It’s easy and it started with that.
Edit: The services I’m talking about have fees. Barrier to entry prevents knowledge and usage. There are hundreds of services that provide this, all to different degrees of quality. But you could just Google “UTM Generator” and, assuming you set up a free GA4 account and set it up on your site, congrats, you’re now using cookies to track purchases based on link clicks to your website. Very easy and literally free.
Google is not the ads industry. Google is a small part of it. I know ad sellers that partner with Google and 60 other data brokers to know when you’re taking a shit.
Cookies don’t even matter for advertising anymore. They don’t need them. You leave breadcrumbs everywhere. Literally where you are, your wifi connection, browser used, browser build, device used, screen size, Google account logged into a browser, just to name a few. They string all this stuff together over days, weeks, years… you’ll slip up at some point no matter how diligent you are with something big, like that Google account login, a share from social media… there’s so much more lol
Some advertisers know their market and pinpoint, others just drag net to see what sticks. You’re getting the equivalent of cold calling for ads. If you show interest in something even once, you’re a target.
Edit: All advertisers are not geniuses. If they’re serving you the same ad for a thing that is not consumable, then one of two things happened. First, their tracking pixel at checkout was not able to associate you with your purchase. Maybe they set it up correctly or there was an error. Maybe you saw the ad on your phone and bought on your computer without enough common data points to connect them both to you. Second, the advertiser may not have set their campaign to stop serving after you converted, which is a total waste of their money. Laugh at them.
I dabble in marketing for my company. Let me just say advertisers don’t need a damn cookie to know who you are to serve you ads. Even across multiple devices. There are so many methods… literally over a dozen when cross referenced tells companies exactly who you are, even on vpn, even incognito.
It really, really depends where you live.
The worst part is your job thinking you can work infinite hours because you dont have a kid. Its a fucked up tax.
They wanted $30k for like 6k envelopes a year for my company. With Conga Sign, it was less than $5k for UNLIMITED. They didn’t adjust pricing with competition. They need to shrink or go extinct.
Get out of my head
I can tell you from experience. You definitely can’t, but I can start and run an online e-commerce business by myself to give you a shoestring budget.
So that being said, if using Shopify for ecommerce, Adobe for creative, paying for your domain name with Namecheap, and registering your business with your local government, it costs me about $220/mo to run an ecomm business by myself.
Realistically, you could use open source replacements for Adobe products too, but I like their stock imagery as well. Take that out, and you’re at about $120/mo plus processing fees for each transaction.
If you don’t need an e-commerce site, you can use something like light speed for a free website. Even WordPress. Add free social media for a boost.
So now this means you’re down to only $20/mo if not using an e-commerce site.
You can learn everything you need to run these sites between dev docs, support articles, forums, blogs, and YouTube videos. All free.
Uptown funky butt
Scuba Steve and Dusty Dan
I’m still trying, but I found this gem and I just had to share: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Dirty_Duck
The plot:
Willard Isenbaum, a lonely insurance man with wild sexual fantasies, decides to ask out the new secretary, Susie, whom he has only known for a day and to whom he has never spoken. He spends the entire morning before work fantasizing about having sex with her, but his attempts to approach her fail. His female boss sends him to investigate a claim filed by Painless Martha, an aging tattoo artist, who works in the city. Martha believes in a Ouija board message saying that she will be “killed by a bomb delivered by a wizard on Tuesday”.
When Willard tells her that the insurance company will not pay until her death, she dies of a heart attack [after an explosion noise]. Her will stipulates that her killer must take care of her duck. After the duo spend a night in jail, the duck takes Willard to a brothel. After a wild night of partying, they wind up in the desert, where the duck dresses Willard in women’s clothing in an attempt to get a ride. After several encounters with an old prospector dying of thirst, a racist police officer, a lesbian couple, and a short Mexican “bandito”, they are finally picked up by a trucker.
Back at his apartment, Willard creates a makeshift sex object, which the duck eats. Shortly after, Willard discovers that the duck is female, and has sex with her. The following morning, Willard and the duck go to Willard’s job, where Willard has sex with his female boss and quits his job shortly after. Willard and the duck leave, and the movie ends with Willard saying that the duck was a good duck after all.>
Steam link works on many oculus devices now. You can have the best of both worlds. Cheap VR platforms and cheap, moddable games through Steam.
Or people behind know you’re not jamming on the breaks when someone is or has already turned, it’s just the car doing it…
Just recycled my printer due to this. Totally worth the inconvenience to not support shitty practices and the environmental impact of so many personal printers that only get used once or twice a year before ink dries.
Interesting. Who is the seemingly random person posting on a forum about human biomes? Do you have a peer reviewed paper on it?
I did one once where it was like 400 toggles. Took me 10 minutes. I did it just to see how ridiculous it was. I don’t remember what site it was but I definitely never went back.