Advertising

 Over the past few years, I have noticed more and more advertisements on the internet that are from or relate to sites that I have recently been on.  For example, the other day I was visiting the online Tommy Hilfiger store, and my following trip to Youtube produced a Tommy Hilfiger advertisement. This occurred multiple times over the next few days on Yahoo, Google and Youtube. This seems to occur quite often with other sites that I visit such as Best Buy, Amazon or Dick's Sporting Goods. For me, I have only ever had retailers pop up in the advertisements, nothing else relating to other sites I had visited. To my surprise though, I have even seen the exact item I have been looking at in the advertisements. One day I had been looking for some new shoes on Amazon and shortly after an  Amazon advertisement popped up with the exact pair of shoes I was looking at in the advertisement. This has happened on multiple occasions, so it wasn't just a coincidence.  

When I first saw these advertisements, I was shocked that these sites which were not affiliated with one another had information about my history on the internet. I read an article that Google was starting to do this, so I just figured it wasn't a big deal. If anything it may seem like a convenience to some, a direct  link back to their online store with the specific item already picked out. But the more you ponder the idea of privacy and the internet, the more you start to despise this method of advertising by Google, Yahoo and other big name sites. If anything, it can be compared to peer pressure. The constant advertising of items that you may have decided not to purchase being brought back up and constantly being thrown in your face between every Google search and before every Youtube video.

It's insane that this is even allowed by the government, you would think that they would want to be the only ones allowed to spy. But in the world that we live in, where a 30 minute TV program is only about 20 minutes long and the commercials take up the rest, it's not surprising. I am sure that it is an incredible tool to those doing the advertising and marketing. It's no longer hit and miss with advertisements, at least not most of the time, because you are simply advertising previously visited sites. In the end, I don't believe this type of advertising should be allowed, because it treads all over our privacy and freedom. It's bad enough the government is allowed to spy, but that's for our safety. Allowing these marketing businesses to spy on us is simply unconstitutional.