I don't really get the pointed outrage. But this isn't hugely different than anything anybody else does.
- Individual products like AdRoll and Perfect Audience let you track users and show them ads. Ever been to a site and had their ads pop up everywhere afterwards? Ever looked at a product then gotten ads for _just that product_? Yeah, that.
- Google lets you track conversions based on a ton of information. What Google ads users viewed, sure, but also referring site, region, demographic info. Hell, it'll tell you which pages you visited before buying. Everything but the search term you used ... unless the referrer was AdWords.
- Emails all send you unique links, which allow you to do conversion tracking. Hell, you can even embed retargeting pixels in emails, so when you open a company's email, they can serve you ads based on that knowledge.
Every possible way that tech can track you, companies are tracking and advertising with. I get that it's kind of scary, but it's not just Facebook, and a lot of it is the digital equivalent of reading body language on people in your store.
So, yeah, run an ad blocker. But not just for Facebook.
Maybe this is a bit off topic, but I think trjordan's point was really that the tracking/retargeting industry is productized though. Google, Facebook and others ultimately serve as platforms for ads as well as providing tracking software. Meanwhile, companies like Marketo provide pretty advanced tracking/attribution data to the companies that use them. They specifically enable tying device IDs harvested through mobile apps that use their tracking SDKs to be linked with other browsing and email behavior to build extensively customized ad campaigns targeted at specific behavior patterns.
Speaking of retargeting, something fascinating happened to me yesterday: I was using Chrome, and searched for some particular product (e.g. "buy [product] [city]" in the address bar) to see who had it locally available.
After opening a few tabs, I switched back to the address bar and started typing "[store name] " (where [store name] is a department store that sells all sorts of things.)
"[store name] [product]" was the very first suggested search result in the address-bar drop-down.
I don't think the suggested query service includes Adwords results. This would suggest, then, that Google added a retargeting feature for its own sake, to help users; or, in other words, retargeting is something that just falls out of optimizing suggestions for relevancy!
- Individual products like AdRoll and Perfect Audience let you track users and show them ads. Ever been to a site and had their ads pop up everywhere afterwards? Ever looked at a product then gotten ads for _just that product_? Yeah, that.
- Google lets you track conversions based on a ton of information. What Google ads users viewed, sure, but also referring site, region, demographic info. Hell, it'll tell you which pages you visited before buying. Everything but the search term you used ... unless the referrer was AdWords.
- Emails all send you unique links, which allow you to do conversion tracking. Hell, you can even embed retargeting pixels in emails, so when you open a company's email, they can serve you ads based on that knowledge.
Every possible way that tech can track you, companies are tracking and advertising with. I get that it's kind of scary, but it's not just Facebook, and a lot of it is the digital equivalent of reading body language on people in your store.
So, yeah, run an ad blocker. But not just for Facebook.