Targeted advertising relies on sorting vast amounts of personal data with algorithms to produce ads tailored to user behavior and preferences. The business model drives social media and search companies to maximize sharing and clicking. Algorithms sometimes misfire, surfacing bizarre or irrelevant products like prosthetic tongues or hamster leashes. The Wish shopping app spends over $100 million on Facebook ads annually, maintains about 170 million unique products, and uploads over 9 million ads weekly, creating matching challenges. Collections of strange ad examples and sarcastic commentary reveal frequent algorithmic mismatches and prompt reflection on ad targeting accuracy.
Targeted advertising is a huge part of the online experience these days - vast amounts of our personal data are sorted through by algorithms to produce ads supposedly tailor-made to best suit our behavior and preferences. It is big business and the main reason why social media and search engine giants are so keen to keep us sharing and clicking as much and as often as possible.
But they don't always get it right! Unless, of course, there are actually large amounts of people out there on the lookout for a prosthetic tongue, or hamster leash. The super cheap shopping app 'Wish' spends over $100 million on Facebook ads each year, has 170 million unique products to choose from and uploads over 9 million ads every week. That's a lot for the Facebook algorithm to handle and might explain why it often throws up some pretty crazy examples.
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