Internet Ads - How Do They Work?

[4X4]

So I noticed something kinda creepy. I use firefox and have about 10 tabs that I open whenever I go online. I use gmail for everything email related, but I have two accounts - one for business and one for personal.

I usually check my email and then close it, but lately I've been leaving whichever account I last opened, open.

So what I've noticed is that the ads on CP have been eerily related to the content of my gmail account. I didn't notice it at first because I always check my personal gmail before my business email, but today I did it in reverse and my personal email is open.

Now, the ads I'm getting on CP are all in italian. And I can only assume it has something to do with the fact that I get emails from friends from italy, that are written in italian, and my personal email is open. Is this the case, or just a coincidence?
I just doubt that it's a coincidence because if it were, I figure that these ads would be promoting travel in italy, but still written in english. But the ads are in italian. So, what gives? Is the internet actually looking at all my tabs and trying to send me stuff that I'm likely to be interested in? I mean, I understand why those kinds of ads are on news links or actually on the ticker at the top of my gmail account, but does it actually cross-reference over to other sites that i'm simultaneously browsing? If so, I'm grabbing my tinfoil hat.

[Dan02]

usually the ads are based on recent webpages you visited/searches you performed. They build a profile and then display ads which are relavent to the profile they have developed.

[4X4]

Well, I re-installed the extension because I'm creeped out. I took it off to prop a few sites from time to time, as ads don't really bother me (EXCEPT FOR AUDIBLE ONES.... (BINGO)). But I'm still convinced that it scoped my gmail, as I didn't surf anywhere on this session except for my email and CP. And in my email inbox, there was no emails from anyone in italy. In fact, I haven't gotten an email from there in probably 2 weeks.
And, I regularly wikipedia different cities and countries. But I've never gotten an ad in japanese or german or greek.

[photon]

Well Google does customize your ads for you based on your mail content in Gmail. It wouldn't surprise me then that the ads that come from Google on CP are also slanted with that same information.

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/a...en&answer=6603

[Russic]

I used to be creeped out by the ads, now I'm not bothered as I used to be.

My friend is a rather passionate about his beliefs in science and his non-beliefs in god so he always manages to write up a hilarious minifesto from time to time. I hadn't heard from him in a few weeks and then one day out of the blue he emails me something very benign like "hey are you busy this weekend?". The google ad above his message was "Would you like to join an Athiest newsgroup?". We both get a healthy laugh out of how goolge recognizes him as a blashphemous guest in my inbox.

[Dion]

I have to remeber to keep my volume low when on CP. Nothing worse than browsing the site and hearing a very loud hellllllllooooooo! ad.

[Yeah_Baby]

Originally Posted by dion

i have to remeber to keep my volume low when on cp. Nothing worse than browsing the site and hearing a very loud hellllllllooooooo! Ad.

say something!!!!!!!!

[Engine09]

I have to remeber to keep my volume low when on CP. Nothing worse than browsing the site and hearing a very loud hellllllllooooooo! ad.

Goddamn hate that one, and there's another with an alarm going off to direct your attention to the flashing garbage ad.

[Phanuthier]

Yeah, I believe Google scans through your email and picks off key words and posts subsequent advertisments for them. Don't you ever wonder why Google is worth as much as they are? Where does their money come from? Obviously, they are an internet advertisement company, they make their money like TV commercials and newspaper advertisements. Here, same thing, what makes Google sexy for online advertisements is that in your account, they are able to target specific advertisements to your activities.

As somewhat of an hopeful entrepreneur, a few others and I had an idea of a product we wanted to take from R&D to market, and we were skeptical of IP issues since Gmail does scan through our emails, and we weren't sure if our IP would be considered to be released on public domain, or how confidential it was, so we had to talk in code for our potential product to hopefully avoid that issue. However, I'm told by a Google private contractor that any info or IP you sent via Gmail is considered confidential and your own. I was also told by the Google priv contractor that the US government wants Google to release info of their users' emails for "national security" but Google said no.

Beyond Gmail and other online tools that gather data on you, data is gathered on you everywhere else too. Safeway cards, probably even Mastercard and Visa to see where you spend your money and when, and that data could be worth alot of money to some companies.

I started to wonder when someone would take advantage of this. I used to think Safeway was using those Safeway cards to track info on which areas were buying what to target specific sales, and if one day, they'd have their safeway deals as pop ups for specific area codes based on the demand of a certain product.

[4X4]

Originally Posted by Phanuthier

Yeah, I believe Google scans through your email and picks off key words and posts subsequent advertisments for them. Don't you ever wonder why Google is worth as much as they are? Where does their money come from? Obviously, they are an internet advertisement company, they make their money like TV commercials and newspaper advertisements. Here, same thing, what makes Google sexy for online advertisements is that in your account, they are able to target specific advertisements to your activities.

Yup. This now has me thinking a little differently about gmail. I still love it and all, but now I'm becoming a bit more aware of why they even created it. I mean, ridiculous amounts of space, never throw away an email... Hmmmm... Never really occurred to me until now. Advertising. Google can see that there are dozens or hundreds of messages in italian in my email, so they're sending me ads for vacations in Perugia, in italian, on CP. Slick.

I'm now having a hard time being annoyed by this. I think it's a pretty darn innovative business they're running. Creepy, but cool.

[Phanuthier]

Originally Posted by 4X4

Yup. This now has me thinking a little differently about gmail. I still love it and all, but now I'm becoming a bit more aware of why they even created it. I mean, ridiculous amounts of space, never throw away an email... Hmmmm... Never really occurred to me until now. Advertising. Google can see that there are dozens or hundreds of messages in italian in my email, so they're sending me ads for vacations in Perugia, in italian, on CP. Slick.

I'm now having a hard time being annoyed by this. I think it's a pretty darn innovative business they're running. Creepy, but cool.

Yup, for sure. Like I said, probably one of the richest companies in the world, the info comes from somewhere. The private contractor I spoke of above, I'm told Sun Microsystems is running into a cash flow problem, and Google has their eyes on buying Sun - just for their data networks, to store info.

Lots and lots of info

But yeah, nothing to be paranoid, really. Its not really big brother, just alot of companies that want data and will pay a ton of money for it (i.e. Wal-Mart, picking out what products to have for christmas, etc). And hey, they've been tracking info on you for years, as above... Safeway cards have to be probably the most obvious data tracker on what you buy and when. Every time I go to Safeway and use my data card, I wonder what the hell they are doing with all this data on me.

[Vulcan]

I rarely get any annoying ads or pop ups on cp or anywhere. I use Firefox and I've turned off third party cookies.

What is kind of strange is I've got two Italian language hotel ads at the top of this page, but I only noticed because I looked for them.

[sclitheroe]

I've got italian adds too, and I'm not italian, don't speak italian, and don't surf italian sites.

So I think conspiracy theories regarding gmail can be put to rest.

[llama64]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

I've got italian adds too, and I'm not italian, don't speak italian, and don't surf italian sites.

So I think conspiracy theories regarding gmail can be put to rest.

It's no conspiracy theory... this is what Google does with gMail (and yes, Google makes ALL of their profit on advertising). Face it, Google owns our souls. At least they aren't intrusive and annoying about it like Microsoft is...

It also does the same with the ads on CP. It uses a proprietary algorithm to scan the page (or email content) looking for specific key words. It then tailors the ad's that are displayed to the nearest match.

Given that it's a learning algorithm, the accuracy is highly dependent on the content provided.

[4X4]

Ok, next question.... Are the italian ads only showing up now that you've come into a thread that has the word italian in it quite a few times, or did you have the ads before coming into this thread?

Lol.

[BlackEleven]

The ad on the side of my page right now is

Vacanze a Casale Monferrato? Confronta prezzi hotel & Rassegne.

Looks like Italian to me. Seems you've infect my ads too! Normally my ads are in French, since I'm in Montreal.

I also get some in Norwegian since I regularly send and receive emails in that language. One time I was advertised a website that specialized in Norwegian products for Norwegians living abroad... creepy.

[worth]

edit

[REDVAN]

Originally Posted by worth

words

Ok careful, I've gotten a permanent warning for posting about things that block ads. It is against the regulations of CP to purposefully block ads, so there can't be any posts telling people exactly how to do it.

edit (by redvan): I am not all that bitter... and understand the reasoning! Sorry for causing problems photon, you know I appreciate all the work you do and I don't mean to be a pain in the ass!

[worth]

i didn't realize it was against the rules. sorry.

[photon]

Originally Posted by REDVAN

Ok careful, I've gotten a permanent warning for posting about things that block ads. It is against the regulations of CP to purposefully block ads, so there can't be any posts telling people exactly how to do it. I'm bitter about this because I got a blue square about it.

Don't be bitter, because it's not a "blue square", there's no such things as blue squares. It's just a warning, don't worry about it. A warning is just a way of saying "please don't do this.". How else are we supposed to tell you about stuff?

They're permanent so that we can keep track of who does what; with so many users we need to be able to keep track of problem people who are repeat offenders.

And to be clear, as I told you before, it isn't against the regulations of CP to purposefully block ads; we can't control what people do on their own computers. However we don't want direct posts on how exactly to block CP's ads, for obvious reasons. If everyone blocked the ads, there would be no CP.