's what you get for not aggressively blocking everything that you can from !GooMyFaceYouMsTwitSpace and the like ... They are using your personal Internet Protocol address to cross-reference everything you do online. Have fun! :-)
Re: Creepy Ads - not us
So this is called "remarketing". We don't have any deals with any remarketing ads companies - as a matter of policy, because we think it's creepy.
We do run Google ads in many territories and Google does work with remarketing companies. But we have set our Google settings to:
-Block ads targeting consumers using cookies based on remarketing lists
-Block collection of data for subsequent use in targeting or remarketing
-Block ads targeting consumers using cookies based on interest-based categories
To recap, we are not remarketing and we don't allow remarketing on our site, so it is a mystery as to what is happening here. Often times remarketing ads have an option to switch off the supplier. Also, I am guessing you can kill the cookies via your browser.
Re: Creepy Ads - not us
I wonder if there's a loophole in that?
Say a user had a Google account and had elected to use persistant login. There would be a gCookie around for this. Now that would give 'em enough, when combined with the user's account info, to target ads very accurately without referring to any cookies bar their own and without collecting any additional data ..........
Drew..adsense settings dont actually mean what you think they do
<<We do run Google ads in many territories and Google does work with remarketing companies. But we have set our Google settings to:
-Block ads targeting consumers using cookies based on remarketing lists
-Block collection of data for subsequent use in targeting or remarketing
-Block ads targeting consumers using cookies based on interest-based categories
To recap, we are not remarketing and we don't allow remarketing on our site, so it is a mystery as to what is happening here.>>
Merely means that you have "opted" that ..what someone reads or sees whilst on the register, will not affect any ads that Google may serve them on sites which they subsequently visit..Publishers have no choice as to whether their sites serve interest based ads to visitors..Google chose to word the "opt in or out of "interest based ads" on your site" in the adsense" publisher control panel, in a particularly misleading way..
I challenged them , via their adsense advisor "rep" ( in another pro webmaster forum when they first made the "opt in " or "opt out" of showing "interest based ads" available ) , to be precise with what they actually were doing, after some confusion from their "rep"..they checked back with Google's legal dept, it was confirmed.."webmasters cannot opt out of showing interest based ads on their websites, if they show adsense ads"..
btw..at the moment their targeting on the register of ads to me is "dire"..80% are for groupon " example of coming offer" ads..except they are in French..and I've not visited Groupon ..ever..Your non UK visitors are ( IME ) getting served totally irrelevant image ads, based entirely on geo-targeting..I have a large collection of screenshots of totally irrelevant image ads I've been served here over the last 15 days..only on the rare occasions that Google serve text ads to me here, are the ads at all related to the article contents..
Yes I see the ads..IMO to run an ad blocker on an ad supported site would be churlish of me, and deprive the webmaster of any potential revenue that they might get if I actually was served an ad that was attractive or relevant..
Re: Drew..adsense settings dont actually mean what you think they do
Dire?
There's an ad to the right here as I type; "Google AdWords: Put your Ad online: Start with $75 free.". That's relevant........
image ad or text ad ?
The text ads here are indeed always relevant to the on page text..
If you are outside the UK ( I don't know what the US visitors get served by way of image ads ..nor the UK ones ? )..the image ads are anything but relevant..and the advertiser "pool" and their ads appear to be limited in my case to Groupon, (various things made in 3D software, such as watches that look like "Rolex" "ray traced", "burgers" that "look like food" ray "traced", interiors of hotel rooms "ray traced", an illlustration of a scary old woman pushing an online fortune telling service , and a totally text-less and explanation-less photo of a piece of floor underneath a boiler in a factory somewhere ) <= I clicked on the last one once and discovered it was for a French company who makes resins for industrial floor treatments..and who sells them B2B..
None of those ads had anything to do with what was on the site , nor with anything I had been looking at previously elsewhere..and any text was in French..pure Geo-targeting based , non contextual ads..
All these ads appear to be CPM ( the advertiser pays per 1000 displayed ) and none of them appear to be CPC ( where they pay if clicked upon ) CPM ( particularly of the Groupon "ficticious example of a possible coming offer" ) are worth so little to the site that they are just WTF ads, that make the place look tacky..
Google say they always show the highest paying ads..Google say a lot of things ..many have been proven to be totally untrue or worded in such a way as to make 99.99% of people think they mean one thing, when in fact they mean the exact opposite..
When an adsense publisher "opts out" they are not opting out of showing ads based upon what the visitor was doing or seeing prior to arriving on their site but they are "opting out" of the visitor being shown ads on subsequent sites that they visit being influenced by what they saw or did on your site..
