It’s not like the current tracking adds are super efficient always. I searched for a new washing machine, found one I liked, bought it, and spent the next 3 months looking at washing machine adds.
With a lot more AI the smart people at Google, Amazon and Facebook may find out one day that there are products you buy rarely versus products you buy repeatedly. Like washing machines vs potato chips.
It makes sense to show ads for potato chips but with washing machines you should stop after purchase.
I much preferred the time when kiteboarding sites had static kiteboarding ads instead of the current situation where ads are totally out of context.
Not an AI problem. This happens when small businesses outsource their adsense campaign to one of the many completely incompetent fly by night SEO shops, or to their grandson who's "good at computers".
Half of Google's income is derived from businesses pissing their marketing budget up a wall with incorrectly targeted ads. But it's still more effective than newspapers.
> Half of Google's income is derived from businesses pissing their marketing budget up a wall with incorrectly targeted ads.
Ah yes I was waiting for a response like this. Adsense campaign or do you mean Adwords campaign? There's a pretty big difference between the two.
Also, what's the difference between pissing away money on "poor targeting" and "testing" targeting which helps you to determine what the best options are?
Alot of bro-vado in your comment - what's your avg CTR? Churn rate? Spend? Out of curiosity.
> I much preferred the time when kiteboarding sites had static kiteboarding ads instead of the current situation where ads are totally out of context.
Or out of nowhere. I get ads for real estate in Chicago - except that I live across the Atlantic. Or ladies products every time after my fiancee used my phone.
Not to mention how most ads are just plain bad. I don't mind actually watching good ads - I was hooked onto buying the Asus Zenbook Pro Duo for a while because of its ad (although later I learnt that the product was shit). The Honda Day/Night ad is another one that comes to mind.
You know I think Amazon may have gotten better about that in the last little bit. I don't recall being flooded with recommendations for something I just purchased recently.
Clearly more tracking needs to be done in order to connect your conversion to your purchase.
Not only will they stop showing ads of washing machines after the purchase, knowing the make and model will help them gauge when to start targeting repair ads as well as start targeting replacement machine ads. They will also know whether you will stick to the current manufacturer or which you will switch to, and which model you will buy. You will be able to live with the comfort of knowing that your entire future of washing machine purchases is planned out and concentrate your energy on more important things in life (such as lobbying for better privacy protections).
Well, they could just use common sense: a washing machine is something people look at when the old one broke down or moved house: they need it so they are likely to buy one asap. Show it a week and then stop. Laptops are similar: makes no sense showing it for months, and that is what happens now.
Even if they have the sales data, it is not connected to the ad data (bought a laptop from a big chain here this week: will get ads for that laptop from the same chain for months) so common sense should work fine for now. If the ads appear around the days I am looking for the article, I even might click on them. Now that my brain knows all ads are irrelevant because they are outdated things I already have, I just do not see them anymore.
The cost of keeping it like that is next to none so there's very little motivation to fix it too. I've done many remarketing ads and generally speaking setting it up to avoid recent buyers is pointless in the grand scheme of daily work.
You seem to imply that the alternative would be more effective. What ads did you see in the 3 months prior to buying it? Maybe they were equally bad or worse but you forgot because of the psychological impact of the washing machines.
I’d like to say I saw the “normal selection”, but the truth is I don’t remember. I’m fairly certain there were not many washing machines there, but probably a good deal of “tech”.
In any case, I put up a network wide Pi-hole blocker shortly after it because the washing machine adds didn’t just show up on my single device, but pretty much every device i own, including my wife’s phone.
I’ve since spent a long time since trying to convince my wife that Apple doesn’t listen for keywords and sell it (though I have no doubt Facebook, Google and Amazon would - if allowed), and that the fact she was seeing washing machine adds as well was either that she had searched for one (at the same time) or they were basing it on our public ip.
I also switched my search engine to DDG at the same time, and it’s quite funny watching the profiling algorithms struggle to find something they think I like. There are still washing machines in there, but the rest of the adds are pretty much all over the place.
