paranoia.
Normally, when I see an ad whose appearance is obviously purposeful, I smile. It’s funny when ads about online universities and writing books and learning English appear in my work-related emails. I like it when Facebook shows me ads about shoes and jewelry and clothing, because I’m overtly passionate about those things. However, today on Facebook, while writing my long-lost NY buddy Rachael a comment, I noticed an ad that gave me an unsettled feeling. Here ’tis.
I get a lot of Mod Cloth ads on Facebook, and I don’t mind them. Often, they give me a new garment to obsess over for a while, until I get over it because I can’t afford it. This ad is no different. However, I already obsessed over these shoes. And when they went on sale at endless.com, I bought them. Yes, mon chéri, I own those heels, and I purchased them online.
I am sure the case is just that the shoes are killer and therefore they were used in an ad. Maybe they have been successfully advertised as of late and their sales went up drastically and so Mod Cloth is appealing to the statistics of their demographic, myself (clearly) included. However, there is a small part of me that feels incredibly anxious at the thought of this ad being tailored to me, specifically. Is that even possible? Can my online purchasing be tracked and sold to online advertising companies? I mean, I did only buy the heels a couple of months ago. I really think (read: hope) that I’m freaking out over nothing. But nonetheless, I am kinda freaking out.
Surveillance… dun dun duuuuuun.
February 2nd, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Question: is your question “Can my online purchasing be tracked and sold to online advertising companies?” a rhetorical one? I can’t tell on the intarwebs. But hey, didn’t you write about this? I mean, you mentioned Beacon in your recent FB paper. So this must be a rhetorical question because you’ve answered it before! So never mind. But I leave this comment for posterity. Also, because I love commenting on blogs.
February 4th, 2009 at 2:06 am
Solid point: I guess what I really meant is, “how likely is it that an advertising company would create an image-based ad that reflects my online activity?” Text ads are one thing, and I understand it, but an actual image in the ad?!?! And that is NOT a rhetorical question.
I honestly think that the shoes are just really popular as of late (which angers me because I like having unique things, but then I guess I can’t do anything about that except, you know, buy vintage stuff or make it all myself) and so they showed up in an ad. I doubt modcloth.com is spying on me. (They’re not….. right?)
February 4th, 2009 at 5:55 am
Ok then….very likely. Although what you say about the demographic is true, if your purchase/ad appearance is as you said in your post, I would bet that you could trace the purchases/activity/cookies/etc between where you purchased the shoes and the ads you see on FB. There will be middleware in there of course, and a couple levels of selling data, but this is precisely what beacon was intended to do, and precisely what targeted marketing, tracking cookies, and affinity algorithms are built to do.
Sorry dude. But on the bright side, given the logic above, you can be both targeted as a buyer AND unique as a shoe-owner.
February 15th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
Dear Lauren. BLOG MORE.
February 20th, 2009 at 4:55 am
I think you have missed the obvious. They started marketing the shoes after you bought them. Going by the ever popular “Lauren has them, must be cool” Business model.
March 5th, 2009 at 5:17 am
[...] information. Especially since it is ever changing and accurate. On the other hand in reference to Lauren’s blog about the mod cloth shoes ad, sometimes they get it right. This obviously as already stated gets to [...]