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The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/05/23/google-now-knows-when-you-are-at-a-cash-register-and-how-much-you-are-spending/ reports that Google has talked retailers into sharing data from credit card transactions, which it will link to location and other data, to further enhance consumer profiling*.
The article says "Google for years has been mining location data from Google Maps in an effort to prove that knowledge of people's physical locations could "close the loop" between physical and digital worlds. Users can block this by adjusting the settings on smartphones, but few do so, say privacy experts.
This location tracking ability has allowed Google to send reports to retailers telling them, for example, whether people who saw an ad for a lawn mower later visited or passed by a Home Depot. The location-tracking program has grown since it was first launched with only a handful of retailers. Home Depot, Express, Nissan, and Sephora have participated."
* and erode privacy.
The article also makes it clear than consumers don't get to opt-out, if they even find out their data has been shared.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Wednesday May 24 2017, @03:52PM (4 children)
As someone who spent a number of years doing advertising market research, among the primary goals of advertising are top-of-mind awareness [wikipedia.org] and unaided awareness [wiktionary.org].
Even if you "ignore" most advertising, if you have top-of-mind or unaided awareness of a particular brand at the point of purchase, the advertising has succeeded, even if you don't actually purchase that particular brand.
By targeting ads for specific brands/products at folks who are contemplating a purchase of that product, the advertisers are focusing efforts on those goals. Perhaps you're immune (or think you are) to such activity, but most folks are not, which is why so much money/effort is put into getting advertising in your face.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 24 2017, @07:22PM
Bingo!
The easiest marks are the people who think they are immune to the con because they don't think they need to protect against the con.
Targeted marketing is not about connecting people with products that they already want. Its about manipulating them into buying the products the marketer has been paid to push on them.
If you are just a regular consumer Its easy to think advertising doesn't work, because most of the time it does not. A 5% response rate is considered an overwhelming success in the advertising world. So 95% of the time the
manipulationadvertising does not work, but 5% of the time it does. If you aren't actively taking countermeasures, you will be that 5% sooner or later.(Score: 2) by Nuke on Wednesday May 24 2017, @08:49PM (1 child)
"Succeeded" only in the surreal world of salesmanship. They are like jobsworths who think that is where their job stops. My wife is a bookkeeper to a small plastics company; the two salesman/reps (one is the owner) will spend half an hour on the phone with someone enquiring about buying one plastic bottle "Because it is good for customer relations" they say. Meanwhile the company is going down the pan because that customer ended up buying just that £1 bottle, or none at all. These salesmen seem to measure their success by how long they can keep talking to a customer; OTOH my wife (any anyone else sane) measures it by how much money the company makes.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday May 24 2017, @09:25PM
There. FTFY.
Advertising is not sales.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Friday May 26 2017, @09:25PM
I've always thought the number one thing that marketers advertise is the idea that advertising actually works. Whether or not it actually does is not important. But so long as the marketing folks can convince the people paying the bills that they need their services, we'll have to deal with advertising whether or not it provides any return on the investment.
If you ask me, the the big problem is simply advertising fatigue. When I have to deal with hundreds of advertising messages a day, I have no choice but to tune them out. Kind of like the snail mail spam that shows up in my mailbox. If I got something every once and a while, it might be novel enough to actually look at it. When it's several pieces of crap every day, it just goes straight to the bin.