Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google shows me ads for it. Why?

Re:Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google show... by grawprog on Sunday April 18, 2021 @11:23AM (#26853247)

Then again, could be fun to screw with them a bit. I wonder what would happen if you just kept clicking I already bought this on everything that pops up. Or better yet, just write a script that clicks it every time one of those ads appears. I wonder if it's possible to go through every single item they advertise and what would happen if you did.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google show... by rightbyte on Sunday April 18, 2021 @12:01PM (#26853577)

If you want to stick it to the man there is: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adnauseam/

That clicks all adds for you. Maybe it can be modified somehow to click already bought item?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: I bought Voltaren at the chemist, now Google show... by Closi on Sunday April 18, 2021 @01:07PM (#26854227)

I suspect that when you do this the following thing happens:

* Big businesses are unaffected as they use click fraud prevention services.

* Businesses that don’t use that have to pay more money to Google because people clicked on their ad, and they think their marketing is effective (at least from a click through perspective).

* Google makes even more money because you are clicking on all the ads and it makes them look better. They can demonstrate how well their marketing platform works even better!

[ Parent | on HN ]