Funny Foto #65... What Do They KNOW?

by Michael Seese

If you want a funny example of targeted ads gone awry....

The other day, I was searching the Internet for a pronunciation of the French expression vin de pays.

The website I settled on featured an amusing ad near the bottom. 

In case you don't know, to save you the lookup, vin  de pays means "country wine."

Are they trying to tell me something?

Funny Foto #44

By Michael Seese

I received the following (allegedly) targeted ad today.

I'm not sure what INSIDEHOOK is, and don't really care to bother looking it up. But it must be important, since it's the "ULTIMATE EMAIL FOR DRIVEN MEN."

A few things came to mind:

1. That's not a man.
2. She's not driving.

Are you driven to fly a jet pack? Click to tweet.

Funny Foto #43

By Michael Seese

While surfing the Web, I came across this ad:

On April 16!

Some people take partying way too seriously.

Better late than never!  Click to tweet. 

Pre-Election Day Funny

By Michael Seese

Tomorrow is Election Day. So I won't have to post any more snarky comments until 2016. (Though if I adhere to the traditional stumping timeline, I suppose I should start in 2 ½ years.)

I thought this represented the definitive commentary on the whole stinkin' process. 

In several previous posts, I've talked about targeted ads. To state the obvious, a targeted ad is supposed to resonate with me because my browsing habits supposedly have put me into various demographic buckets. 

I see them all the time in the infosec and privacy e-newsletters I subscribe to. I also subscribe to the "Word Of The Day" from Merriam-Webster. 

Here are two of the ads I saw last week:

Hmmm.

What makes the irony even more delicious is that day's word of the day:

Clearly, the universe has a wicked sense of humor. 

As I said last year, remember the old Chicago adage: "Vote early and vote often."

Does anyone care to make a bold prediction as to the electoral vote count? Mine is 298-240. I'm not saying who will win, though...

A Win For The Little Guy

By Michael Seese

I guess I'm just in a pissy mood this week with regard to news from the world of infosec and privacy...

One of my daily e-newsletters contained this link to an article about analytics company KISSmetrics and their use of supercookies to track online behavior. Cookies, as we all probably know by now, a small text files that web sites place on our computers. In many cases, they are necessary; without them, for example, you would have to re-enter your credentials on every page of your online banking site. But all browsers allow you to control cookies. Supercookies, as the article notes, track people online without first notifying them and giving them a choice.

What ticked me off about the article was this passage:

The company also will pay $2,500 each to the consumers who sued -- John Kim and Dan Schutzman -- and around $500,000 to the attorneys who brought the case, according to court papers filed on Thursday.  

Sure...give the wronged parties a few thousand, and give the lawyers 200 times that!

I should have gone to law school!

Feel free to share your thoughts (of outrage).

Funny Foto #34

By Michael Seese

In a previous post, I made light of two targeted ad I received in an email, offering me a convenient channel to date or meet "women 50+." Each of the ads showed three women. On Friday, I received this ad in the same email. 

So my surfing habits have caused them to question either my gender or my...shall we say...proclivities.

Hmmm.

 

Funny Foto #33

By Michael Seese

This one is not so much ha-ha funny as it is amusing to me.

One of the daily e-newsletters that I receive comes from the ABA which, in this case, is the American Bankers' Association.

Wednesday, as I paged down, I saw this:

I thought, Hey, that looks like Chagrin Falls, which is where I live. Only it's not quite right.

You see, if you were walking from our house and through town, the buildings on Main Street are on your left, while those on South Franklin are on the right. And, the last building on South Franklin doesn't look like the last building shown above. But that building does look like the Key Bank, which is on the opposite...

Hey!

I clicked on the link, and saw the full image. 













If you look at the way the cars are parked and driving, either this is England, or a flopped picture.

It is flopped. And it is Chagrin Falls.

Funny Foto #32

By Michael Seese

This one is not so much funny, as creepy. The other day, I received an email featuring an ad from the same folks who brought me beret guy and cougars, which showed this.

 



 









Take a good look at the curve of her left side, from her rib cage, to her waist, and then out to her hips. Either she was photoshopped scary, or her body is scary.

What do you think?

Funny Foto #31

By Michael Seese

In a previous post or two, I have talked about targeted advertising, and how they can be hit or miss. A while back, on two consecutive days I got two I would definitely say were off target.

I will stress again that these ads absolutely missed their mark, and I say that for several reasons. (And none of those reasons is even remotely connected to the fact that my wife reads this blog.)

1.  These ads were attached to a daily e-newsletter which comes to my work email account. We can't access dating sites. We can't even access Facebook from work. So I certainly was not doing any "singles surfing" at the office.
2. I don't engage in "singles surfing" at home.

Also, apropos of nothing, I would bet my mortgage that the top row left, and bottom row middle are nowhere near 50.

If you want further proof that the marketing strategy of the folks at "LiveIntent" is off base, check out the ad from yesterday's email.

What do you think? Are they me?

Funny Foto #25 1/2

By Michael Seese

In my last post, I made fun of a targeted ad for a writing degree program, which featured a cheesy picture of a guy sitting at a laptop, ostensibly typing his masterpiece, wearing a stupid beret.

They must have read that entry, and realized the error of their ways, as this is the ad-- for the same school -- I received today.

I have to say, though, I'm not too crazy about the scarf. The bags under the eyes are pretty accurate, though.

What do you think?

Funny Foto #13

There is a lot of talk these days in both the traditional media and cyberspace about targeted ads. I'm sure you've heard of them, but perhaps you are not exactly sure what targeted ads are. Forgive me if it seems like I'm questioning your intelligence; since I work as a privacy professional, targeted ads are something that I read about every day. 

So if you don't know, as the name implies, targeted advertising strives to serve you online ads that are geared toward your tastes, based on your prior browsing habits. The end result, the folks paying the bills hope, is that the ad you see will resonate with you, and you'll buy the product.

For some people there is a certain "ick" factor. They worry that if they surf to a "bad site," they'll get advertisements for "bad things." First of all, those kinds of sites don't advertise on NewYorkTimes.com or Yahoo. Putting that aside, there are benefits to targeted ads. After all, if you're taking a trip to, for example, Boston, would you rather see an ad for a restaurant in Boston, or for a car?

Personally, I'm not sure how big of a threat targeted ads are. After all, as I often say, I can ignore a targeted ad just as easily as I can ignore a regular ad. And, consider the e-mail I got this week. Seeing it makes me think that their targeting systems are not as quite accurate as some people fear.

 

Those of you who know me know that nothing I do in life -- and therefore on the web -- should make an advertising bot "think," This is a good one to show Seese. I know he'll click through, and we'll earn money. In fact, you can see it appeared twice. So they're really off the mark.