5th
Stalker Ads
Online advertising relies heavily on the concept of relevance. The better a company can figure out the relevance of a ad to you, the higher percentage they will convert.
I am heading to Monterey, CA for a weekend trip so yesterday I was looking for rooms on Expedia. Afterwards I went to TechCrunch and clicked on a blog post. This is what I saw:
Notice the Expedia ad in the bottom right corner with deals on hotels for Monterey, CA. I think this ad might actually be too relevant to me.
It feels like Expedia is stalking me. I like most people understand that you are fairly exposed on the internet in terms of privacy. However as the receiver of the data a company has to be careful in how they use it. In this case Expedia to bluntly used my data. A better ad would have been one that was relevant based on Expedia knowing that I was about to go to Monetery but did not come right out and say that.
