Why does the Internet think that I live in Florida?
Facebook had far outlived its usefulness to me when the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, so my decision to #DeleteFacebook required little thought. The only thing that had provided any true value to me was the ability to share photos with loved ones and Instagram—which I was content to continue using—had cannibalized that functionality long ago.
What I failed to anticipate was the absolute mess of ad targeting that would befall me once I severed the link to the mothership. It was as if not a single piece of social interaction on Instagram had been recorded to determine my interests: everything had been funneled up to Facebook. Initially, I was accepting: it takes time to build up a taste profile, so I focused on liking and reporting ads as they came along.
Then things started to get weird.
I was shown ads for political candidates in Ohio. I grew up in Cleveland and still have family there, but I have been living in New York for the last decade. I was shown ads for both Democratic and Republican candidates and issues, but gradually they started to skew towards the right. (PS—I’m a registered Democrat.)
After flagging those ads as either inappropriate (some still pushed the boundaries of what should be acceptable) or not interesting, Facebook began to serve me political issues from other states. The majority of these were from Florida. I made the mistake of commenting on one issue that I felt was particularly misleading in its messaging in an attempt to educate other viewers and encourage them to read the full text of the bill.
So now Facebook thinks I’m a Floridian.
Cool.
The ads continued (and still to this day):
Fine. Whatever. It’s not my fault their targeting algorithms are garbage. I’d prefer more relevant ads, but I’m equally comfortable with continuing to ignore them if that’s what it takes.
But then…this:
This email is problematic for several reasons:
- The targeting of this direct response campaign did not seem to be a coincidence.
- It was sent to the same email address that my Bonobos account is registered under.
- I have spent well into the thousands of dollars at Bonobos over the last five years. No order has ever been shipped anywhere other than NYC. That same email address has been used for all orders.
I’ve had moderate luck responding to recruiters who send email to my personal account (which is kept fairly secretive), so I decided to follow up and investigate further:
“Automatic customer database”? Okay, so it definitely seems like they are pulling from a datasource that is mapping one or more of my device IDs to my Instagram account / whatever shadow profile is left of me on Facebook’s servers.
While I would love to believe that Bonobos’ system truly had some error in it as suggested (I’ve certainly shipped my share of bugs!), they are not alone:
Again, there is absolutely, and without question, no logical reason for Crate & Barrel to think that I live in Florida based on their own first-party data. Why?
Because I registered with them for my wedding over eight months ago:
So we have yet another retailer who:
- Definitely has my personal email.
- Definitely has my home address in Brooklyn.
So why do they think I live anywhere else? Why can’t they make this connection? I may never know why multiple advertisers and retailers can’t get this right, but I do know that I need a vacation from this insanity.
I hear Florida is nice this time of year.
