How to Lose $119 Billion

I spent years selling online ads, and every year the targeting technology got more creepy. I’ve been in countless meetings explaining the latest targeting capabilities to clients and they all played out the same way. At first there was a little nervous laughter followed by the “how much does it cost” question. I sold a campaign to a bail bonds company where we mapped all the bars, strip clubs, and card rooms in the city. If you went in to one of those places with a phone we would target you with bail bonds ads for the next couple of months. If you were in an ER you would get personal injury attorney ads.

I always thought the backlash would come one day. Some of the biggest companies in the world are entirely built on collecting and selling your personal information. Take that way and those companies are next to worthless.

FSBook

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-04/early-backer-of-faceb...

Disney bans plastic straws from all its resort properties.

https://www.google.com/amp/www.foxnews.com/travel/2018/07/26/disney-to-e...

>>> I sold a campaign to a bail bonds company where we mapped all the bars, strip clubs, and card rooms in the city. If you went in to one of those places with a phone we would target you with bail bonds ads for the next couple of months. If you were in an ER you would get personal injury attorney ad

How do you know if someone is in a bar, strip club or ER? Is it because someone logs into that business’ WiFi? Or is it done through the phone location detection or something? 

Genuinely curious, thanks. 

Phone location. Everywhere you go with your phone is logged by latitude and longitude. Then you just plug in the latitude and longitude of the places you want to target and cross reference.  Most apps that you download make their money selling that information to data aggregators.

Then all you do is fill out a form and ask how many ads can I serve to people who have been to the locations I want and you get a number back. Car dealers are big buyers of the technology. They target people who have been to their competitors lot.

This only makes sense if you understand how digital/mobile ads are served. All digital ads are served through an ad exchange. That means that every time you load a page a signal goes out to the exchange that says a page is being loaded by someone with these cookies. Then there is an auction and the winner serves you the ad. That all happens in .7 milliseconds. In order to serve the ad for the bailbonds company we would preset a high bid price for anyone who had been to the places we wanted.  

If you want to see where you have been on an iPhone open settings>then Privacy>then Location Services> then all the way at the bottom “System Services”> then most of the way down “significant locations”

That’s really interesting TY for that explanation. Pretty cool about the auction. 

I just noticed when I looked at my iPhone settings that I have both “significant locations” and “location-based Apple Ads” “off”. Does this mean I’m blocking the ads you are referring to? 

(Hey Nino you explained the CA budget surplus and deficit too thanks for the Friday morning knowledge)

Apple actual doesn't sell your info. They got out of that business, because they make their money on selling you the phone. They use that for things like find my phone. If you have Waze, or All Trails, or Facebook or just about any app on your phone you are being location tracked.

Facebook makes so much money because they are able to aggregate your at home and mobile data. The Republicans got rid of Net Neutrality which also allowed ISP's to collect and sell your info. So if you use Verizon or AT&T for your home internet and for your phone they track everything and sell your information. 

I have an iPad that only I use at home. As soon as those regulations ended I started noticing all these dress ads and women's bathing suites ads. That is because Comcast who I get my internet from was now able to sell my personal data. The advertisers can now target my house, and my wife does a lot of online shopping so they targeted every device in my house with those ads. 

They're losing money on me. I block all the ads I can and ignore the rest.