TV Beer Ads and BA

This may strike some as an odd, conspiratorial, and perhaps unhinged post. But I feel certain I'm correct, and was just wondering if I would get any sort of confirmation at all from regulars here.

But briefly, I started frequenting this site with some regularity, I guess a couple of months or so ago? I actually registered over 18 months ago, but did not frequent the site very often at all, frankly because I did not want to be pegged for marketing purposes as being a huge beer drinker. But a couple of months ago, I sort of threw caution to the the wind and started hitting this site pretty regularly, more or less as an idle pastime, not really directly reflective of the amount of beer I was consuming Well, as I suspected might happen, I have started to get just a deluge of beer ads on TV (Verizon is my cable and internet provider). And, its not just on stations you would expect, like say ESPN, or other sports networks. It will be during the week, and even in the middle of the day on CNN for example. I know for a fact I was not getting beer commercials on CNN prior to a couple of months ago. But its on other stations as well that I never got beer ads on before, stations not at all associated with a big beer-drinking demographic. And its especially disconcerting if you tie one on a little bit, and the next day you're sort of resolving to tone it down, and you get Budweiser ads on CNN in the middle of the day.

But that's not even the most disturbing aspect of it. I have also gotten a huge number of ads for a particular local alcohol and substance abuse treatment center, just over and over and over. I guess as some sort of civic duty, whatever AI logic is being used to direct a profusion of beer ads at me on TV is accompanied by ads for alcohol treatment centers as well.

I just find all this to be an extreme imposition, that I would like to opt out of. I have tried to opt out of it. Verizon has some sort of option to do this on their site, but its worded so cryptically you wonder what ads its actually curtailing. It has not stopped the profusion of beer ads, that's for sure.

So, was wondering among other regulars here, do you get for example, a profusion of ads on TV for say, alocohol treament centers? Do you think nothing of it? Does it not bother you? Obviously if you're buying a lot of beer with your credit card, I guess they have you pegged that way regardless, but in my case I know for a fact its due to how often I've hit this site over the last couple of months.

And of course, its not just beer ads. Get in a hypochondriac mode, and start searching something intensely on WebMD, and you will be getting ads for it occasionally on both the internet and TV months later, long after you quit worrying about it. Another obscure example: I was doing some fairly intense internet research on cats, pursuant to a screenplay I was working on. I subsequently starting getting a profusion of cat food commercials on TV, as if I was some fanatic cat lover. I absolutely hate that sort of thing.

I have been taking more active steps to stop all this nonsense. Was already previously using adblock plus in my desktop browser, so didn't have to worry about ads there (But then there was nothing comparable for my Windows Phone). But have also subsequently started using things like Ghostery, https-everywhere, Tor, Noscript, etc. That's a whole other discussion, but I can tell you for a fact those things do not come close to stopping everything. The worst ruse right now, is the so-called "sponsored links" to articles. And Taboola is one of the absolute worst offenders. (On their website they say they're run by former Israeli army personnel, intelligence officers I think it said.) But, with browser fingerprinting and "evercookies", it does not matter at all if you delete your cookies or not. TOR itself is absolutely powerless against Taboola. Anyway, I just hate getting sponsored content from them on everything I browse. I have also gotten sponsored content correlating with my private emails.

So, does this bother anyone as well? Do you all think I'm crazy or is it common knowledge?

 

I know that cable TV is dying. I guess they're really doubling down with the customized ads for people still watching it.

 

As I said, the emphasis for marketing purposes on the internet seems to be focused now on "Sponsored content", e.g. on a huge number of major new-oriented websites if you scroll down, it will have a section entitled, "sponsored by Taboola", and its just links to articles that they think you would want to read. And it will be tailored to your very specific internet activity. So for example, I posted a question in security.stackexchange.com, where I was asking how relevant email still was. Well, I got sponsored content from Taboola on a completely unrelated site on that exact same topic. And I had not discussed that topic anywhere except that one time on security.stackexchange.com. And the kicker is, security.stackexchange.com does not use Taboola at all, as I checked their headers! But I could write a novel on this sort of thing, have no idea why it doesn't seem to bother anyone. The worst is watching TV late at night and getting ads correlating to your browsing activity. And I don't want to be bombarded by beer commercials just because I hit this site.

 

Well that's all from me for a while, thanks for the feedback. Try 'The Temptress' Milk Stout from Lakewood brewing company. Utterly phenomenal beer.