[dijit27]

It might be creepy, but it might not be. It is possible that the conversation influenced the ad shown. But it is also likely that ad would have been shown no matter what the prior conversation was about. If the conversation hadn't included talking about the college prior to seeing the ad it would have been a non-event. But being primed in advance makes it at least feel like a freaky coincidence or at worst nefariously creepy targeted advertising.

These kind of events happen by chance and have been happening well before almost everyone started carrying mobile recording devices in their pockets and even pre-internet.

I have no doubt that advertisers would love to have that kind of insight but I can't help but feel that the anecdote of the form, we talked about A and A showed up X minutes later, is too easily explain by coincidence. How many topics were discussed, how many ads were shown? When I read something like this I imagine the anecdote should read more along the lines of how we talked about A, B, C, D, E and F and among the dozen or so ads I saw afterwords one of them was topic A! Can you believe it? And yes, yes I can, that is a pretty neat coincidence.

On the other hand if out of all 6 of the topics discussed all of the ads that were shown afterward were related to them, maybe not all, but more than one or two. That sounds like there is something fishy going on.

I don't mean to single out this particular example, it was to be a simple comment that had more to say. So, thank you for the inspiration!

[hvidgaard]

The first time it happened to me, I considered it a coincidence. And the next few times too. It must because the game is new, or they know I've been searching for new floors on my computer, ect. But it keeps happening, and it's always in the time following after it was talked about, but not searched for. It has happened for things we talked about at friends place, that is completely outside what my wife and I would do.

The most blatant I've experienced was on the Wii U. The controller with the screen powers up and shows ads for new games every now and then. We actually had a bit of fun with it, casually talking about new games and guess what happened. An ad for that particular game was shown. I'm 100% certain now, that it happens with smartphones as well.

[jrimbault]

When I was a child and had history class, I was always surprised to see there was documentary about the period I was currently studying on the TV.

I thought that was some great scheme made by the adults.

Turns out, it isn't. Just everyday life coincidences. Reinforced by the global rythm of social life.

College ads are more likely to appear in the periods when people talk about college.

[digikata]

It could be the ads came up a more conventional way - the makers are priming the publicity for the game so it shows up in magazines and ad buys etc. If you and your friends are avid gamers - you probably get some early exposure before more general ad channels buys show up.

But to really answer this question, we could build a better experiment. Write out a set of topics on index cards. You have to be careful that topics aren't new product rollouts (otherwise you really have to think about how you decided to write that topic down in the first place). Draw a card, don't talk about or search the topic for some amount of time, then inject the topic where it might be observed (talk about it and/or search for it somewhere), then for some amount of time, see if it comes up.

[devrelm]

Also keep track of every time that you see references to each topic both before and after bringing them up.

And have a control group that you simply don't bring up at all. Make sure to have more than one, so that you still have more remaining if someone around you brings up one of your control topics.

[madeofpalk]

You're surprised that the Wii U is able to show you advertisements for games?

[hvidgaard]

It shows advertisements for games I talk about. Games I do not search for.

[eggpy]

Here's a fun experiment idea. When you are around friends and the Wii U, only talk about games that came out at Wii U launch, ideally one you don't have. Like, FIFA Soccer 13 or something. Don't ever search for that game or talk about it away from the Wii U. After a week or so of that, see if you get an ad for it.

"We were talking about new games and I got and ad for a new game!" sounds like pretty standard, non-targeted advertising. Easily chalked up to coincidence. Steam advertises new games to me, some I'm interested in and some I'm not, but I don't think Steam is reading my brainwaves.

[madeofpalk]

How often does it show advertisements?

How many Wii U games are there anyway?

Would you expect the Wii U to do some sort of correlation (other people that own the same games A & B also own C, so you're probably interested in C)?

[hvidgaard]

I cannot remember that it have ever showed one while I was sitting and reading an entire evening. But as soon as we start talking it will show advertising. That could be explained that it simply detects noise in the room, but it correlating to what we're talking about more often than not.

[crtasm]

There's an option to disable it waking up and displaying things, so I've never seen adverts on mine (but maybe there's other things shown you do want to see?)