Why you are seeing this
Why am I seeing this, and what does the sender think they know about me?
An offer that seems to know you is the result of a selection step: somebody defined an audience and you matched it. This chapter explains the common routes by which you were chosen, how to tell fair targeting from targeting built on a weakness, and which settings and legal rights let you see and limit what the sender knows.
All stages
You were selected, not discovered
An advert that seems to know you is not a coincidence. It is the output of a selection step: somebody defined an audience, and you matched the definition. Seeing the offer tells you that the sender believes something about you, such as that you recently moved, that you looked at a product, or that you resemble existing customers. That belief may be wrong, and it is never a reason to buy. Relevance tells you about the targeting; it tells you nothing about the quality of the product.
Selection also explains a common illusion. When an offer appears on several sites and in your inbox during the same week, it feels as if everybody is talking about it. Usually one advertiser is following one browser.
Four routes to you
Retargeting is the simplest route. You visited a site or left something in a basket, a tracker recorded it, and the advertiser pays to show you the same product elsewhere. Lookalike or similar audiences work differently: the advertiser supplies a list of existing customers, and the advertising platform finds people whose behaviour resembles theirs. You may never have heard of the company.
Data brokers assemble profiles from public records, loyalty schemes, purchase histories, apps, and other brokers, and sell segments such as new movers, new parents, or households by estimated income. Life-event targeting uses those segments, or signals held by the platform, to reach people at moments of change: a move, a birth, a wedding, a new job, a bereavement, a debt. Habits are unsettled at those moments and many purchases are made, which is why they are valuable to sellers and why offers that arrive then deserve more care from you.
Fair targeting and unfair targeting
Targeting is not manipulation in itself. Showing running shoes to people who read about running is efficient for both sides. Honest targeting is explainable: the platform will tell you why you saw the advert, the advertiser is named, and the reason is one you would not mind hearing said aloud.
It becomes a problem when the selection is built on a weakness and not on an interest: financial distress, illness, grief, loneliness, addiction, or the inexperience of a child. It is also a problem when the message pretends to a personal knowledge it does not have, when a sensitive fact has been inferred about you without your knowledge, or when some groups are steered to worse terms than others. Parents should assume that a child or teenager is being profiled by the games and apps they use, and should check those settings as well as their own.
What to do about it
Start with the explanation. Most large platforms attach a menu to each advert with an option such as Why am I seeing this ad, which shows the advertiser and the broad criteria used. Then open the ad-preference settings of the platforms you use, remove interest categories that are wrong or unwelcome, and turn off personalisation based on your activity on other sites where that is offered. Industry opt-out pages, and browser settings that block third-party cookies or send an opt-out signal, reduce cross-site tracking further.
You also have legal rights, which vary by place. Under the GDPR in the EU, and its UK equivalent, you can ask an organisation for a copy of the data it holds on you, ask for it to be erased, and object to its use for direct marketing; that last objection must be honoured. A growing number of US states, California first among them, give residents rights to know, delete, and opt out of the sale or sharing of personal data, and some keep public registers of data brokers. A short written request to the contact address in the privacy policy is usually enough to begin. Opting out reduces tracking, not the number of adverts, so expect less relevant adverts and not fewer of them.
Techniques you will meet here, and the tell
The advertiser defines a narrow audience by location, age, interests, and behaviour, and the offer is shown only to people who match.
The tell: The advert fits your situation closely, and the Why am I seeing this explanation lists several criteria and not one.
Profiles assembled from purchases, apps, and brokers decide not only whether you see an offer but which version of it you see.
The tell: The message refers to a circumstance (a move, a new baby, a renewal date) that you never told this company about.
A product you looked at once follows you across unrelated sites and into your inbox.
The tell: The same product image appears in several places shortly after a visit, often with a new discount each time.
Repeated exposure to one targeted campaign is experienced as the product being everywhere and widely chosen.
The tell: You think everyone is using this, but every sighting came through your own devices and none from a person you know.
Life-event and distress segments reach people when they are tired, anxious, grieving, or short of money, and less able to weigh an offer.
The tell: The offer arrives during a hard week and speaks directly to the hardship, promising relief if you act now.
A cookie banner collects a consent to tracking that most people give only because refusing takes more steps.
The tell: Accept all is a bright button on the first screen, and refusing requires a second screen or a list of switches.
Sign-up flows and settings are arranged so that you share more data, with more partners, than you intended.
The tell: Sharing options are on by default, described in vague terms such as improving your experience, and spread across several menus.
Worked example
Dana and Hearthbox are fictional. Dana has now seen the Hearthbox offer three times in a week: in a social app, beside a recipe article, and on a postal flyer addressed to the new resident. She wants to know why.
- 1On the social app she opens the advert menu and chooses Why am I seeing this ad. It names Hearthbox as the advertiser and says the company wants to reach people aged 25 to 44 near her city who are similar to its customers and interested in cooking.
- 2She traces the other routes. She searched for quick weeknight dinners and visited the Hearthbox plan page last week, which explains the advert beside the recipe article. The flyer arrived ten days after her move, which points to a new-mover mailing list.
- 3She names the window she is in: a new kitchen, unpacked boxes, late shifts. This is exactly the moment a new-mover campaign is designed to reach, so she decides not to choose anything on a weeknight after work.
- 4In the ad settings of the app she removes two categories she does not want used, recently moved and takeaway food, and switches off personalisation based on activity from other sites.
- 5On the Hearthbox site the cookie banner shows a bright Accept all button. She chooses Manage settings and rejects the non-essential cookies, which takes two more clicks.
Outcome. Dana now reads the three sightings as one campaign reaching one person by three routes, not as evidence that Hearthbox is popular. The targeting is explainable and based on an interest and a move, which she judges fair. She keeps the offer under consideration and discounts the feeling that it is everywhere.
Audience worksheet: why did this reach me?
Fill this in for an advert, email, or mailing that seems aimed at you in particular. Saved in this browser only.
List each place you saw the offer and roughly when, including post and email.
Copy what the Why am I seeing this explanation, or the small print on the mailing, says about how you were selected.
Tick every route that plausibly explains it.
Write the belief about you that the targeting implies, and whether it is true.
Be honest about your present state; offers timed to hard moments should wait.
Tick each step you have taken.
If you sent a request, note the date, the address you sent it to, and what you asked for.
Decision check: is this targeting fair?
0/6If any of these is not true: Treat the relevance as targeting and not as a recommendation. Hide the advert from its menu, report it if it exploits a sensitive situation, and tighten the ad-preference and privacy settings. Postpone any decision on the offer until the moment that made you a target (the move, the bill, the bad week) has passed. If a company holds data you did not expect, send a written access or deletion request.
Common mistakes
- ×Reading relevance as endorsement. An advert that fits your life shows that the targeting worked, not that the product is right for you.
- ×Looking for an exotic explanation. An uncannily relevant advert is usually explained by ordinary data (a search, a site visit, a purchase, a mailing list), and chasing other theories leaves the real controls untouched.
- ×Pressing Accept all to clear the banner. That single press is the consent later relied on for tracking across sites.
- ×Expecting an opt-out to stop adverts. It limits the use of your data; you will still see advertising, only less tailored.
- ×Over-suspicion. Being targeted is not being manipulated. An offer that reaches you after a move may be useful, and declining everything that fits you is its own mistake.
Who exactly are you trying to reach, and what do they already believe and need?
Related
References
- Federal Trade Commission (2014). Data Brokers: A Call for Transparency and AccountabilityDescribes how data brokers collect consumer data from many sources and sell audience segments, including segments based on life events and financial circumstances.
- Nouwens, M., Liccardi, I., Veale, M., Karger, D., & Kagal, L. (2020). Dark Patterns after the GDPR: Scraping Consent Pop-ups and Demonstrating their Influence. Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsShows that the design of consent pop-ups, such as hiding the reject option, changes how often people consent to tracking.
- European Parliament and Council of the European Union (2016). Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation)Sets out the rights of access and erasure and the right to object to processing for direct marketing.
- Lambrecht, A., & Tucker, C. (2013). When Does Retargeting Work? Information Specificity in Online Advertising. Journal of Marketing ResearchStudies retargeted advertising that shows people the specific products they viewed earlier, and when it is effective.
- Acquisti, A., Brandimarte, L., & Loewenstein, G. (2015). Privacy and human behavior in the age of information. ScienceReviews evidence that privacy choices are uncertain, context-dependent, and easily shaped by defaults and interface design.