Can anyone give a basic technical explanation of how ad retargetting works, of how the information on what you looked at on Amazon makes it to wherever it is that controls what ads you see on facebook?
On amazon up they put an image or other code on their page that generates a random id and stores it in a cookie.
When you're on Facebook the id is passed back to Amazon which can generate an ad based on your history.
It works because the resource loaded on fb and amazon originates from the same domain. Eg. 3rdpartyretargettingadnetwork.com
Spare me the "pitchforks".
Nothing is free. We all pay for what appears to be free, the price is just very well hidden in the current case. Advertised products will have the cost of advertisement factored in their price.
I am happy to block these unwanted ads, and to give people the tools to do so. Let's see where the supply/demand curves for ads intersect when you give people the choice.
As much as (s)he paid 5 years ago when there wasnt any as-retargeting.
Ghostery works for the advertisement industry by building profile of blocked ads to allow them to tweak the ads so you don't want to block them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostery#Criticism http://www.technologyreview.com/news/516156/a-popular-ad-blo...
From the wikipage and the copy I have installed, it look like only if you enable Ghost Rank. (And as ways to use data goes I can think of worse things than making ads less annoying.)
I used to leave them on, until I learned that they were paid for.
There is nothing nefarious here. This is standard internet marketing efforts.