Big Brother coincidence or not?

[The Cincinnati Kid]

I'll try and keep this short.
Lady Kid and I renovate a spare room. As part of the renovation we buy a 2 seat couch that converts to a bed for the occasional overnight guest. (Not too comfortable of course....you don't want guests staying too long...bwahahahaha)
Anyhoo, before shopping....you know...old style shopping where you actually venture out and buy stuff.....I google..."couch beds Cincinnati"
From there I visit 3 or 4 websites....I'm looking for 3 locales, close together so I can visit, make 3 comparisons and buy.
Don't recall sites visited but IKEA / Macys.....you get the picture...and on these sites I search for couch / beds / daybeds.

We go shop and buy

A few days later I'm browsing this site and I read the thread posted by Porchester PFC re new crest designs. There's a link to The Snooze page showing the designs. Now, as a matter of course I don't click on Snooze links as its one of those web pages that take an hour to load due to (I assume) excessive advertising. But this is interesting enough so I click the link
Anyhoo....page loads (relatively quickly for The Snooze) and I notice to the right of the story are 3-5 ads.
The most prominent one displays daybeds / couches

So...did googlyintertwitteryweb search engine spy on me and send that search enquiry I had made to the Snooze page???

Enquiring minds want to know!

See...I get, if I visit youtube and play a vid....lets say a music vid by The Clash....certain assumptions can be made about me by youtube such as my age for instance....and so in that way, the next youtube vid I watch may contain an age appropriate ad for me. In the same way, if I watch a guitar tutorial vid, I may get an ad for Fender guitars...... In that way advertisers are not wasting their time and money making me watch an ad for Kate Hudsons yoga leggings for young wimin.....I get that.

I find the couch thing much more insidious though

[Pompey Dave]

Not coincidence, these sites advertise things to you based on your search history by checking your cookies.

[Locky_McLockface]

So...did googlyintertwitteryweb search engine spy on me and send that search enquiry I had made to the Snooze page???

The very short answer to that is "Yes". It's called Remarketing.

[The Cincinnati Kid]

Not coincidence, these sites advertise things to you based on your search history by checking your cookies.

So, are you saying its my machine sending info to The Snooze via cookies?
And if so, would disabling cookies on my intertwitterwebexplorerthingy stop that?

[Milkins]

Not coincidence, these sites advertise things to you based on your search history by checking your cookies.

So, are you saying its my machine sending info to The Snooze via cookies?
And if so, would disabling cookies on my intertwitterwebexplorerthingy stop that?

Hmmmm... Disable cookies and the browsing experience is diminished. It's an impossible situation unless you either clear your browsing history, including cookies, or (my preference...) just ignore all advertising on all websites. Tracker cookies are everywhere mate - you'd be like Canute and the tide trying to deal with it so just ignore it. It's not people looking at your cookies, it's machines.

...and, even in this internet age, I'm still getting reams of targeted junk mail through the post because the feckers have all the info they need about you anyway.

All that garbage on your screen is just modern junk mail so treat it as you would treat junk mail. A minor irritant.

Still not sure how effective web advertising is anyway. Hopefully the morons will wake up one day and realise they're pouring millions into a bottomless pit of no return.

[The Cincinnati Kid]

Not coincidence, these sites advertise things to you based on your search history by checking your cookies.

So, are you saying its my machine sending info to The Snooze via cookies?
And if so, would disabling cookies on my intertwitterwebexplorerthingy stop that?

Hmmmm... Disable cookies and the browsing experience is diminished. It's an impossible situation unless you either clear your browsing history, including cookies, or (my preference...) just ignore all advertising on all websites. Tracker cookies are everywhere mate - you'd be like Canute and the tide trying to deal with it so just ignore it. It's not people looking at your cookies, it's machines.

...and, even in this internet age, I'm still getting reams of targeted junk mail through the post because the feckers have all the info they need about you anyway.

All that garbage on your screen is just modern junk mail so treat it as you would treat junk mail. A minor irritant.

Still not sure how effective web advertising is anyway. Hopefully the morons will wake up one day and realise they're pouring millions into a bottomless pit of no return.

I agree Milkins....see I get ads on the bbc which is fine as its fast loading and easily ignorable but when I get to sites such as the snooze and other ad heavy sites with pop ups I just don't go back there much....hence the snooze efforts are totally lost on me but the bbc at least has a shot of me clicking an ad.
I do clear cookies and browse history maybe once a month but you're correct....its not something you can do every day.
Also the youtube model is not unreasonable......here's a free vid to watch but check out this ad first (or 5 seconds of it)....don't really have any issue with that.
Interesting to note that over here at least, some of the serious press/newspapers are moving to a limited free view but pay a small subscription monthly fee for full access....you know....like buying a newspaper in ye olde days

[past memories]

What browser are you using ? I use Firefox with Ad Blocker enabled, it seems to work.

[The Cincinnati Kid]

What browser are you using ? I use Firefox with Ad Blocker enabled, it seems to work.

well pm...in my admittedly state of techno stoopidity I did do a bit of checking on that some time ago. I concluded...and I stand to be corrected by clever people....that yeah you can compare one browser to another such as ease of use and vulnerability to security issues but you're still stuck with needing a search engine for your chosen web browser and I recall google as being the default for Firefox.

Anyways....I don't really have any problems as such with my IE and google search and I don't get pop up ads except on the very occasional site I might get sidetracked to.....just an insidious feeling of being spied upon and profiled for advetisers!

As an aside I shall mention that I don't do twitter / farcebook or crapchat or any such social diddery-poo AND....I'm still the proud owner of a flip phone (luddite alert code red)

[past memories]

If you go to the search bar in Firefox you can change your search engine, DuckDuck go is one.

[Earl Grey]

How does running your toplap with VPN affect all this Big Bro ad targeting malarkey?

Often thought to get VPN'd up to avoid being found out watching stuff using Kodi but can't be bothered as I don't find enough time to watch all the free terrestrial fare, let alone watching Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad through Kodi's dodgy add-ons.