4 ms·

The thing that drives me nuts is I see ads for a long time after of products I just bought. I already bought the product, why would I want to see tons more ads

The thing that drives me nuts is I see ads for a long time after of products I just bought. I already bought the product, why would I want to see tons more ads for it (especially when I saw zero ads before I bought it).

newscracker 9y ago
That may be done (even offline), to prevent buyer's remorse and to reinforce your choice of having bought that product — so you don't return it or give it away with a negative view of it. It's all mental manipulation.
- ThrustVectoring 9y ago
  Likely not, with the incentives involved in pay-per-click advertising. Your pre-purchase online activity put you in a particular cohort, so Facebook sells "impressions by people in this cohort" to advertisers, who then talk about the cohorts they targeted in impressive-looking reports that convince mid-level executives that their advertising is effective and they should continue to pay the marketing department salaries. The actual ground reality of "bought a one-off product and doesn't care about future purchasing of said products" doesn't matter. I saw ads pretty constantly for the coding bootcamp I had just graduated from. All that matters in these transactions is checking off the targeting boxes, which everyone involved is pretty eager to do because it makes their numbers look better.
shostack 9y ago
This often occurs if proper exclusion lists are not setup for past purchasers at the SKU level (somewhat of a headache at scale). Instead, often these campaigns might use a duration-based list option. So for example, you might target an audience of people who viewed a product detail page for 7 days. If you purchased on day 3 and there was no SKU level exclusion list, the targeting has no way to know you already bought it. In this case you might see the ad for a few more days.
- manicdee 9y ago
  That’s great, but doesn’t explain why we get ads for things not during three months of scouring product reviews but only after the purchase. “Oh! This consumer bought a new car! Let’s show them ads for more cars in case they buy another car on impulse!”
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    Exactly the point I was trying to make and feel you likely did better! Thanks :)
  - shostack 9y ago
    Likely a combination of poor targeting, budget allocations, prioritizing other audiences, etc. It is much messier than a lot of people realize if they don't do it for a living.
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  This definitely would sound like a very plausible theory, except most times it's for companies which have only one (or maybe two) products. To me, it seems more likely that they are getting swindled by some ad company helping manage their campaigns, but that could be my bias against many of those types of companies showing.
  - shostack 9y ago
    While that could be a factor, it usually amounts to a combination of poor targeting, and other harder to control factors like loss of cookie data and cross-device tracking challenges that can easily create these situations. It is much messier to manage in real life than people think.

newscracker 9y ago

That may be done (even offline), to prevent buyer's remorse and to reinforce your choice of having bought that product — so you don't return it or give it away with a negative view of it. It's all mental manipulation.

ThrustVectoring 9y ago
Likely not, with the incentives involved in pay-per-click advertising. Your pre-purchase online activity put you in a particular cohort, so Facebook sells "impressions by people in this cohort" to advertisers, who then talk about the cohorts they targeted in impressive-looking reports that convince mid-level executives that their advertising is effective and they should continue to pay the marketing department salaries. The actual ground reality of "bought a one-off product and doesn't care about future purchasing of said products" doesn't matter. I saw ads pretty constantly for the coding bootcamp I had just graduated from. All that matters in these transactions is checking off the targeting boxes, which everyone involved is pretty eager to do because it makes their numbers look better.

shostack 9y ago

This often occurs if proper exclusion lists are not setup for past purchasers at the SKU level (somewhat of a headache at scale). Instead, often these campaigns might use a duration-based list option. So for example, you might target an audience of people who viewed a product detail page for 7 days. If you purchased on day 3 and there was no SKU level exclusion list, the targeting has no way to know you already bought it. In this case you might see the ad for a few more days.

manicdee 9y ago
That’s great, but doesn’t explain why we get ads for things not during three months of scouring product reviews but only after the purchase. “Oh! This consumer bought a new car! Let’s show them ads for more cars in case they buy another car on impulse!”
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  Exactly the point I was trying to make and feel you likely did better! Thanks :)
- shostack 9y ago
  Likely a combination of poor targeting, budget allocations, prioritizing other audiences, etc. It is much messier than a lot of people realize if they don't do it for a living.
jsjohnst 9y ago
This definitely would sound like a very plausible theory, except most times it's for companies which have only one (or maybe two) products. To me, it seems more likely that they are getting swindled by some ad company helping manage their campaigns, but that could be my bias against many of those types of companies showing.
- shostack 9y ago
  While that could be a factor, it usually amounts to a combination of poor targeting, and other harder to control factors like loss of cookie data and cross-device tracking challenges that can easily create these situations. It is much messier to manage in real life than people think.