Ad-ventures of an Online Presence

While online people have something called an advertising identity, that matches ads to their presence and activity online; an advertising identity can be compared for accuracy to a person’s real identity in life. When it comes to having an advertising identity, mine is very similar compared to my real identity in life. Some of the ads that appear when I am on social media or other websites are freakishly relative and a bit creepy, but it helped me learn how broad of an expanse the internet has.

While I do not have a big online presence, and I rarely ever use my social media accounts, but the ads that do pop up when I am online are reasonable for what I do online. I went on a website, that sold t-shirts with sarcastic sayings, to order someone a shirt for Christmas, and afterwards I started getting ads for sarcastic t-shirt websites. Even though the website product was not for me, the advertising identity it gave me was pretty realistic to my real identity; as I have been told that I can be a tad sarcastic at times (all the time). These ads matched my sense of humor and I did not mind them, some of them were pretty entertaining. Another ad-ventorous time, I needed a pair of shoes, so I went on Converse’s website and order a pair of shoes; after that every time I went on other websites, Spotify especially, an ad for the shoes I ordered would pop up each time, but showcasing a different color variation of the shoes. At first I was a bit concerned, but then I realized that out of all of the ads they could have pulled up it was not the worst, so now I just embrace it and admire the different colors that would come up. While it was oddly specific of an ad, it was not far off from my life offline, I do have an interest in Converse and I wear my pair of shoes all of the time. While it is a bit creepy that after viewing these items, they pop up as ads on other websites, the ads are realistic to my actual interests in life.

While I am online, the ads that I get the most that are pretty relative to me and my real identity of interests outside of the internet, are ads for books and authors advertising their newly published books. While browsing different websites, I went on a few to look at books and some other websites to read people’s reviews of some books I was interested in reading. I also looked up a specific author and their series of books to see the order that she wrote them in, and after those multiple searches related to books and authors, a majority of the ads I get online and on social media are for books or authors marketing their new books. This part of my advertising identity is truly fitting to my real identity, my online presence is filled with ads about and related to books and my actual life is filled with books, so much so that I do not have enough room to fit them all. My advertising identity is pretty accurate compared to my actual identity offline, even if it is a bit spooky that the internet knows these things.

Overall my advertisement identity, and my identity in real life, are comparatively close in similarities and it has helped me realize the full extent of the internet’s reach when it comes to personalizing ads.

“Laptop or Book” by dejankrsmanovic is licensed under CC BY 2.0