Arrgghh!! My wife was STALKED by Facebook.

Does she feel violated? Not really, she expects to be stalked by Google & Facebook, it’s 2019 after all. But she would like to know how. How is it that they knew her information? And the thing is, it wasn’t my wife’s information, it was MY information they used to influence her…

So the question…

• Did they listen to our conversation? Surely not!?
• Did they read our WhatsApp messages? Read our Facebook messenger conversations?
• Did Facebook collude with Google?
• Did my Samsung Galaxy phone and my wife’s iPhone collude with Facebook?
• Or is it just our imagination and just a coincidence?

Let me start at the beginning…

I received some sad news last week that my uncle had passed away. Another one was taken away too early. The funeral is in Perth, Western Australia and we’re based in Adelaide.

And so the conversations begin about heading to Perth for the funeral. My wife and I discussed it, I sent Facebook messages to my cousins in Perth and discussed funeral arrangements on WhatsApp with my mum and dad.

The time to came to explore flights. NOW THIS IS THE IMPORTANT BIT…not once did I visit an airline’s website. I simply went to www.skyscanner.com.au (A well-known flight aggregator). Given the current extensive advertising campaign by Trivago, I perhaps should have gone to their site, but old habits die hard and www.skyscanner.com.au received my clicks.

I did the search “Adelaide to Perth” and quickly scanned the results to get an idea of flight times and best prices. Again, NOT once did I proceed any further and I did not visit any airline’s website.  I was now content I had all the information I needed to begin the discussion with my wife.

Now, this is where it gets interesting… That night, my wife received this ad on Facebook…

This was an ad from Jetstar.

Now, I’m not too concerned about this. I am a digital marketer after all and this is what I do for a living. I help my clients with re-targeting and receiving the Jetstar ad can easily be explained away.  For those who don’t know or understand it, Jetstar would have set-up a campaign to deliver ads to people that Facebook has identified as possibly needing to travel in the near future. This in itself is spooky – but I myself do it for my clients, so no big deal…

The reason that my wife received the ad, women normally make the purchasing decision when it comes to flights for the family. Facebook knows we are married and hence the ad went to my wife.

BUT HERE IT IS… the ad mentions “Adelaide to Perth”.

Not only has the information been passed onto Jetstar that I’m in the market for flights, but it knows that I’ll be flying from Adelaide to Perth. How does it know this? How has this information been passed on?

Again, I throw it out there…Neither of us had at this stage been to the Jetstar website.

So did Facebook use voice sampling and listen to our conversation? Surely not!? Did they read our Facebook Messenger conversations, read our supposedly encrypted WhatsApps messages? Did skyscanner.com.au use some sort of script or computer tracking code to then pass my “Search” onto Facebook and Jetstar? Is Samsung and Apple colluding and passing the information on?

Or is just one big coincidence?

Needless to say, I’m flying to Perth this week on Jetstar.

Another successful re-targeting ad story…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Matt Williamson is the Company Director of Digital Marketing Adelaide. He keeps busy doing what he enjoys most – talking. He has a passion for social media and all things digital marketing.

Matt is an internet entrepreneur, social media expert, multiple business owner and digital marketer who specialises in assisting businesses to generate more revenue via the power of online advertising and digital marketing. Matt regularly speaks at events as a keynote speaker focusing on digital marketing & social media.

View Matt’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewdjwilliamson

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