3 ms·

Does anybody in your family have a cat? I recently visited my brother and he was talking about crowdfunding a project of his..guess what? YouTube showed me ads

by speeq 9y ago

Does anybody in your family have a cat? I recently visited my brother and he was talking about crowdfunding a project of his..guess what? YouTube showed me ads for crowdfunding platforms later that day, probably because I was logged into his wifi. It sure feels a bit creepy sometimes!

nofilter 9y ago
Yeah, I've been in a meeting with nobody using the internet and our phones just merely sitting our pockets. 3 hours later I saw ads relevant to the conversation in the meeting, for which, again, I had not googled or used internet for, on Instagram.
- mkbkn 9y ago
  May be the phone's microphone have picked it up.
  - nofilter 9y ago
    That was my idea as well.
- thesehands 9y ago
  Do you think this may be a bit of Baader-Meinhof going on?
  - 1_player 9y ago
    Probably. A couple of non technical friends and I were talking about Bitcoin one evening, they had never heard of it. A few days later one of these friends calls me asking how is it possible that he's seeing Bitcoin ads everywhere after we talked. I also thought that's Baader-Meinhof happening, but it doesn't make ads any less creepy.
    - samsonradu 9y ago
      Ha, I had a couple of experiences alike also. But then if you look at the big picture, it makes sense. You're a solid target for Bitcoin ads, you're in the same location with 3 other people, likely same demographics, interests, social status etc. and they become a target too? This is all suppositions of course, I have no idea how it works. But I've tried this experiment with my gf once: We both opened Instagram and started talking about a product class that we never saw ads for there, say like shampoos. We even mentioned a few brands and then waited for the ads to hit us. They never did. EDIT We use iPhones
      - 1_player 9y ago
        > you're in the same location with 3 other people, likely same demographics, interests, social status etc. and they become a target too Nice, let's call this technique "advertisement by osmosis" :-)
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    What is Baader-Meinhof? I only know the terrorist group with that name.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      The “Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon” is a name that was applied to the frequency illusion [1] before the term “frequency illusion” was coined. It's a particularly bad case of opaque naming, because even knowing about the terms that make it up gives you no clue what it means (since it doesn't reference the Baader-Meinhof Gang, but instead presumably the experience of the person who coined the term around the time they first encountered the name “Baader-Meinhof Gang”.) Further shortening to “Baader-Meinhof” (perhaps a result of mistaking the name for being named after the discoverers, which would be less opaque, like the Dunning-Kruger Effect, where familiarity with the work of the researchers in question makes the term less opaque) actually makes the term worse, since then it seems like a direct reference or analogy to the group. [1] http://web.stanford.edu/~zwicky/LSA07illude.abst.pdf http://web.stanford.edu/~zwicky/LSA07illude.abst.pdf
- radiorental 9y ago
  What was in the title/description of the meeting in your calendar app? I'm guessing at least one person in the room was on android and syncing with gcal.
  - nofilter 9y ago
    Wasn't even a trace of that meeting virtually, it was a spontaneous over-the-coffee idea. Subject was improv acting, which is something neither of the participants have ever even googled.
- ericb 9y ago
  I know several other people who have noticed this experience in the last 6 months for the first time. For me, it happened with my Google Now feed and the Netflix show Riverdale (not my cup of tea, but my wife was watching it).
MarkMc 9y ago
Well my stepmother has a cat, and I may have been using her WiFi. But I was logged into YouTube as me, and the videos I watch would not be of interest to her so Google could be very confident that they were indeed advertising to me. (By the way, Google also have my location history so they can see that I never visit the pet food ailse at the supermarket). So I'm inclined to think Google is not optimising their ads. This episode has made me think Google should have a "Human vs AI" internal competition: Take a specific Google end user, and see whether a Google employee can tweak that user's ads to get a better conversion rate. If so, the employee gets a big bonus and the engineering team get to know where their ad algorithm is lacking.

by speeq 9y ago

nofilter 9y ago

Yeah, I've been in a meeting with nobody using the internet and our phones just merely sitting our pockets. 3 hours later I saw ads relevant to the conversation in the meeting, for which, again, I had not googled or used internet for, on Instagram.

mkbkn 9y ago
May be the phone's microphone have picked it up.
- nofilter 9y ago
  That was my idea as well.
thesehands 9y ago
Do you think this may be a bit of Baader-Meinhof going on?
- 1_player 9y ago
  Probably. A couple of non technical friends and I were talking about Bitcoin one evening, they had never heard of it. A few days later one of these friends calls me asking how is it possible that he's seeing Bitcoin ads everywhere after we talked. I also thought that's Baader-Meinhof happening, but it doesn't make ads any less creepy.
  - samsonradu 9y ago
    Ha, I had a couple of experiences alike also. But then if you look at the big picture, it makes sense. You're a solid target for Bitcoin ads, you're in the same location with 3 other people, likely same demographics, interests, social status etc. and they become a target too? This is all suppositions of course, I have no idea how it works. But I've tried this experiment with my gf once: We both opened Instagram and started talking about a product class that we never saw ads for there, say like shampoos. We even mentioned a few brands and then waited for the ads to hit us. They never did. EDIT We use iPhones
    - 1_player 9y ago
      > you're in the same location with 3 other people, likely same demographics, interests, social status etc. and they become a target too Nice, let's call this technique "advertisement by osmosis" :-)
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  What is Baader-Meinhof? I only know the terrorist group with that name.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    The “Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon” is a name that was applied to the frequency illusion [1] before the term “frequency illusion” was coined. It's a particularly bad case of opaque naming, because even knowing about the terms that make it up gives you no clue what it means (since it doesn't reference the Baader-Meinhof Gang, but instead presumably the experience of the person who coined the term around the time they first encountered the name “Baader-Meinhof Gang”.) Further shortening to “Baader-Meinhof” (perhaps a result of mistaking the name for being named after the discoverers, which would be less opaque, like the Dunning-Kruger Effect, where familiarity with the work of the researchers in question makes the term less opaque) actually makes the term worse, since then it seems like a direct reference or analogy to the group. [1] http://web.stanford.edu/~zwicky/LSA07illude.abst.pdf http://web.stanford.edu/~zwicky/LSA07illude.abst.pdf
radiorental 9y ago
What was in the title/description of the meeting in your calendar app? I'm guessing at least one person in the room was on android and syncing with gcal.
- nofilter 9y ago
  Wasn't even a trace of that meeting virtually, it was a spontaneous over-the-coffee idea. Subject was improv acting, which is something neither of the participants have ever even googled.
ericb 9y ago
I know several other people who have noticed this experience in the last 6 months for the first time. For me, it happened with my Google Now feed and the Netflix show Riverdale (not my cup of tea, but my wife was watching it).

MarkMc 9y ago

Well my stepmother has a cat, and I may have been using her WiFi. But I was logged into YouTube as me, and the videos I watch would not be of interest to her so Google could be very confident that they were indeed advertising to me. (By the way, Google also have my location history so they can see that I never visit the pet food ailse at the supermarket). So I'm inclined to think Google is not optimising their ads. This episode has made me think Google should have a "Human vs AI" internal competition: Take a specific Google end user, and see whether a Google employee can tweak that user's ads to get a better conversion rate. If so, the employee gets a big bonus and the engineering team get to know where their ad algorithm is lacking.