How targeted is targeted advertising?

It’s been said that there’s a mug in every deal – and if you don’t know who it is, it’s probably you.

By this logic, we’re all mugs when it comes to sharing online information.

The free services we use on a daily basis – search engines, social media, free apps – have to generate revenue to pay staff costs and meet their setup/overhead expenses.

If we’re not paying for these services, another obvious commodity we can provide them with is our data.

Unquantifiable amounts of personally identifiable information (PII) are volunteered online every day, by people who might claim to value their privacy even though their actions suggest the opposite.

This information is then bundled together, resold many times around the world and used to promote goods and services we’ve previously shown interest in.

This is known as targeted advertising.

It differs from the scattergun approach of traditional advertising by harnessing volunteered PII to direct ads deemed to be of interest to us onto our computers and mobile devices.

It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it

Targeted advertising focuses on the traits, interests and preferences of individual consumers.

However, don’t assume every web search result will be taken down and used in evidence against you.

The agencies responsible for building individual consumer profiles are cannier than that.

They combine your search history (especially repeat searches or items viewed more than once, hinting at genuine buyer intent) with demographic data, stated interests and subscriptions.

Memberships, email mailing lists, ecommerce baskets and social media sites all betray information people wouldn’t dream of handing over to a stranger at their front door.

Yet the companies collating this information are far more anonymous than someone standing on your doormat with photo ID and a clipboard.

For one thing, you won’t be able to track your own data once it’s captured, scraped or saved.

Faceless organisations specialising in reselling PII will bundle your data together with thousands of other private individuals, selling it to companies you’ve never heard of.

A search for baby clothes might be merged with search engine histories to determine whether you’re likely to be pregnant yourself, or buying for a friend/relative.

Depending on the projected outcome of this analysis, the adverts you see could be very different, even in this specialised niche.

Either way, you’ll potentially be seeing baby clothes adverts for months to come – which could become extremely upsetting after a miscarriage, for instance.

Advertisers will study your relationship status, age, ethnicity, income, job, location, travel habits, lifestyle, hobbies and more, to establish whether a particular ad is likely to lead to a purchase.

Your web browser, phone, smart TV or other web-enabled device will then be sent adverts deemed to be specifically relevant to you, from a vast trove of ready-to-publish ads.

Because your identity, accounts, IP address and location are shared between different devices, a PC search could result in weeks of targeted advertising on your smartphone.

What can I do about targeted advertising?

Remarkably, there are no regulations governing internet data collection, resale or reuse.

Companies can harvest, use and resell whatever information exists online. If you provide it, it could circulate around cyberspace forever, or until newer information contradicts it.

Many people have been reckless in detailing the minutiae of their lives online, especially on social media.

Our first tip is therefore to limit the information you share on these forums going forwards.

No more ‘checking into’ venues on Facebook, announcing holidays on Instagram, quoting personal anecdotes on Reddit or arguing with trolls on whatever Twitter is currently known as.

In terms of prevention, logging out of search engines makes pinning those results to your online profile harder, as does using Private Browsing or the Tor Browser.

You could also set your web browser’s privacy settings to ask sites not to track you and to delete cookies.

Cranking up privacy settings on antivirus software may also be beneficial.

Finally, while it doesn’t stop PII being out there in the first place, ad blockers diminish the agencies’ ability to project what they know about you back onto your own screens.