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PayPal plans an ad network built off your purchase history
(www.theregister.com)
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this post was submitted on 29 May 2024
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with stuff like this, usually the objective is to advertise based on patterns across purchase histories
I'm sure thats the theory, and whats being sold to the ad buyers, but my money is on it ending up like the ads you get after buying something from amazon/ebay: same item you just bought.
you probably just notice that because it doesn't make sense from your perspective.
it's probably more cost efficient for advertisers to just throw relevant ads at potential groups. Determining whether an individual already has the item is a waste of resources, and you probably don't notice when the ads are things you don't own.
Last time I observed this I was getting the exact same item that I bought being advertised to me constantly, across multiple sites. No variation at all. It was a pair of hiking shoes. If it had then offered me hiking poles or rain coats or anything else that would have been useful, but instead it was the same pair of shoes I had already purchased.
If the ad network had actually suggested useful paired items that i dont already own, then those ads should actually stand out, as they are actually relevant to me.
If its not cost efficient to actually target to the individual (and I dont doubt that it isn't), im not sure what Paypal is bringing to the table here that Amazon etc can't already do.