Super Way OT: Banner Ads on MGoBlog

Submitted by FauxMo on

I know this is absurdly OT, but it is MGoBlog-board related, and the board has been slow lately. Anyway...

 

Does anyone else get a banner ad to the left side of their screen for Russian mail order brides pretty regularly when they open MGoBlog? I know the banners rotate different ads in, but I seem to see it quite often.

 

This raised two crucial questions for me... 1. If it's not just me that is seeing this (i.e. it isn't targeting my specific Internet behavior when cycling ads in), why would MGoBlog users in general be a good target advertising market for a mail order bride service? 2. If it is just me, what in the hell am I doing online to make it seem as though I might enjoy a Russian mail order bride???

StephenRKass

February 22nd, 2016 at 11:10 AM ^

I think the bucket is pretty big, depending on the websites you choose to visit.

  • For example, we're going to St. Augustine over the kid's high school Spring Break. Having searched air fare and rental vehicles, we are getting a ton of ads for airfares, cars, hotel rooms, and things to do in Florida.
  • I have bought stuff from Land's End, so I get side banner ads from them.
  • And I did a search for men's shoes, so I get banner ads for this as well.
  • Shoot, because I have given money to World Vision and some other charitable organizations, I get pop ups for World Vision here at mgoblog. That's a clear key that there is some kind of search algorithm involved. Because I would bet money that very few among mgoblog's readership get banner ads for World Vision!

As mentioned above, you might want to clear out your browsing history, add ad block, and change the settings for cookies, etc.

CGordini

February 22nd, 2016 at 11:24 AM ^

I also get this ad, NOT running AdBlock/UBlock (Chrome, Windows 7).

The interesting part is that I am running this window in incognito mode.

I do not have a browsing history to base this ad off of.

Everyone Murders

February 22nd, 2016 at 11:35 AM ^

Depending on the advertiser, some of it is sites you may have visited (or visited affiliated company's sites).  I recall checking out an Amazon.com ad for a barrel of "personal lubricant" to send a link to the ad as a gag* and was getting some interesting banner ads after that.  They eventually reverted to ads for guitar gear, athletic equipment, etc.  But for a while I was thinking I'd get quasi-pervy banner ads for eternity.

Some of it is algorithms.  If sites share who visits them, you may match a demographic that makes you more likely to be interested in a mail order bride.  If you're middle-aged and sports obsessed, you're probably more than halfway into the mail order bride sweet spot already.

*The cost of the item was way too expensive to actually send it as a gag, which is probably a good thing.  I could get into some real mischief sending those to friends and colleagues.  It was more-or-less an oil drum worth of lube.

lbpeley

February 22nd, 2016 at 11:40 AM ^

an ad for MBB tickets picturing fully uniformed Caris and Spike standing back to back. Talk about false advertising.

1VaBlue1

February 22nd, 2016 at 12:13 PM ^

Google tracks everything you do - everything!  So does everyone else...  You cell phone even has a GPS track on it - do yourself a favor and Google it.  There are businesses that do nothing but aggregate tracking data for customers to target ads to various users.  Rest assured, your MGoUserID is correlated to your email account is correlated to your Amazon account is correlated to your mail order bride account.  The sad reality is that we have been assimilated.

LSAClassOf2000

February 22nd, 2016 at 12:18 PM ^

It has been home improvement stores and realtors lately for me, so you can easily tell I am a person of two minds about my current housing situation. Last week, it was the alumni association and I think a site that sold novelty stuff (I do an amateur magic act along with my amateur comedy routine sometimes), and indeed I was paying dues and increasing my prop arsenal. I know, an interesting life. 

skurnie

February 22nd, 2016 at 12:22 PM ^

I went on Sparty's ticket website a while back looking at Michigan/MSU hockey tickets in East Lansing and got a Sparty Ticket banner for a while, which was humerous. 

Louie C

February 22nd, 2016 at 12:28 PM ^

I've been getting it too, and I most certainly do NOT use the family desktop for "extra cirricular activities". That's what the tablet is for. I guess I'll just go ahead and nuke everything in the history (sorry kids) and see if that fixes it.

JHendo

February 22nd, 2016 at 1:10 PM ^

I've never got one for mail order brides before, but I do often get ads for Fredericks of Hollywood Lingerie when I'm on Mgoblog. I would say that would make sense on my personal computer (not gonna lie, it's seen its fair share of scantily clad ladies and then some), but it makes no sense on sense on my work computer (where Mgoblog, facebook, ESPN and CNN are the only non-work related sites I visit).

Seth

February 22nd, 2016 at 7:51 PM ^

There should be a little triangle in the upper-right of the ad which you can use to not see that ad anymore.

You're getting that ad served through Google, so no I'm not selling it directly. Those ads pop up based on things like your search history and your interests, So if you're getting anything that seems kinda weird for MGoBlog to sell, it's probably because Google is trying to match whatever you have been obsessing over.

(Or in the case of mail-order Russian brides that advertiser might be telling Google to hit up profoundly male audiences making over six figures household income who like sports.)

FWIW I get a lot of Michigan sports ticket offers, car ads, things from rival schools that I'm always looking up for work research (e.g. Michigan State hockey tickets), and various cable cutter gadgets/amazon/netflix etc. stuff.

BoFan

February 23rd, 2016 at 2:41 AM ^

Hahaha. Your ad is based precisely on whatever you last shopped or searched for. So you are either: A) Trolling the board; B) looking for something; or C) You have a 16 year old son or maybe even your wife using your computer?



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