Targeted advertising is scary
Jun. 1st, 2012 06:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snousleJohn and I have been meaning to go see "Nixon in China" at the SF opera before it closes, but he has not yet bought the tickets.
So I'm derping around on icanhascheezburger.com and what do I get popping up but an ad for that very opera? HOW DO THEY KNOW? I haven't bought any discs, searched for it online, or anything. Yet somehow their ad server knows I'm likely to go see it. So much for being a special snowflake what with all my esoteric tastes in music. Harrumph.
So I'm derping around on icanhascheezburger.com and what do I get popping up but an ad for that very opera? HOW DO THEY KNOW? I haven't bought any discs, searched for it online, or anything. Yet somehow their ad server knows I'm likely to go see it. So much for being a special snowflake what with all my esoteric tastes in music. Harrumph.
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no subject
Date: 2012-06-02 01:05 am (UTC)(1) There's a mic on your computer that's open and - with its secret human speech recognition software - it overheard you discussing the opera with John, even from the next room... and responded appropriately.
(2) It's just a case of you noticed this one coincidence between opera discussion and pop-up, but it hasn't registered on your memory all the MYRIAD times that an ad popped up on the computer and did NOT match an event occuring just prior to that pop-up (or, to paraphrase Littlewood's Law: "it's that time of the month..." ;-)