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But who does the algorithm think I am? Why your networks are filled with strange ads

2022-08-14T10:42:47.370Z


It is common for social networks to be filled with products and offers that do not fit our profile, but this has exploded recently. The explanation is a recent change in the privacy of our mobiles with which not all experts agree.


Iván has no friends or relatives outside of Spain, not one, but YouTube seems to think otherwise.

Every time he searches for a video, he has to attend to an ad first.

"Getting money is easy, the hard part is sending it to Latin America," they blurt out.

It is always the same claim, and with it they try to direct you to a page to make transfers abroad.

As the young man recounts, he does not remember ever having been interested in services like this: "I'm looking for Rosalía and I get these things!"

More extreme is the case of Victor.

The ads invite you to join a Mormon church, the Latter-day Saints.

And even though he, a convinced atheist, is free from sin: he barely uses the networks to read movie reviews, search for tourist destinations and find advice on pets, since he lives with two cats and a dog.

“They also offer me very expensive furniture, far from my purchasing power.

With me the algorithm never gets it right”, he comments.

And like him, so many users on the networks wonder where ads so far removed from his profile come from.

But didn't we say that all our data was crossed on the networks, that Google knew us better than anyone and that even our mobile listens to us to perfect and improve the blessed algorithm?

Something is wrong, so let's review some concepts.

The Algorithm

It is “a computer system responsible for organizing and filtering content.

Each social network has its own.

This is how Patricia SanMiguel, professor of digital marketing at the University of Navarra, defines it.

Much of the technical knowledge listed here is given by her.

By following our behavior on Twitter, for example, the application knows which posts interest us the most, which users we usually interact with, and from which geographical points we launch the most posts.

With this, the social network can detail a profile of each user and always show us what it thinks we will like the most.

Algorithms also decide which ads we see while browsing, based on our interests.

This has been the case since social networks have existed and has not changed at all.

Now, there is something that has changed in the last year, and that explains why advertising is losing some of its aim.

Each application has its own algorithm, we said.

But until now, this has also been nourished by data crossed with other social networks.

Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp belong to Meta, the large conglomerate run by Mark Zuckerberg.

Everything we do in each of these networks feeds the others.

At the same time, applications often buy our data from other companies to refine their filters.

A single search on Google can end up in the algorithm of other platforms, even if they are from the competition.

But this is no longer the case at all.

For a year now, our cell phone has been spying on us a little less than before.

The latest iPhones, released in the fall of 2021, allow customers to block tracking in apps (the phrase “ask the

app

not to track” may be familiar to you).

And what does this mean?

That social networks will continue to accumulate data about our behavior, but they will not share it with each other.

For the first time, the algorithms feed only on what happens in the application that we are using, but not on what we do with the others.

What happens on Twitter, for example, stays on Twitter.

Social networks.DOLE777 / UNSPLASH10/02/2021DOLE777 / UNSPLASH (Europa Press)

That is to say: even if Google finds out that I am at the beach, that information will remain locked up in Google and will not reach Facebook, so this social network will not show me ads for swimsuits or flip flops.

Miriam Bravo, an expert in brand strategy, describes this as "a debacle, since there is a lot of information that is lost."

She has been designing and placing campaigns on social networks for nearly five years.

“Advertisers are still recovering from this blow, due to all the data that falls by the wayside,” she says.

The latest Android operating systems also allow, for the first time, applications to access other mobile resources only while they are running.

That is to say: if we want it that way, WhatsApp will only be able to listen to our microphone when the application is open.

Therefore, throughout a day you will receive less information about us.

This also explains why, for some time now, applications have known us something worse.

But let's go to the other extreme.

Algorithms can make mistakes for not listening to us much, as has been the case for a year, but also for listening too much.

If we are the ones who accept all permissions, instead of blocking them, the applications will know not only where we are, but with whom.

“Once I told a friend that I would be afraid to go paragliding.

And nothing, from then on, Instagram did not stop showing me paragliders.

All the time.

It could have happened because the phone heard it, but also because I had taken a photo with her, that she had been looking at prices on this very thing,” says San Miguel.

If one of our relatives has a hobby, it is common for algorithms to try to tempt us with it.

This advertising criteria is known as similar audiences.

Data contagion can also occur between the personal and professional devices of the same user.

“As a publicist, I keep track of very different brands, from pharmaceuticals to finance companies.

So I have the algorithm quite stunned, ”says Bravo with a laugh.

Again, these data crossings will be more likely as we give more permissions to our mobiles and less common if we restrict them.

There are more reasons why advertising sometimes doesn't hit us.

The criteria of some brands may be rather outdated and seek an excessive impact, but imprecise.

When August arrives, for example, an alarm company hires advertising on Instagram, always in exchange for at least two million people seeing it.

Being a very high figure, "the social network may have an easy time finding that first million ideal profiles, close to the perfect client, but it will be more difficult to reach the second, so it pulls viewers further away," explains SanMiguel.

That is to say: Instagram will show the ad, first, to personalized users.

These are those who have already been interested in alarms in their internet searches.

Then there will be those who match a sociological portrait: they live in a chalet, own a house or are part of large families with second homes.

Adding it all up, maybe they'll get that first million viewers, and among very likely customers, too.

But of course, you have to reach the second million impacts that the company has contracted.

And there it is time to pull more disparate profiles, although they can never afford an alarm or a robbery is the last of their worries.

“There are also brands that sell a very expensive product, so they advertise indiscriminately.

With the closing of a single deal, they have already amortized the entire campaign”, adds Bravo.

One more reason why algorithms sometimes surprise us: social networks reserve the display of ads, themselves and on their own, to groups discarded by the advertiser.

"A brand may think that women are not interested in architecture, but Facebook may have a different opinion," says Bravo.

Apps return results to advertisers, but they don't always tell how they got them.

Thus, companies only know that one social network has worked better than another, but they are left without the magic recipe.

Therefore, it is better for them to invest again in those platforms with which they have had a good result.

Bravo adds another revealing anecdote: during the pandemic, advertising dropped so much on social networks that she herself came across ads that she would never have imagined.

“There was hardly any competition, so apps filled in the gaps with what little there was.

A tarot reader appeared to me who had recorded herself in her own house, ”she recalls.

As an account, on Facebook you can dump campaigns from very little money.

Five euros is enough.

Applications like TikTok do impose a minimum investment on brands, plus the cost of creating video advertising, and not just fixed image, as other social networks allow.

The usual thing, in any case, is that users identify what may have inspired the algorithm.

Even so, sometimes this ends up being annoying.

Looking at the price of a flat on the Internet, even if it happens only once, can mean that all the ads that appear when reading the newspaper or wandering through social networks are for similar apartments, both in price, location or size.

"This 2022, Instagram is abusing advertising, and this will end up playing against it," says SanMiguel.

Meanwhile, in Spain a fashion already present in North America is beginning to take hold, such as applications that allow us to block advertising while browsing and forget about it.

At the moment, both here and there, these are perfectly legal.

But then, do we let the phone listen to us or not?

“From a political position, I understand the movements for privacy.

Now, as users, we will miss many things that interest us”, says Bravo.

The price of intimacy, as he says, is that the networks will be more clumsy and will bombard us with ads and content that have nothing to do with us.

“The important thing is to be aware, and then we'll see if we put a sticker on the laptop camera.

For now, Google and Meta promise that our data is blind, that it does not bear our name.

From here, the paths separate.

There are those who appreciate receiving emails because the sneakers of their dreams have fallen in price, but there are those who don't", reflects SanMiguel, and recommends the documentary

El dilemma de las networks

, which we can see on Netflix.

She is in favor of helping the algorithm with a very simple gesture: letting it know that an advertisement does not interest us, as the applications themselves allow us.

"Even if it's selfish, because our experience as users will be better, I prefer to collaborate."

By the way: networks may stop showing you paragliding ads.

She has already overcome her fear and even appears, in her photos on her networks, portrayed the day she got on one.

Let the algorithms take note.

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Source: elparis

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