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It's a fairly common practice now (not the spam, I've gotten spam email clearly triggered by a re-targeting campaign but as far as I know it is not a widespread
by freshhawk 11y ago
It's a fairly common practice now (not the spam, I've gotten spam email clearly triggered by a re-targeting campaign but as far as I know it is not a widespread thing).
The basic pattern is: Get user to trigger re-targeting campaign, use re-targeted ads to read a tracking cookie or browser fingerprint from the user, use that to look up user info in your customer profile database you bought (or bought API access to) from a data broker, send targeted email, package up your new piece of customer profile data (Walter Kirn went to an art gallery in Hollywood) for later resale/trade.
The specifics for each step change all the time.
The author wrote this piece in a style where he defaults to paranoia in the face of all coincidences to mirror the subject matter so it was not an accusation. But this one is actually feasible.
- magicalist 11y ago> But this one is actually feasible. Does Google Maps even embed display ads? I don't think there's any way to get a cookie, pixel, etc etc in there for just a query.
- timdierks 11y agoThere are no display ads on Google sites like Maps.
- freshhawk 11y agoIt doesn't as far as I know, that's why re-targeting is such a boon to these types of practices. Google Maps searches can trigger re-targeting campaigns, and when they are somewhere else on the web and get a re-targeted ad you might have a change to get that fingerprint/drop that cookie. Often it's not even the same group doing all these steps either, there are opportunities to buy your way in and/or cash out partway through.