Google is Watching
/Note: I changed the footnote style on this post so you don’t have to scroll as much. Let me know what you think.
Hello everyone!
Last week I was talking to my friend, who we shall call The Teacher (because she is one*) and I was chattering away about some work-related thing and we got into “how exactly does Google know so much about me and why do I keep seeing ads about this one hat I googled last year” and the Teacher suggested I write a post about it** and so I have.
Where I am going with this is that if you do not find this post to be of general interest, it is not my fault.
please excuse the manners of the teacher.
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*Teacher, if you are reading this, I hope you are appreciative that I didn’t choose to refer to you by your Messenger nickname, which is of course Fart Bag.
**The Teacher also suggested I write a post about the intriguing sport of weightlifting-but-with-your-vagina, which I agree would also be interesting. And before you ask, yes it is a thing, except more frequently referred to as ‘intimate gymnastics’ which a) is somehow worse and b) just sounds like doing gymnastics in the nud with a friend, while talking about your feelings. The current world record holder for this particular kind of intimate gymnastic (weightlifting-but-with-your-vagina) is a lady called Tatyana Kozhevnikova and the current record is 14kg.
Here are some other things which are 14kg:
- 12 guinea pigs
- Half an emperor penguin
- A particularly large Daschund
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As part of my job is organising online advertising campaigns for a range of generally very nice people, I am familiar with the ways of Big Brother Google, and so I can share the arcane knowledge of “when will these hat ads go away” with you.
A caveat: some of this has been simplified for ease of explaining.
As with attire and lovemaking there are several levels of sophistication available.
Unlike with attire, we will get into all of them.
Level One
An advertiser who we shall call Pinky’s Garden Bits (they’re a garden store, don’t be filthy) knows, from their own research, that 25-to-45-year-old women who like gardening love to buy their products. Pinky’s are running an ad campaign through Google.
After looking at your browsing history (you are all over the hip new gardening sites) and taking a stab at your age and gender (you read left-leaning news sites and are a heavy Instagram user, so you’re probably the right age; you read a lot of articles about how to shave your legs so you’re probably a lady*), Google will put you on the list of people who match Pinky’s target market and therefore should be seeing their marvellous trowel ads.
You go onto a nice website about something very unrelated to gardening (hint: it’s porn) and Google goes “ah there she is” and BAM! Pinky’s ad for you.
this ad has got me badly wr- wait, pharoah’s treasure??
Level One, Version Two
Pinky’s doesn’t give a shit whether you’re a 35-year-old Auckland lady or a 72-year-old Wellington horse but they are confident that if you’re into gardening, you will be into Pinky’s.
You visit your favourite gardening website to look up some shit about plants. BAM! Pinky’s ad for you too.
This is called Display Targeting.
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*or a cyclist. Google is not perfect.
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Level Two
You are heavily into gardening and have broken your favourite trowel. OH NO!
Naturally you go to Google and search “I need a new trowel because I sat on the old one” and you click through to the Pinky’s website. You don’t buy a trowel but who gives a shit?*
When you land on the Pinky’s site it tags you, like a cattle or an endangered bird, if one was attempting to market garden supplies to an endangered bird, which I would probably not recommend to any of my clients as it is very unlikely that they will purchase them.
“pinky why would I even need - you know what never mind”
You leave the Pinky’s site again and go about your day but Pinky’s ads follow you around the internet to the point where you wish to email Pinky himself and go “I BOUGHT THE FUCKING TROWEL FROM MITRE 10 ALREADY PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE.”
This is because the tag from Pinky’s site is now attached to your online profile, and you have been put into a list of People Who Came To Pinky’s Site and are therefore more likely to buy something than the people in the Level One examples, who have never heard of Pinky’s in their life. And so Google will show you Pinky’s nice ads until the very day you die, or until you fall off their list, which is usually about three months.
I mistyped that as “three moths” but then I deleted it as moths are not a valid measurement of time.
This is called Display Remarketing and it is the source of your hat ad pain.
one o’moth, two o’moth, three o’moth rock
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*at Level Three whether or not you buy the trowel does actually matter but if I get into explaining that we’ll be here all night and you probably need to go to the supermarket or something.
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Level Three: Shit Gets Real
Note: this is sophisticated stuff and most of the companies you interact with won’t be using this level of automation. BUT SOME DO and it’s absolutely fascinating.
You go to Pinky’s site, for whatever reason, and you sign up for a pleasant weekly email about gardening. Pinky’s sends you these nice emails. They are very interesting! Thank you, Pinky.
Things Pinky now knows:
- Which emails you open
- When you open them
- How long you spend reading them
- What you clicked on inside the email
A month later, Pinky sends you an email about Hot New Trowels This Month!
If you don’t open the email, nothing happens. (If you ignore enough emails in a row, Pinky’s automatic system might figure out you no longer give a shit about Pinky, and send you a polite “we notice you aren’t enjoying these emails, shall we take you off our mailing list?” message.)
“1-50 of about 74” get the hint already tripadvisor
But you do open the trowel email. You can’t resist the trowel email. And the second you open it, you automatically go onto a list of people who opened the email. This list is held on Pinky’s customer database. Google is more or less out of the equation at this point.
Then you open the email again. And again! (You can’t stop thinking about the ShovelMaster3000.)
Now you are on a new list of people in Pinky’s database, a list of people who opened the email multiple times.
That weekend, you open the email a fifth time, and you sit there and stare lovingly at the ShovelMaster3000 and wonder if perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t make the car payment this month.
Far, far away, in a garden centre office, Pinky’s automatic system generates an automatic message.
Your phone rings.
“Hello,” the caller says, “this is Mark calling from Pinky’s Garden Bits! Your local Pinky’s has some really good trowel specials on this weekend and we are just… calling round our customers and letting them know.”
“That’s funny,” you say, “I was just thinking about you.”
And this is called Marketing Automation.
I hope this has been interesting and if it hasn’t, well, you can blame The Teacher.
our education system is in ruins
Disclaimer: I don’t use this level of tracking/automation techniques on my site, and am not running any advertising campaigns. I do run Analytics, which gathers anonymous data about you my readers; partially because I think it’s interesting and also because it means I can tell which posts people like. All I can tell about you from this data is that on Tuesday someone visited from Wellington and they spent three minutes reading this post, after which they left.
(Dad, it’s you! But the Analytics didn’t tell me that. I just don’t have any other Wellington readers.)