Curious on how online advertising works

Cookies that find key words. Play per click

I once had a friend send me a link for a funny tshirt at one of them online tshirt places. My TD Mobile ads are now all online tshirt shops all the time. So your internet history obviously has a lot to do with it

And now my current TD Mobile ad is for an Assisted Living facility. Google knows I'm old. FML.

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does that mean your ads on TD are different from my ads?

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Not necessarily but quite likely.

It's pretty simple how it works actually. As a page is delivered to the browser the dynamic add code looks at several things. The meta tags within the page which are just simple key words that define at a high level what content is on the page but the more real time part is it looks at all the text in the page and crosswalks any keyword to the adds keyword. So for your purse example on the rendered page was "purse" and the add is saved with that keyword somewhere and a match was made and it delivered the add.

To add to the other comments on cookies. TD has google add services delivering those adds. So any site you visit that has that service on its site will pull your google add services cookie to see the sites you have been to so they can personalize your delivery even further. So an aggregate of the sites you visit in that cookie make up your add filter. If you clear that cookie you will notice that your ads will go back to general/priority content. This is a multibillion dollar business by the way.

I'll try and send you some links, searching for it will be difficult.

The geographic part is based on your IP address. IP addresses are issued out to service providers and can be easily connected to a geographic location. So when your computer gets an address handed to it a website knows with a pretty good accuracy where you are.

She is just trying to understand how they do it in general. She doesn't want to advertise.

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im more intrigued on how google works to target geographic and demographics to get an ad in front of the face of someone who actually clicks on it and checks out a business.

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The geographic part is pretty easy. IP addresses are pretty well mapped out to where they are supposed to be located. Demographics is pretty easy, too, considering Google knows almost everyone's search history, and in many cases their actual name and age via their various services. Obviously, when you search google for something, they are going to show ads about what you're searching for. Those ads will also "follow you around" to most of the millions of sites that use Google's ad services. In addition, those millions of sites that use google ads remember that you visited them, and that information is also used to "profile" you. For example, if you were to search google for "purses", and then visit a particular brand's website, you might see ads for that particular brand of purse on completely unrelated websites. In addition, as someone mentioned, the content of the page you are actually on is also considered and weighted heavily in deciding on which ads to show you.

And all of this is probably tailored to the individual, too. Google is constantly testing and tweaking the programs that decide what each individual would be most likely to click on.

Hope this helps.

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She is just trying to understand how they do it in general. She doesn't want to advertise.

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I know, but the site has a lot of links on the options, etc.

However, I did mention searching for blogs that would outline the process. Here are a couple I found on my search. Good start.

Infographic on Google AdWords process

How Google and 104 other companies are following me on the Web