Ok, so. Earlier today I was watching the Technology Connections video about how Power is energy over time. In the video he shows a picture of an Anker Solix powerbank to illustrate the concept of energy storage. I’ve never seen or heard of this product before.
An hour later I’m reading an article on Lemmy, and there is an ad for that same powerbank.
What explains this? Some explanations I can think of:
- Random chance.
- Google scans YouTube videos for information about what products appear in them, and knows that I watched the video, and that I’m the same person now reading the article. It then gives this information to everyone in the ad-selling marketplace, so the Anker ad company can bid high to show me an ad.
- Google is observing what appears on my screen in order to sell this info to advertisers.
I think 2 is most likely given Occam’s Razor, but I didn’t think Google scanned yt videos like this.
Is there something I’m missing?
I was watching on an Android phone, on Tubular. My browser is IronFox. I’m surprised that Google can follow my activity from one app to the other… this is probably based on IP address, but I wonder what other device fingerprinting tubular and IronFox expose…
There is simpler explanation. People who watched this video acvtualy buy the product more often then people who didn’t.
So it flaged you as someone potentially interested and selected you when advertisers chose to target people similar to their actuall historical clients.
(I’m not saying they don’t scan videos. I’m saying they don’t have to do it to achieve effect like this)
I doubt this because it is not a product people would buy in any volume, and was just used to illustrate a random point. Also the video has been out less than 24 hours. I don’t think it’s likely in this case.
But on the other hand, if millions of people watch something, I guess some percentage will buy the thing they see… huh.
Thanks for this suggestion.
Wait a second, how would Anker/Amazon know that people who watch the video are likely to buy that item? Would Google send Amazon the exact watch history of each customer and they identify videos in common?
YouTube doesn’t share exact user info. But, google ads platform does have the metrics and can show the Amazon seller statistics of interest when buying ad prints on YouTube videos. Like search terms and referral links click right after or before the video played.
This happens automatically and virtually without human intervention though. It’s just bots talking to bots talking to bots. It all happens in milliseconds after you click play. By the time your web browser has started loading the player, yt opened a bid for the ad spot, thousands of companies chose to bid on that video based on a myriad of parameters and statistics, a winner was chosen based on pledged money, then a video ad is loaded to the server ready to play.
GAds assigns every video several keywords, based on information from the uploader, then watches user behavior to assign meta tags. Videos are scanned, to search for curse words, nudity, copyright and other offending material automatically. I don’t think they scan for objects shown in the video to assign tags about the kind of product, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility.
It’s interesting to me that they scan the video, and then know that I watched it (on tubular) when I’m visiting a completely unrelated website in a different browser, and serve me an ad there.
This is what the big deal about cookies and privacy is all about.
Yeah I’m just not sure how it has cookies since I used tubular…
Fingerprinting. If they don’t have a cookie, they’ll link other information that they have to figure out with pretty decent accuracy who you are
This must be it. Especially since they have my IP address it must be an easy fingerprint
It does digest what’s being said in the video and compare it to the other videos you watch. To better personalize your experience.
It’s definitely personalized, even though I had turned all of that off, since tubular interacts with YouTube without logging in.
Google scans YouTube videos for information about what products appear in them
Yes, but not specifically looking for products. They’re scanning to try to learn everything about the video with the goal of better matching suggestions to the interests (as determined by watch history) of viewers.
The intention is (as always) to increase viewer session time because the more time viewers spend on the platform, the more ads they see and ultimately the more money YouTube makes.
Of course, that scanning and view history can also be used to target ads with the goal of increasing ad click-thru and conversion (ultimately also driving the profit goal)
I guess it’s in the same category as those automatic ads that say “cop this look” and offer to sell you products that appear in a photo on a website.
The words in the video are certainly captured. The guy didn’t say what is was or put it in the video’s description?
No, but there was text on screen in the video saying what it was, and that it wasn’t an endorsement.
Here’s the section in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOK5xkFijPc&t=2999
He doesn’t speak its name, it’s just visible on screen.
One thought would be comments. People could have talked about the product there
I haven’t seen it in the comments yet, except for my comment that I had seen an ad for it.
I mean, there’s 6000 comments lol
It was on screen for a few seconds and not the point of the video.
Still, doesn’t seem crazy for a few comments to be about it
It does to me, but ymmv. On the other hand there is at least one now because I made one.
Is it an Anker? Because I see an Anker on that timestamp. If so, seems it’s the same for everyone? So just a coincidence as I suspected. Let me know if I’m misunderstanding.
My guess is it’s coincidence and that the powerbank company has just paid for a lot of ad space recently for similar topics. See if you can confidently reproduce it a few times. If so, I’ll change my opinion.
I’m only saying this because I have never once had this happen. However my mobile browser clears history every time on close. Does yours? I personally disabled “Android System Intelligence” as that’s responsible for a lot of app personalization on Android phones.
Could also be that you have some sorta BS toggle turned on on your Android phone where it personalizes ads. You may want to check.
Do you think there is information YouTube wouldn’t collect about you even if they could be better at selling ads to people based on it?
Do you live somewhere with data protection laws? If so you could request a dump of all personally identifying data they hold on you.
There’s a fourth Option.
It could be a new marketing strategy. Post and push a video on Lemmy that involves a power bank, and advertise said power bank also on Lemmy.
It’s a bit of an odd Video anyways to make it to the front of Lemmy, especially considering that long videos usually never make it to the front.
Neither the video, nor the ad were on Lemmy. The ad was an automated ad on a random article I found on Lemmy. The kind where behind the scenes, the ad vendor auctions off the space and your information to the bot that’s the highest bidder
