
How Does Facebook Know What's In My Amazon Shopping Cart? - ojilles
http://thecodist.com/article/how_does_facebook_know_what_39_s_in_my_amazon_shopping_cart
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pyduan
This is called ad retargeting -- the basic premise being that conversion rates
are much higher for items the user has actually looked at in the past. Usually
it's only supposed to show abandoned purchases, but sometimes it doesn't work
and shows you stuff you already bought. I personally feel retargeting to be a
bit too intrusive for my tastes but the conversion numbers are excellent,
which is why this industry has boomed in recent years. It looks like your
browser's incognito mode _can_ be useful for online gift shopping after all!

There are a few companies who do this like Criteo or Adroll, but I believe
Amazon is using Triggit [1]. It looks like it's working for them:
[http://marketingland.com/triggit-facebook-
exchange-36-better...](http://marketingland.com/triggit-facebook-
exchange-36-better-than-google-at-converting-retargeted-users-30462)

[1] [http://blog.triggit.com/amazon-chooses-
triggit%E2%80%99s-dem...](http://blog.triggit.com/amazon-chooses-
triggit%E2%80%99s-demand-side-platform-dsp-technology/)

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drakaal
Retargeting typically uses Cookies, the scarier ones are Continuous Targeting,
where Metadata is used to track you without cookies, or worse yet straight up
user data sharing.

If you are John Smith of 1313 Mockingbird Lane no cookie is needed partners
just share info about targeting.

Sometimes it is more general Someone at your IP shopped for an Xbox one, so
you get ads for Xbox One. We see this at my office a lot. I shop for
something, and the guys in the office start to see ads for it.

Then there is the really scary ones. Your referrer data comes along with a
search from Google or where ever, the ad network uses that with your metadata,
or user data to know what you searched for, now they store all of those to
track where you live based on you doing things like "Near:1313 Mocking bird
lane" from Google Maps, and they now have your physical address, (or they get
it from somewhere you bought something). Now your paper mail gets "Current
Resident" targeted Spam.

Go a step further. Your friend Bob plays Candy Crush on Facebook, the game
gets all the friends of Bob and their cities. Using the data from above we now
know you are friends with Bob. So we start sending you spam that uses Bob's
last name in it, or We just plain send you spam that uses Bob's Full name.

As someone who has managed large online ad campaigns you don't want to know
how much information I can buy about you. The NSA is not nearly as Scary as
Google with regards to how much they know about you. And Google will sell that
stuff to anyone with a big enough budget, with no care as to how we want to
use that data.

~~~
joshfraser
A few key differences between the NSA and Google:

1) Google don't have the ability to take your life or limit your freedom.

2) Google maintains full control of your data. They will serve ads based on
very specific criteria, but they're not going to give advertisers an Excel
file with names and email addresses. That's bad for business.

~~~
brandon_wirtz
Yeah, actually they will. It isn't in xls, it is typically in an XML format.

and since google provides the info to the NSA on demand does it matter which
of them does the collection?

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alecsmart1
Also, would like to add that Facebook does not know what's in your shopping
cart. For all practical purposes, it's just an advert from Amazon (using
retargeting).

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ars
"This could be embarrassing if you ordered a gift for someone who then saw it
on the screen."

This happened to me! Luckily the other person didn't realize there was
anything special about that ad.

I don't get these ads though - I looked at a product and either decided to get
it or not. Why are you still showing it to me? I'm done with that product.

~~~
hmsimha
Wow! This is unfortunate because that person has now been primed for that
gift. If it's a fairly obscure product that it was possible they hadn't heard
of, then they may not be as surprised upon receiving it, and either way if
they are able to remember they saw it while you were browsing facebook, they
may be less convinced of the genuineness of the gift, thinking you just
clicked on whatever ad jumped out at you rather than using your creativity to
select something.

~~~
hmsimha
Even worse, if it's an obscure product that suits their taste, there's a
chance they could decide to order it after seeing that ad!

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amccloud
Ad retargeting. Happens all the time.

[http://www.perfectaudience.com/](http://www.perfectaudience.com/)
[http://www.adroll.com/](http://www.adroll.com/)

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MrMorden
I'd be much less annoyed by this tactic if the retargeted ads didn't gang up
on you like a platoon of Belarusian KGB agents.

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mknits
Almost same thing happened with me today morning. I live in India and I was
planning to buy a laptop cooler. So I opened homeshop18.com (a popular
e-commerce site) and found the desired product there. I added it to the
shopping cart. Facebook was open in another tab. Some time later I closed the
homeshop18 website and continue to browse the Facebook. Later I found the
first advert on the right hand side was exactly the same product on homeshop18
that I had earlier added to the cart.

I use different emails for Facebook and HomeShop18 website. So I guess this
creepy thing has something to do with the Facebook's cookies. I think FB's
cookies keep track of the other websites that we visit.

Anyway, I've decided to use "Self-Destructing cookies" addon on Firefox and
remind myself to close facebook before opening any other website.

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termie
A more recent trend is to use several points of data assumed to be unique to a
user, in place of cookies. Your IP address, browser, UserAgent string, screen
dimensions, fonts, other factors, when combined together via simple hashing,
usually provide a unique identifier. This unique identifier can now be stored
at a data provider and a profile can be built against you. This approach
breaks down when there are people are sharing the same computer, browse from
offices with similarly configured machines, or even upgrade their system. But
it's still very valuable information, and with so much money in play it'll
only get more sophisticated. [http://www.bluekai.com/audience-data-
marketplace.php](http://www.bluekai.com/audience-data-marketplace.php)

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Kiro
Are people seriously unaware of this? Retargeting is so common it's like
posting about Google adding ads to your search results.

~~~
logicallee
The poster seems to be asking how it's possible technically, i.e. how it's
implemented.

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chenster
That creepy thing is called "ads retargeting".

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jka
Although this does sound like a case of ad retargeting (as a number of other
commentators have mentioned), it's worth being aware of the 'data brokerage'
industry, which may or may not become more closely linked with advertising in
the future.

Essentially, with so many institutions collecting and storing (even fairly
anonymous) profile/intent data (browsed this page, purchased these items),
there's an ability and motivation to have back-channels between data-driven
advertisers; buying and selling user data to inform each other's targeting.

Retargeting pushes the user experience in this direction while being arguably
more benign; it is a little more transparent and simple to understand than
data sharing.

~~~
davemel37
This actually goes much further than you realize. There are companies buying
credit card purchase data and plugging it into a Data Management Platform
along with billions of data points a day and using that to buy their ad
inventory from the real time ad exchanges. Were talking about mapping a
purchase in a store back to a banner ad impression online.

I know of atleast one company actively doing this, and I am sure there are
hundreds others.

~~~
jka
Thanks Dave - I didn't know the function of a DMP (or the acronym), so that's
an interesting thing to learn about. Sounds like there are some real-time data
auction houses for advert targeting as well, which is interesting.

I expect the volumes and retention of this kind of data are fairly unregulated
at the moment? I certainly haven't heard anything consistent as a consumer
about how this data is collected/used (also bearing in mind international
considerations in many cases)

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drewinglis
This might also be custom audience targeting.
[https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/ads-
api/custo...](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/ads-api/custom-
audience-targeting/)

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jtchang
My guess is retargeting via AdRoll or something that Facebook uses for their
ads platform.

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blantonl
Before anyone grabs their pitchforks and condemns ad-retargetng, the question
has to be asked. How much did the OP pay to use Facebook as a social platform?
With that said...

There is nothing nefarious here. This is standard internet marketing efforts.

~~~
jrochkind1
OP wasn't neccesarily suggestiong anything nefarious, but was curious about
the technical details of how this is done -- as are many of us.

Can anyone give a basic technical explanation of how ad retargetting works, of
how the information on what you looked at on Amazon makes it to wherever it is
that controls what ads you see on facebook?

~~~
fleitz
Basically it works like this:

On amazon up they put an image or other code on their page that generates a
random id and stores it in a cookie.

When you're on Facebook the id is passed back to Amazon which can generate an
ad based on your history.

It works because the resource loaded on fb and amazon originates from the same
domain. Eg. 3rdpartyretargettingadnetwork.com

~~~
mjmahone17
For more detailed information:
[https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/ads-
api/rtb/#...](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/ads-
api/rtb/#cookie_matching)

~~~
jrochkind1
thank you, this is super interesting.

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harel
I'm more surprised that after all this time the poster only now notices
retargeting ads. The web is littered with them. This one is running on
Facebook's own exchange.

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moonka
This is exactly why I buy my gifts using an incognito window for researching
gifts. Otherwise I'd go to Facebook or Fark and the sidebar would have exactly
what I was looking at.

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wdr1
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_retargeting](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_retargeting)

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alextingle
This smells like it would be illegal in the EU. I have no idea about ads
because I AdBlock... does anyone see this technique used in the EU?

~~~
riffraff
google does it a lot. Try visiting the adwords page for your local google
franchise and you'll be getting ads for a 100€ coupon at 25€ everywhere.

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idunno246
if you click on the x in the top right corner of the ad, theres an about this
ad link that will give you details on who generated that advertisement.

[http://www.mikeonads.com/2010/02/22/rtb-part-iii-cookies-
use...](http://www.mikeonads.com/2010/02/22/rtb-part-iii-cookies-user-data/)
this describes roughly how they identify you.

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jbverschoor
I was wondering the exact same thing today

