How come the Art.com ad is showing all my recent searches?

[Anonymous]

Jeff, one of your ads is for Art.com, and it shows all the art I recently looked at. How come?

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:Jeff, one of your ads is for Art.com, and it shows all the art I recently looked at. How come?

Big Brother Google is watching you. Actually, I can't be sure. I've never seen an Art.com ad. All I can say is that the ads here are all supplied by Google's Adsense program. Recently, Google opened Adsense to other ad networks. Therefore, some of the ads here don't actually come from Google, but from other ad networks that use Google's distribution system. All ad networks use cookies. When you browse other websites that have ads on them, the ad networks are storing cookies on your machine that they use to identify you. They basically track your Internet usage and collect information about you. Then, they use that information to target what they believe to be appropriate ads. So, you browse art sites, the ad networks make a note of that, then you come here and they think, "This person likes art, let's display ads about art".