4 ms·
I haven’t had Facebook for a few years now but taking a look at the advertising section is what finally made me delete my account. One of my interests, accordin
by elliekelly 6y ago
I haven’t had Facebook for a few years now but taking a look at the advertising section is what finally made me delete my account. One of my interests, according to Facebook, was pants. This was especially odd because I wear dresses and skirts far more often than I wear pants.
Some time later I was in my closet and still pondering how Facebook could possibly be so wrong as to think I was interested in pants of all things. On a whim, I decided to count my pants. And you know what? I had a lot of pants. Triple digits. Way more pants than I realized I had and way more pants than any one person could possibly need. It turns out, I _was_ pretty interested in pants.
Facebook, without ever having seen my closet, had a better understanding of my wardrobe than I did.
- anoraca 6y agoThey buy all of your credit card data.
- nkozyra 6y agoI'm not sure that would allow you to glean specific types of clothing, unless the purchases were at Pants R Us or The Pansatorium
- tobyjsullivan 6y agoYou are assuming it is Visa or MasterCard selling transaction information but that seems unlikely (beyond aggregate, non-identifiable data). It's far more likely that the Gap is uploading your itemized receipt data to advertising networks (complete w/ that email address they always ask you for and your CC info) under the guise of improving their own retargeting.
- rhizome 6y agoThat isn't itemized. It'll tell them how much you use a credit card, and where, but that's it. No, what they do is buy point-of-sale data from stores, often through companies like Nielsen and larger. NOW they know what you're buying, and Banana Republic ain't gonna stop telling them, because the market research aggregators pay them back by telling them who is buying their stuff, like people whose credit card usage is 45% directed at clothing stores.
- bonoboTP 6y agoYou have hundreds of pants and you just kinda forgot about it? That's like several wardrobes filled with pants. Do you have a separate apartment just for your clothes?
- elliekelly 6y agoI don’t really have a good excuse other than I enjoy fashion. Women’s pants take up less space than you’d imagine. I had a walk-in closet and my pants took up a section about equal to a normal sized hall closet. I hadn’t forgotten about them I just didn’t realize how many I had. I’ve since re-homed the vast majority of my admittedly excessive wardrobe in order to live out of a suitcase. Expensive clothing was one of the many ways I felt I was trapped in the rat race.
- eitland 6y agoFor what it is worth, it is my opinion that Facebook (that I dislike more than Google) serves me much more relevant ads. I've even bought a few things I found through Facebook or Instagram ads, things that I wasn't aware of and that I enjoy, timeular and old school safety razors for example, proving that advertising can be a win-win game.
- RobertKerans 6y agoI get this impression as well: again completely anecdotal, but FB is the only advertising that I've actually heard friends actually talk about approvingly (as in, it offered them things they found they wanted). Which I find slightly bizarre: I've never really ever heard anyone talking about advertising approvingly. As I'm writing this, my partner has just walked into the room and is debating whether to order ice cream on delivery due to being shown a targeted advert on Instagram. Something seems to be working, anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯