I was reading through the Everyday Minimalist the other day, and I noticed something was a bit different about it. I know it was sold a while back, and it has new writers, but something about it was rather off.
The design of the site has always been aesthetically pleasing and pretty streamlined, so the jarring, clunky advertisement at the top of every post definitely caught my eye. I don’t recall them being there before, or if they were they sized and shaped to blend in with the articles better. That being said, it was the content of the ad that I found to be the most jarring, rather than the awkward size and shape itself.
The Boy’s birthday is coming up shortly, and I’ve been asking him what he wants for his birthday. He’s in the process of redoing a car in his garage right now: a 25th anniversary 5.0L fox body Mustang convertible. Spurred on by my grocery challenge (believe it or not) he’s decided to try to fix up the car on a budget. So, instead of telling me he doesn’t want anything for his birthday, he sent me a list of links for car parts he’d like. Gotta love him, lol.
I checked out the different parts to get a feel for what he was looking for and how much they cost, and then went back to reading blogs about minimalism (I’m having a moment). That’s when I headed over to the Everyday Minimalist.
Those jarring ads at the tops of the posts? They were advertising the car parts website I had been on earlier. Not only that, but they were advertising the EXACT products I had just finished looking at! It’s not like these were sexy parts that coincidentally make for slick marketing here, we’re talking push pins and small plastic parts for repairing the door interior.
I was disgusted.
I knew that marketing was getting invasive, but I’ve never been so slapped in the face by it before. This isn’t good. Imagine you were trying to recover from a shopping addiction. You look at a site, see a sweater you like, and then close the browser before you tempt yourself anymore. Now not only is it going to be sitting in the back of your head going “Buy Me! Buy Me!”, but it’s going to follow you around as well. Check Facebook, you see the sweater. Read a blog, you see the sweater. Check the news, you see the sweater. You can’t put the temptation in the back of your mind, because it’s right there in front of you following you around! This form of advertising robs people of their cooling down period, because when they leave the webpage behind the site follows them. It’s shopping stalking!
There’s a really good TED talk by Gary Kovacs, the CEO of Mozilla Corporation, called Tracking the Trackers. He shows how quickly your information can spread from site to site, even though you never actually visit the vast majority of them. You have no idea they’re there, but they know all sorts of stuff about you. It’s really disturbing.
The more I think about it, the more it makes me want to take a step back and stop buying things all together. This level of advertising doesn’t make me want to buy, it makes me want to get the hell off the grid.
Have you ever been aware of an advertiser tracking you?
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I’ve heard about this, but I’ve never been aware of an advertiser tracking me. It’s just crazy what companies are doing now for the almighty dollar. That’s why as consumers we have to be extra cautious.
We really do have to be cautious. It takes a lot more to be an informed consumer today than it used to.
I actually just noticed this happening recently, and you’re right, it’s invasive!
It is! Mr. Kovacs brought up a good point about how they were tracking his daughter as well. If they were doing this offline we’d never tolerate it!
I’ve certainly noticed it on Facebook. They definitely look at the pages you follow and what you’ve commented on or liked and then target ads at those. I have to admit, though, that I’ve gotten quite good at ignoring ads, even though I know they’re on almost every page I visit, I just don’t notice them most of the time. But, you are certainly right that its very creepy to see an ad on a completely unrelated site for something that you just looked at.
Facebook is really bad for it. I’m rather put off by the ads showing up in my newsfeed. More concerning there are the ones that say I “like” something, when I don’t recall ever having hit the like button for it before. I’m usually pretty good at ignoring ads too, but this one was pretty jarring.
How creepy. I don’t think I noticed before you mentioned it.
I’m hoping it’s a trend that doesn’t continue, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to.
I’ve never understood why I get an enormous amount of ads for playing poker online. I’ve never visited gambling sites before, so I thought it was just the generic ads running on the sites I visit, but my boyf frequents many of the same sites and he rarely gets poker ads.
But yes, I have noticed many other online ads that are “geared towards me” – usually they are pretty passive things, but every now and then I’ll get the super creepy ones like the one you mentioned.
I get a lot of dating site ads, which is odd because I haven’t been on a dating site since 2 years ago O.o
Creepy indeed. I feel watched by Big Brother.
Hello 1984 :s
I use a browser extension called AdBlock Plus. I never see ads on ANY site I visit. It probably doesn’t stop companies from stalking me, but at least I don’t have to know about it. If I look at a site in another browser, I’m always shocked when I see how many ads some sites use.
Anyway, I highly recommend AdBlock. Makes the internet a happier place.
Good to know! Thanks for the heads up. I’m kind of useless when it comes to computer programs and knowing what’s good/not good, so since it’s coming from you I’ll probably check it out.
Great to know. Thanks, Andrea! And thanks Cassie, for bringing this subject up.
You can download a “do not track” extension/add-on for your browser. The one I use is by Abine. It blocked two things from tracking me on this page alone. I highly recommend this and AdBlock. I’m flabbergasted whenever I use someone else’s computer and I see how much advertising there really is.
Yikes! I’m sorry to hear that there’s stuff tracking you on my page. That makes me feel kind of ill actually, because I don’t even have ads on it that I’m aware of.
Yes, mine is Athleta. I love their stuff and have purchased online from them before. Now I see them everywhere!
I hate that advertisers track me. I routinely mess up my information (my birthday is wrong in gmail, FB etc. to avoid age-targeting) and am almost never logged into one consistent gmail account which makes it harder to track. I also use IE, Firefox or Chrome depending on my mood so that mixes things up too
I’d consider doing that, but knowing me I’m screw it up and get myself locked out of my accounts, lol.
Cassie, you are so right – this is terrible! Here’s another excellent post I read today about the sneaky ways of advertisers: http://www.frugalrules.com/ways-advertising-companies/
We’ve really got to watch our pocketbooks with them around!
That’s actually a really good post. Thanks