this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
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Answer is no. Google Ads doesn't work that way. If you perceive such a coincidence, it just happened by chance or you or your wife sent out other signals that buying new shoes is a topic for you.
None of that happened though. It was on a long car trip, no Internet web browsing done, and no previous searches done from home.
The only time shoes were relevant was a verbal discussion in the vehicle.
~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~
Still a high chance for a coincidence. And the human mind tends to see patterns to structure the world. Shoe advertisement is not particularly rare in the web.
How? Its an isolated environment where the conversation is being had.
Its an explicit viewing of a commercial of a type that is not normally seen. Not exactly a pattern.
I never saw any on YouTube until the evening of that conversation. /shrug
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Coincidence in the sense that the ad that you saw had absolutely no connection to your talk. It was just a random ad. No all advertisements are targeted precisely. I work in the field and a lot of campaigns on YouTube are just targeted to a selected YT-channel, or a topic like sport videos, or maybe an age group. That's all. You see an ad because you watched a channel. Like on TV.
I'm willing to admit that's possible, but when I haven't seen any for a couple of years (truly), and then see one the same evening, that seems like more than just a coincidence to me. /shrug
~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~