The internet ad system sometimes runs backwards

I buy Hagerty insurance for my new to me Miata and everyday I receive Hagerty ads.  You're late to the party, pal!  

In reply to Noddaz :

Yeah, I love how you buy something and only get ads for that for weeks. You're behind the curve, I already know about your product and own it, I don't need to be told about it anymore

Want to screw with an office mate?   Wait til they go for coffee and type "erection problems" into their search engine.

In reply to Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) :

It is a good thing I wasn't drinking anything when I read this.  And I know just who to do that to.   

My mother crabs about this "smart" marketing because she'll buy my father a present for his birthday or Christmas or what-have-you, and then the internet browser on their laptop will only show ads for whatever she for weeks at a time. She's always worried it's going to spoil the surprise.

Your internet has ads?

It is probably organized by the Amazon people who think that because somebody has purchased a toilet seat they want their inbox flooded with other toilet seat options - as if they were a toilet seat fancier.

I use to work in the ad attribution business and this is roughly how the world works these days.

You search for Hagerty on one of the big search engines.  Now Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and all the other big players know you are interested in Hagerty.  Retargeting you with Hagerty ads means Hagerty pays them more money.  If you click on a Hagerty ad, Google & co get paid dollars instead of fractions of a penny.  Showing people the product they just searched for is known to have a 10x or bigger conversion rate compared to a random ad for the item.

At some point, you signup for a Hagerty policy.  Hagerty doesn't tell anyone either because they are serious about privacy or nobody is willing to pay what they are asking or their system is so old/slow that it takes days to weeks to get the user signup data out the door.  Google & co still send you Hagerty ads and Hagerty still pays (relatively) big bucks for ad impressions and ad clicks on those ads.  Google & co don't know you have a Hagerty account and Hagerty doesn't exactly know who Google is targeting.

On the one hand, you have no privacy.  On the other, you have just enough privacy for this all to be pretty annoying.  We truly live in a utopia.

I still get ads for a really expensive exhaust for a Cayman that I bought years ago now. How many Caymans does a man need that need the same exhaust?

I recently starting seeing Maaco ads featuring a white NA Miata. 

Youtube is showing me 2-3 Summit Racing ads per video.

If there was any company that didn't need to advertise to me it's summit racing. I'm aware of them.

It's pissing me off so much my next order will probably go to Jegs.