Newsletters following site visits

Russinating · 19 Sep 2017 at 09:27

Has anyone else noticed this occurring more frequently and quicker than ever before (if it even did happen before)? Basically I've noticed that when I visit a website, often with 24-48h I'll receive an email newsletter from them to one of my Gmail accounts. I'm not suggesting I've been subscribed without my knowledge, but it seems that Google look at what you visit and un-spam emails from sites you've already subscribed to and recently visited.

It's happened with MSE whereby I visited to compare cards and that evening I received their newsletter, and today I've received a newsletter from a very obscure camera equipment maker who's website I visited at work yesterday.

If so then it's very clever and can actually be useful, but also a little cheeky if you've marked something as spam in the past.

Or is it just me on a confirmation bias rollercoaster?

FL630 · 19 Sep 2017 at 15:19

Never had that happen to me, but I do see a strong correlation as to what I talk about and then suddenly adverts appear about such topics. I might be going full-on tinfoil hat, but I detest the game of football, I mentioned it only once the other day on the phone comparing the cost of my golf shoes to that of football boots. Having never looked at football websites or sports websites I suddenly start seeing football boot adverts on google add spaces?

Weird.

Daaaavvveee · 19 Sep 2017 at 15:21

FL630 said:
Never had that happen to me, but I do see a strong correlation as to what I talk about and then suddenly adverts appear about such topics. I might be going full-on tinfoil hat, but I detest the game of football, I mentioned it only once the other day on the phone comparing the cost of my golf shoes to that of football boots. Having never looked at football websites or sports websites I suddenly start seeing football boot adverts on google add spaces?

Weird.

Don't some Android phones listen for key words? Then advertise to you. Pretty sure someone at work was saying it has happened to them quite often.

FL630 · 19 Sep 2017 at 15:30

Daaaavvveee said:
Don't some Android phones listen for key words? Then advertise to you. Pretty sure someone at work was saying it has happened to them quite often.

I've just switched to Android but I saw a lot of it on iOS too. I mean, correlation isn't causation, but it's a bit creepy.