3 ms·
It might be creepy, but it might not be. It is possible that the conversation influenced the ad shown. But it is also likely that ad would have been shown no ma
by dijit27 9y ago
It might be creepy, but it might not be. It is possible that the conversation influenced the ad shown. But it is also likely that ad would have been shown no matter what the prior conversation was about. If the conversation hadn't included talking about the college prior to seeing the ad it would have been a non-event. But being primed in advance makes it at least feel like a freaky coincidence or at worst nefariously creepy targeted advertising.
These kind of events happen by chance and have been happening well before almost everyone started carrying mobile recording devices in their pockets and even pre-internet.
I have no doubt that advertisers would love to have that kind of insight but I can't help but feel that the anecdote of the form, we talked about A and A showed up X minutes later, is too easily explain by coincidence. How many topics were discussed, how many ads were shown? When I read something like this I imagine the anecdote should read more along the lines of how we talked about A, B, C, D, E and F and among the dozen or so ads I saw afterwords one of them was topic A! Can you believe it? And yes, yes I can, that is a pretty neat coincidence.
On the other hand if out of all 6 of the topics discussed all of the ads that were shown afterward were related to them, maybe not all, but more than one or two. That sounds like there is something fishy going on.
I don't mean to single out this particular example, it was to be a simple comment that had more to say. So, thank you for the inspiration!
- hvidgaard 9y agoThe first time it happened to me, I considered it a coincidence. And the next few times too. It must because the game is new, or they know I've been searching for new floors on my computer, ect. But it keeps happening, and it's always in the time following after it was talked about, but not searched for. It has happened for things we talked about at friends place, that is completely outside what my wife and I would do. The most blatant I've experienced was on the Wii U. The controller with the screen powers up and shows ads for new games every now and then. We actually had a bit of fun with it, casually talking about new games and guess what happened. An ad for that particular game was shown. I'm 100% certain now, that it happens with smartphones as well.
- madeofpalk 9y agoYou're surprised that the Wii U is able to show you advertisements for games?
- hvidgaard 9y agoIt shows advertisements for games I talk about. Games I do not search for.
- madeofpalk 9y agoHow often does it show advertisements? How many Wii U games are there anyway? Would you expect the Wii U to do some sort of correlation (other people that own the same games A & B also own C, so you're probably interested in C)?
- hvidgaard 9y agoI cannot remember that it have ever showed one while I was sitting and reading an entire evening. But as soon as we start talking it will show advertising. That could be explained that it simply detects noise in the room, but it correlating to what we're talking about more often than not.
- crtasm 9y agoThere's an option to disable it waking up and displaying things, so I've never seen adverts on mine (but maybe there's other things shown you do want to see?)
- eggpy 9y agoHere's a fun experiment idea. When you are around friends and the Wii U, only talk about games that came out at Wii U launch, ideally one you don't have. Like, FIFA Soccer 13 or something. Don't ever search for that game or talk about it away from the Wii U. After a week or so of that, see if you get an ad for it. "We were talking about new games and I got and ad for a new game!" sounds like pretty standard, non-targeted advertising. Easily chalked up to coincidence. Steam advertises new games to me, some I'm interested in and some I'm not, but I don't think Steam is reading my brainwaves.