Facebook tracks your google search visit and/or visits to other sites

Onedollaridea

Black Man
Apr 28, 2007
983
14
0
Hey guys, so the following has been happening to me and others working with me.

Whenever we go and search for some random stuff on google and later check our facebook account we tend to have ads relating to those niche show up which would have never shown before.

So in order to be conclusive, we went and searched for few things and visited few websites relating to those keywords and bang those niche ads started showing up for us.

Today I went and searched condoms and condom shop and there were 2 condom ads on my facebook showing up after this my searches.

Then I went and searched for dog breeds and how to take care of dogs. Again I had 1 random ad about dogs in the side.

Finally, I went and searched for cheap web design firms and web design templates, again I had 3 ads about web designers and web developers on my profile.

Just so you know, for my pages I liked, I am only part of 2 groups which belong to me and part of 2 fanpage which are House MD, and drinking beer.

I also do not have any status updates relating to the above niches etc.

Have you guys had similar experiences ?
 


When you use Google, the domains responsible for adsense dump a SHITLOAD of cookies on your local system, and stores a SHITELOAD of IP based stuff too. If you have a dumbass newbie 'toolbar' installed, they know EVERYTHING you do every day, including what kind of porn you like, and how it contrasts to the tastes of your kid brother, who uses your machine between 2 am and 4 when you are asleep.

He's into 'schlerer' sex, btw, which involves balloons and donkeys.
 
well that explains then facebook suddenly serving me certain ads, i've started logging out completely or just keeping facebook open in Opera or IE9 which I rarely use
 
You guys have to realize we've reached an age of behavioral targeting that for some reason seems to be over a lot of internet marketers heads right now. EVERYTHING YOU DO IS TRACKED! Information is aggregated from multiple sources/cookies/ IP tracking and pretty soon we have enough information to reach you with exactly what you want on the sites you're most likely to take action from.
 
OP, can you clarify... did you and your friends all have toolbars installed?

Sort of related, here's a worrying trend I'm seeing more of: Khan Academy Great website, but notice there is no registration - only google or facebook authentication. That seems an evil road to go down.
 
No we have no toolbars or any addons installed. We are using firefox for the browser. All we have is a standard install of firefox 3.
 
You guys have to realize we've reached an age of behavioral targeting that for some reason seems to be over a lot of internet marketers heads right now. EVERYTHING YOU DO IS TRACKED! Information is aggregated from multiple sources/cookies/ IP tracking and pretty soon we have enough information to reach you with exactly what you want on the sites you're most likely to take action from.

soon they will read our fucking mind. This is good for us advertisers that we can get a bigger demo than usual :D

However, i fucking hate stalking ads, now more ads to deal with. behavorial targeting is slowly becoming big brother
 
adblock plus. and no, you don't need to see other people's ads in order to create your own.
 
Didn't know Fb was in the re-targeting space...interesting...

I was recently working with re-targeting company and they can display ads of specific products you have looked at in the past however, they told me the find it too stalker-ish to do that so they do it based on the category of product you were looking at... but it's insane that they have the capability to target now based on specific products...
 
> No we have no toolbars or any addons installed

Thanks for the clarification.

OK, so as I understand it so far, there is no direct connection between the google search and the facebook ads. You actually have to visit a website, which then drops a re-targeting cookie. There is some deal between FB and the re-targeting company which allows them to read the cookie and display the ads on FB. Is that about right?

If that's correct, then the ads will appear on any popular website that the re-targeting company has made a deal with, so this isn't strictly just a facebook thing?
 
> No we have no toolbars or any addons installed

Thanks for the clarification.

OK, so as I understand it so far, there is no direct connection between the google search and the facebook ads. You actually have to visit a website, which then drops a re-targeting cookie. There is some deal between FB and the re-targeting company which allows them to read the cookie and display the ads on FB. Is that about right?

If that's correct, then the ads will appear on any popular website that the re-targeting company has made a deal with, so this isn't strictly just a facebook thing?

I do not know if there is any deal or not. They could be pulling cookie data based on your previous search data stored on your browser.

But we know it is happening.
 
> They could be pulling cookie data based on your previous search data
> stored on your browser.

How can one website access another website's cookie?
I'm pretty sure that can't be done directly.
 
any site that has a "like" button knows who you are immediately if you're logged into your facebook account.

Facebook is probably the only company in the world in a position to knock Google down hard when they launch an adsense competitor for 3rd party publishers to use because they're a giant fucking retargeting machine.