Why sites show you this particular ad

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Those who have not yet set up data collection mechanisms in their accounts go to unpleasant deals with social networks and other services every day.

Targeted advertising exploits the interests and needs of users. This is its main meaning - to show ads to the very audience that is likely to pay attention to them. To identify such users, search engines and social networks are almost under a microscope watching the behavior of people. Lifehacker figured out how targeting data is collected and where it is hidden.

How the information dossier is formed

It is difficult or even impossible for a user to find a page with a list of their preferences - for example, it simply does not exist on the VKontakte social network. Platforms and search engines are reluctant to disclose targeting mechanisms. And it's clear why.

Harvard marketers conducted a study on Ads That Don’t Overstep: to one group of people they showed regular ads, and to another - the same banners, but with an explanation of the reasons for the display: for example, "because you visited site X". The second group had a 25% lower interest in buying than the first.

Nevertheless, in most systems, you can find out for what reasons you find yourself in a certain set of audiences. We offer you to see what information dossier websites and applications make on you and how they do it.

Facebook and Instagram

Facebook targeted ads are considered to be the most accurate. Fine-tuning the audience allows you to show advertising posts to the most interested users. If you've come across Instagram ads that aren't right for you, then it's most likely a marketer's blunder, not a social media mistake.

Determination of advertising preferences

Open your Facebook account and search for any advertising post. There is a small button with a drop-down menu hidden in the upper right corner of the ad. Click on "Why do I see this?"

A window will open in front of you informing that the seller has chosen you by age or geography. The explanation is rather vague, and seems to have been added "for show", which once again confirms the reluctance of social networks to reveal the secrets of targeting.

But try clicking on the ad display settings - the entire list of interests that the social network managed to identify with you will open.

Here you can also find advertisers who uploaded your Facebook contacts when setting up targeting. Companies are actively using this opportunity so as not to shoot sparrows with a cannon, but to show their offers only to those customers who are familiar with their products. Therefore, the social network allows advertisers to upload phone numbers and email addresses of users into the system in whole lists.

Facebook knows your phone model, what services and applications you use, which places and cities you are interested in, what you are passionate about and what your lifestyle is. The data from WhatsApp and Instagram, of course, goes there too.

The social network also receives information about your actions on the sites and applications of Facebook partners. For example, if you visit a web page on the topic of tourism, then you may be shown advertisements for hotel promotions. This is possible if the website and app developers use About Facebook Ads technologies to integrate with Facebook, as well as analytics tools.

If you like, for example, a restaurant that you visited on the weekend, the system will advertise it to your friends with the mark “I like Ivan Ivanov”. Think about it: do your friends, colleagues and managers really need to know that you are interested in, say, the topic of planning a pregnancy or emigration to another state?

Users have these settings by default. In the same interface, you can prevent Facebook from collecting data about your activity outside the company's products and advertise your likes to friends in various communities.

Facebook agent in mobile apps

In the code of many mobile applications, there is an SDK - libraries of analytics systems and social networks. They help developers track events in applications: installations, user activity, time spent in the program, and much more. In addition, the SDK extends the advertising capabilities.

For example, by installing the official Facebook SDK, developers can advertise their products using the popular and highly profitable Pay Per Install model. As you might guess, this code is present in most applications that advertise on Facebook and Instagram.

It happens like this: when the user installs and opens the application, the SDK automatically informs the analytical platform about it. Events can be different depending on the settings and tasks.

In general, Facebook SDK records data about installs, activations, and engagement. However, the social network has been repeatedly accused of collecting more personal information in applications. The Wall Street Journal investigated You Give Apps Sensitive Personal Information. Then They Tell Facebook and discovered that Facebook collects data from applications about the user's health - his weight, blood pressure, ovulation status. Agree, no one will write about this on social networks. But with such data, you can show more effective ads.

Facebook pixels on sites

Has it ever happened to you that, having visited an online store, you almost immediately start receiving advertising for it? The fact is that another Facebook agent is hidden in the site code - a pixel. This data is used for dynamic retargeting.

Its purpose is to take advantage of the client's unresolved need. Let's say he visited the site, got acquainted with the product, but did not take the targeted action. However, ads can follow you after the purchase - it all depends on the campaign settings.

Retargeting helps the advertiser remind of himself in order to get high conversions due to the “warmed up” audience. After all, the data that you looked at these particular sneakers in the online store characterizes your consumer desires much more accurately than information about age and gender.

By the way, pixel technology is also used by other social networks - Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki.

Google and YouTube

Google monitors not only the actions of users, but also their movements. Geolocation is again needed to display ads. You can view your location history here. There is also a button to disable tracking.

Google is ready to share information about the collected advertising preferences with users. Search any site for a Google banner or include a YouTube video, then click on the subtle button i … You will see the reasons for showing ads, as well as the setting of advertising preferences, where all the data and interests of the user are recorded. You have the right to turn off ad personalization.

A complete list of tracked actions can be seen on this one - all your searches, voice commands, YouTube searches, moving around the world are stored there.

"Webvisor" and "Yandex. Metrica"

These are Yandex products capable of collecting data about the audience of sites and filming user actions on web pages in video format. With the help of "Webvisor" companies can easily see what site visitors do on each page, where they click, where they hold their attention.

It looks quite harmless, because the actions are not personalized, that is, the owners of web resources cannot determine who exactly came to visit them. All they can find out about you is city, operating system, browser, device type. Based on the filmed actions, then the developers, for example, put the Buy buttons where people most often use the mouse.

Webvisor in conjunction with Yandex. Metrica helps companies segment their audience in order to further show ads to those people who have already visited the site, viewed certain pages, and clicked on specific products. For the system, each user is a set of identifiers by which it determines behavior and some socio-demographic characteristics (gender, age, interests, geography). The data is depersonalized, and no one knows that it was you who visited the site, but the advertising of this company will most likely get to you.

Mobile analytics systems

Many mobile analytics systems, like Facebook, have their own SDKs. And advertisers also actively use them to form their own target audience. Marketers compare data from different sources and thus create a more or less understandable portrait of the user.

Thanks to analytics systems, they can determine your city, age, smartphone model, gender, operator, time spent in the program. The only thing missing is the photo, but the technique has not reached this yet. All of this is also used to identify audiences and customize ads.

An ordinary user will never know that the application on his smartphone has some kind of libraries, integration with social networks and various databases, until he learns to read user agreements.

Why is the data collected and where is it stored

All targeted advertising is built on the basis of preferences and interests. You have the right to delete information and prohibit some systems from tracking your interests, but you can't get away from the advertising itself. It's just that it will become random, because your preferences will not be taken into account when displaying.

Often your contact information is leaked by advertisers with whom you are registered. They upload their databases to targeting systems to build a loyal audience.

On the one hand, it is unpleasant for users to understand that their every step on the web is recorded and stored somewhere, on the other hand, you get ads that match your interests. For comparison, remember television: videos about thrush pills and breathable pads are watched by 48-year-old Valentin, and 15-year-old Tamara, in between her favorite programs, listens about the miraculous properties of drugs for men.

Many people worry that corporations like Facebook eavesdrop on our conversations and then display relevant ads. More than 2 billion accounts are registered on the social network. Imagine how much electricity is needed and how much power the servers need to be to store the recordings of the conversations of a third of the world's population? Wired has counted FACEBOOK'S NOT LISTENING THROUGH YOUR PHONE. IT DOESN'T HAVE TO, that in order to eavesdrop on users in the United States alone, a social network would receive 20 petabytes of information per day, when the total amount of Facebook data is only 300 petabytes.

And why are these companies, if users already leave a rather clear informational footprint on social networks: they like, stay on certain publications, make reposts.

How to block ads

• First, you need to restrict outgoing traffic. In any browser, go to the settings, select the "Privacy" item (it can also be called "Security" or "Privacy") and turn on the ban on data tracking.
• Visit your Google account and prevent the system from collecting history of searches, locations, voice control and YouTube video views.
• your preferences, which Facebook managed to record. Remove interests and advertisers, prevent social networks from using personal data and exchange information about you with other sites and applications.
• If intrusive ads continue to appear in the feed, then click "Hide ads from …". The offers from this advertiser will no longer bother you.

• Use browser blocker plugins. They not only stop showing ads, but they also prevent companies from tracking user activity online.