[georgemcbay]

Just anecdote, but...

The most common pattern I see relating to personalized advertising as someone being advertised to is that I will often see an ad for something I just bought (or some competitor to it) repeated relentlessly for a couple of days after buying it and this is after not seeing any related ads during the days prior where I was actually doing some research into the product space.

Maybe I'm an outlier but they seem to miss the window of relevance on me often enough that I notice it as a commonly repeated pattern.

[scott00]

I know it seems moronic, but I think it might actually make sense from the advertisers point of view. Some percentage of people who buy a thing are going to return it and buy something similar in the next week. That percentage is almost certainly large compared to the percentage of the overall population who's going to buy that thing in the next week, and it seems plausible to me it's even large compared to the number of people who have been browsing for the thing but haven't bought yet. (Think of it as the ratio of people just browsing vs ready to buy.)

[mcv]

Even so, wouldn't it be much smarter if they kept track of what the expected life expectancy of the thing you bought is, and then years later start feeding you ads for a replacement? Or is it too hard to track people over such a long period of time?

[tomcatfish]

I don't think any advertisers would be able to offer "People who bought a washing machine 3 years ago" as a category that can be targeted without a riot

[adamc]

Same experience. What's even more mystifying is that often it is for items that no human would be likely to be buying many copies of in a short span of time (high ticket items, or items where you probably don't need more than one).

[treis]

Just because I bought something doesn't mean I kept it. And those 0.1%, or whatever, returning items are very likely to buy another one of a different brand.

[adamc]

Valid. I'm skeptical that this makes it a winning strategy, but it's conceivable.

[gwd]

Exactly. If I just bought some power tool for a home improvement project, I am the least likely person in the country to want to buy that exact same power tool the next day.

[jamiek88]

Not if you hate it and want to return it. In fact there’s a calculation to be made - what percentage of people return or dislike their drill? Because that subset of the population is probably more likely to be looking to buy one than any other.

A return rate of say 1% may lead to more people looking to buy a drill who have just bought one in the last week than people looking to buy their first drill.

[gwd]

> In fact there’s a calculation to be made - what percentage of people return or dislike their drill?

If that's true, they left something out of their calculation: What percentage of people will install an adblocker as a result of feeling like they're being hounded for a few weeks? This scenario was mentioned specifically by Tim Cook when he introduced the Safari anti-tracking features.