I recently asked you to tell me what ads you see on my blog. My question was, does WordPress randomly assign ads, some of which might embarrass me to death…. or does each person see ads that reflect his/her browsing history?
Well, you can un-bate your breath now… I’m about to divulge the results of that informal poll, answering the question for each ad: User or Random?
Kayak Travel: 3+ sightings. Frequent and/or world travelers. Clearly user-oriented.
Restaurants: 2 people reporting multiple sightings. Everyone loves to eat, so that’s neutral.
Clothing catalog site: 1 sighting, by a customer of that site. User!
Quilting ads: multiple sightings by my Quiltapalooza friend. User!
Used vehicle dealer: 1 sighting. My guess is Random.
“Pam” cooking spray: 1 sighting. Unless the reader had been searching online to find out whether he could get a buzz from inhaling the spray, I’m calling this one Random.
Score: 5+ user-oriented ads, 2 probably random, 2 neutral so they don’t count.
There you have it: WordPress usually shows you ads based on your browsing history.
So, it’s not me… It’s YOU.
Oddly enough, though, when I logged out and opened this blog without signing in, here are the two ads I saw under a recent post:
Nothing to do with the post or with anything I’ve ever browsed.
Maybe the Randoms are catching up!
Thanks for reading,
Jan
Jan C Johnson, Writer 
No, I wasn’t trying to get a buzz from inhaling Pam cooking spray.
I don’t think it’s totally us, you’re faithful readers, either. 🙂 The two ads that opened with this blog post were both from Kayak, which you happened to mention in this post. I have not used Kayak, but WordPress likely has discovered I travel a great deal. I almost never eat out–there aren’t exactly restaurants in PNG–and have never seen an ad for restaurants, here or anywhere else. But you have have it tagged as a keyword in this article, and I believe you have blogged about eating out recently.
My guess is that WordPress uses an algorithm that combines what it knows of your previous blog posts, the cookies it finds on your computer, the particular blog post itself, the cookies it finds on the reader’s computer, and probably a profile it has on file of the particular reader.
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That seems to be a sound theory from someone who knows the “Interwebs” better than I do. Soooo….. what you’re saying is, “It’s complicated.”
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Uh…sorry. I went into tech mode. I haven’t done a lot of research into it, not nearly as much as some, but I have looked at it a time or two. I guess the shorter explanation is that the ads displayed are probably based on a combination of the content of the post, what is known about who’s writing it, and what is known about who’s reading it.
So, for example, I think you have blogged about travel. WordPress probably has an inkling one way or another that I have traveled extensively. You mentioned “Kayak” in your post. Voila! I see two ads for Kayak.
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Big Brother is watching all of us!
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