Retargeting In Online Politics

15 minute read | Last updated 11-Sep-2019 |  Privacy

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Bad Robot Transcript

Morning, everybody. How you doing today on this episode of the show. We’re going to talk about retargeting. Now what got this idea spinning in my head was an article that dropped on CBC News yesterday talking about how Federal members of parliament are in Canada and had a variety of tracking cookies and Technologies on their personal websites.

Now, that’s an important story and actually covered it really. Well. It went through to understand what the technology was how it could potentially track you it’s a great article as you can see here and I’ll obviously put the link in the description, but I wanted to cover this a little more specific than and the reason why it is highly expected that a federal election will be called so that Canadians will be heading to the polls on October 21st.

Yes, October 21st this year. That’s how fast Canadian elections happen, but it’s also highly respected that digital will play a critical role moving forward in this election. And one of those things is this technique is technology set called retargeting now, First things first. It’s no reason to be alarmed at the CDC piece of both the individual and peas at new or websites and how they’re tracking because that’s how digital tracking Works across the web.

So you don’t need to be politically alarm due to be alarmed overall. In fact, I was actually surprised at how poorly the politicians are actually using this technology digital markers and marketers know that retargeting is an extremely powerful thing. And if you use it correctly that can really promote your business and that being said it’s really invasive and I don’t agree with it personally.

I think there are privacy implications and in the context of politics, especially within Canada where we have strong privacy legislation, we have the Privacy Commissioners. I think there needs to be clear guidelines around it, but let’s get into what it is. Exactly. The concept is pretty straightforward. What it is is when you visit a website, you’re unlikely to convert the first time which means if you go to a website to buy a new witch, It’s unlikely that you’re going to buy that with you.

The first time what retargeting does is put a cookie on to your browser. So some little unique individual identifier and whether that’s directly from the website for throwing add Network and what. Does is now identifies that Mark went to widgets iPhone. And now when I go to other places that gives it the ability for an ad Network to show me ads for that widget.

So I’ve been retargeted. So I was originally targeted with an ad that Drew me to the to the property to to see about widgets. I didn’t buy but they cookies me. So now I’m in the way that cookie works as it’s in the network not to the site. So it doesn’t pop up any security warnings when I go to other places and now I’m going to see answer that widget everywhere.

I go see NFL rumor about like a my phone’s listening to me yet most the time that’s retargeting at work and the Spooky fact of like a my phone was new conversation. And that’s why I’m getting these ads that’s The gut feeling that you should have when you hear the word retargeting the idea from a marketing perspective is pretty straightforward.

You showed some level of interest you came to the widget site and you looked so if I can hit you with some other messages about how great those widgets are. Maybe you’re going to come back and buy shift gears think about the political context is why I said originally the opening I was disappointed to see how the effectively they were using it because it doesn’t bode well about the dangers in the challenges in the possibilities of digital technology when it comes to elections at least here in Canada.

If a members site has this type of digital ad technology on it right into very very commonplace. So if you’re using Google analytics, you can leverage it if you’re using any number of Technologies for tracking what’s going on on your website, you can use retargeting if I was an MP If I Was A Member of Parliament what I would be doing that anyone went to my personal site or my campaign Site retargeting them is a great way to raise awareness around issue.

So there’s a positive aspect of this if you visit Mark the MP’s site and now I have an issue that I want to get your attention on saying like a do we really care about on this redistricting or do we care about this new piece of legislation? I could use a digital ad campaign to raise awareness to my constituents because I could Target that add it’s the only show this ad to people who have that cookie because they went to my site.

So retargeting let you narrow down that Focus to something very very specific and that’s really really powerful deposit contact using an example of negative context. What it means is you can start to leverage the same kind of techniques. We see on social media on Facebook and on Twitter because they have behavioral profiles.

It’s basically a retargeting environment by default and we saw that Adam you see that in there the great hack for the big hack on Netflix was a good example of brexit on You always are good for the movie examples of why this kind of technology is really really dangerous.

So we saw that Mo if he holy Vu campaign for brexit we saw with Cambridge analytica because essentially what you can do and I’m malicious perspective to say. Hey, I know you showed interest in a left-leaning message. I’m going to show you stuff that’s going to bring you to the right or I show a saw you I showed interest in something that traditionally viewed as right and I’m going to start showing you messages that bring you to the left now on Facebook and social media app happening there was it that was done repeatedly.

It was a really fast feedback loops of that. It was pulling you ever so slightly more and more and more constantly over the course of days and weeks so that fact that you had a radically different opinion when the campaign started on that is retargeting taken to the example.

Should we have regulation around this absolutely. Can you do something to protect yourself? Absolutely install an ad blocker turn on all the things that stop tracking so go freeze a good one. I’m using a one-block. I think on my Max and on my iOS devices is there is the ability for you to stop what’s happening on your device.

If you can’t stop what’s happening out on the site and but you can prevent these tracking Technologies from working and by enabling our privacy and enhancing software on your browser’s by using ad blockers. Almost every I block her out there has an auntie tracking feature Auntie tracking set of control and be forewarned some things do break when you turn this kind of thing on so for me, I use a social media sharing application called buffer.

Basically what it does is give me a little button in my browser where I can say like a cliff cuz I want to share this one. So show me whatever I’m looking at right now if I turn off this type of if I turn on the Santa tracking that kind of thing breaks because they’re using the same kind of cross domain cookie to keep me logged in.

Being said I do Switch to my mobile device and on here. I use the sharing would you would you set up by default to allow that type of activity without tracking me? So there are differences again. I’ll put links to everything down below but not in a nutshell is retargeting Adam if used everyday in an add contacts temp companies are doing this to try to focus the digital advertising to be far more specific to get you to buy that which it in the political context.

I think people are just waking up to it here in Canada. I think things are far more mature in the states and obviously in brexit and that whole campaign things were taken to a very big extreme but I think these types of technologies have a very dangerous and pack when you’re unaware of them at what do you think? Let me know hit me up online at Mark and seeing the comment down below and as always buying you don’t meet at Mark end.

CA here in Canada. It’s going to be an interesting next 30-plus days as we wrap up to yet another federal election. I’m going to be looking closely to see how social media and digital tools are used. So if you have any questions along that line, let me know. I’m and stay tuned for more.

Around this topic. Have a great day, and I’ll see you on the next episode of the show. Morning, everybody. How you doing today on this episode of the show. We’re going to talk about retargeting. Now what got this idea spinning in my head was an article that dropped on CBC News yesterday talking about how Federal members of parliament are in Canada and had a variety of tracking cookies and Technologies on their personal websites.

Now, that’s an important story and actually covered it really. Well. It went through to understand what the technology was how it could potentially track you it’s a great article as you can see here and I’ll obviously put the link in the description, but I wanted to cover this a little more specific than and the reason why it is highly expected that a federal election will be called so that Canadians will be heading to the polls on October 21st.

Yes, October 21st this year. That’s how fast Canadian elections happen, but it’s also highly respected that digital will play a critical role moving forward in this election. And one of those things is this technique is technology set called retargeting now, First things first. It’s no reason to be alarmed at the CDC piece of both the individual and peas at new or websites and how they’re tracking because that’s how digital tracking Works across the web.

So you don’t need to be politically alarm due to be alarmed overall. In fact, I was actually surprised at how poorly the politicians are actually using this technology digital markers and marketers know that retargeting is an extremely powerful thing. And if you use it correctly that can really promote your business and that being said it’s really invasive and I don’t agree with it personally.

I think there are privacy implications and in the context of politics, especially within Canada where we have strong privacy legislation, we have the Privacy Commissioners. I think there needs to be clear guidelines around it, but let’s get into what it is. Exactly. The concept is pretty straightforward. What it is is when you visit a website, you’re unlikely to convert the first time which means if you go to a website to buy a new witch, It’s unlikely that you’re going to buy that with you.

The first time what retargeting does is put a cookie on to your browser. So some little unique individual identifier and whether that’s directly from the website for throwing add Network and what. Does is now identifies that Mark went to widgets iPhone. And now when I go to other places that gives it the ability for an ad Network to show me ads for that widget.

So I’ve been retargeted. So I was originally targeted with an ad that Drew me to the to the property to to see about widgets. I didn’t buy but they cookies me. So now I’m in the way that cookie works as it’s in the network not to the site. So it doesn’t pop up any security warnings when I go to other places and now I’m going to see answer that widget everywhere.

I go see NFL rumor about like a my phone’s listening to me yet most the time that’s retargeting at work and the Spooky fact of like a my phone was new conversation. And that’s why I’m getting these ads that’s The gut feeling that you should have when you hear the word retargeting the idea from a marketing perspective is pretty straightforward.

You showed some level of interest you came to the widget site and you looked so if I can hit you with some other messages about how great those widgets are. Maybe you’re going to come back and buy shift gears think about the political context is why I said originally the opening I was disappointed to see how the effectively they were using it because it doesn’t bode well about the dangers in the challenges in the possibilities of digital technology when it comes to elections at least here in Canada.

If a members site has this type of digital ad technology on it right into very very commonplace. So if you’re using Google analytics, you can leverage it if you’re using any number of Technologies for tracking what’s going on on your website, you can use retargeting if I was an MP If I Was A Member of Parliament what I would be doing that anyone went to my personal site or my campaign Site retargeting them is a great way to raise awareness around issue.

So there’s a positive aspect of this if you visit Mark the MP’s site and now I have an issue that I want to get your attention on saying like a do we really care about on this redistricting or do we care about this new piece of legislation? I could use a digital ad campaign to raise awareness to my constituents because I could Target that add it’s the only show this ad to people who have that cookie because they went to my site.

So retargeting let you narrow down that Focus to something very very specific and that’s really really powerful deposit contact using an example of negative context. What it means is you can start to leverage the same kind of techniques. We see on social media on Facebook and on Twitter because they have behavioral profiles.

It’s basically a retargeting environment by default and we saw that Adam you see that in there the great hack for the big hack on Netflix was a good example of brexit on You always are good for the movie examples of why this kind of technology is really really dangerous.

So we saw that Mo if he holy Vu campaign for brexit we saw with Cambridge analytica because essentially what you can do and I’m malicious perspective to say. Hey, I know you showed interest in a left-leaning message. I’m going to show you stuff that’s going to bring you to the right or I show a saw you I showed interest in something that traditionally viewed as right and I’m going to start showing you messages that bring you to the left now on Facebook and social media app happening there was it that was done repeatedly.

It was a really fast feedback loops of that. It was pulling you ever so slightly more and more and more constantly over the course of days and weeks so that fact that you had a radically different opinion when the campaign started on that is retargeting taken to the example.

Should we have regulation around this absolutely. Can you do something to protect yourself? Absolutely install an ad blocker turn on all the things that stop tracking so go freeze a good one. I’m using a one-block. I think on my Max and on my iOS devices is there is the ability for you to stop what’s happening on your device.

If you can’t stop what’s happening out on the site and but you can prevent these tracking Technologies from working and by enabling our privacy and enhancing software on your browser’s by using ad blockers. Almost every I block her out there has an auntie tracking feature Auntie tracking set of control and be forewarned some things do break when you turn this kind of thing on so for me, I use a social media sharing application called buffer.

Basically what it does is give me a little button in my browser where I can say like a cliff cuz I want to share this one. So show me whatever I’m looking at right now if I turn off this type of if I turn on the Santa tracking that kind of thing breaks because they’re using the same kind of cross domain cookie to keep me logged in.

Being said I do Switch to my mobile device and on here. I use the sharing would you would you set up by default to allow that type of activity without tracking me? So there are differences again. I’ll put links to everything down below but not in a nutshell is retargeting Adam if used everyday in an add contacts temp companies are doing this to try to focus the digital advertising to be far more specific to get you to buy that which it in the political context.

I think people are just waking up to it here in Canada. I think things are far more mature in the states and obviously in brexit and that whole campaign things were taken to a very big extreme but I think these types of technologies have a very dangerous and pack when you’re unaware of them at what do you think? Let me know hit me up online at Mark and seeing the comment down below and as always buying you don’t meet at Mark end.

CA here in Canada. It’s going to be an interesting next 30-plus days as we wrap up to yet another federal election. I’m going to be looking closely to see how social media and digital tools are used. So if you have any questions along that line, let me know. I’m and stay tuned for more.

Around this topic. Have a great day, and I’ll see you on the next episode of the show.