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(I Always Feel Like) Somebody’s Watching Me

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User big brother 1984

User big brother 1984 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Relax, Orwell! Nobody is actually watching you-it’s just Internet technology!

“I’m just an average man, with an average life. I work from nine to five-hey, hell, I pay the price!”

Alright, that’s enough of that. You can see where I’m going with this: When you’re on the Internet, sometimes, it feels like somebody’s watching you. Like your computer is starting to know you a little too well, almost. Don’t worry, though-we’re still a long way off from the eventual robot uprising and the super-intelligent killing machines that look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. What we are dealing with, though, is the increasing ubiquity of e-commerce personalization software and other tracking programs that sneak around the Internet and keep an eye on you.

Nobody’s Really Watching

If it makes you feel better, know this: There is nobody actually watching you. Big Brother doesn’t exist-thankfully, 1984 came and went without that one every coming true-and nobody is spying on you from the other end of your DSL line. Online technology is so advanced that nobody has to, because at this point, it’s all done automatically with e-commerce personalization software. This type of program automatically logs everything that you look at when you’re shopping on a certain website, building up a history of your previously viewed and purchased items. Instead of just reminding you about those products later (and it will), it also learns about why the item is significant, how it relates to other things you’ve looked at and how it can recommend new products based on that information.

So What Does It Do?

Confused yet? Don’t be-while the technology behind programs like these is pretty complex (and way beyond anything I can distill here), the principle behind it is simple. Let’s illustrate it with an example: If you are shopping in an art supply store, and the salesman sees that your cart has canvas, paintbrushes, acrylics and an easel, he’s not going to take you to the knitting aisle-he can see that you’re interested in painting supplies. That’s exactly how personalized online shopping works, too. The website sees what you look at and what you buy, then puts it all together to form a logical conclusion.

Let the Following Begin

The thing about personalized online shopping programs is that they don’t stop working once you leave the website-and this is where some of that feeling of being followed sets in. For example, let’s say you looked at a new set of paintbrushes online, while you’re logged into a web store that has your e-mail address on file. You leave the site without buying the paintbrushes, and after a bit, you forget all about them.

Next thing you know, you get an e-mail from that website advertising the very paintbrushes you looked at before! This is one of the tricks of personalization programs-they remember what you looked at, then proactively use that information to tailor their ads right to you.

When I was younger, I imagined that in the future, it would be cool if TV stations knew what products you had already bought, so you didn’t have to watch commercials for those things. A modest ambition, maybe, but darn it, I hate commercials! And while we’re not quite to that point yet, the way that personalization programs work is remarkably similar-because they remember everything you look at and everything you buy, they don’t waste your time with irrelevant advertising. If only I’d actually invented it!

Online Shopping Banner Ads

Personalized online shopping and marketing strategies take plenty of other forms, too. For example, have you ever noticed that you tend to see banner and display ads for websites you’ve already visited? When you leave a website without making a purchase or contacting them-what they call “converting”-you can be on the receiving end of retargeting. This is when the website’s marketing tries to bring you back, and the strategy can be as simple or complex as the site wants.

For example, instead of just showing you a display ad for the online store, the display ad itself may be customized to show you a picture of a product you looked at and didn’t buy. It’s like if you could open up a magazine, and every ad was something you had already thought about buying.

Forget about Big Brother

So in the end, you can relax. You don’t have to bolt your door real tight, or be afraid to wash your hair-no matter how smart these algorithms and engines get, nobody is actually watching you. The Internet is full of codes, programs and little tricks that keep an eye on your shopping habits, but it’s not fundamentally different from how an in-store salesperson works-just more efficient. Your computer just wants to help, and hey, if you’re like me, you need all the shopping help you can get!

More Info about Online Shopping

Go behind the scenes of the online industry!

Online Shopping Habits
Are you in the majority?
E-commerce Personalization Software
Get a look at how they do it
How Retargeting Works
See an illustrated example of the technology
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