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Comment by esw | Hacker News Reader

It's called remarketing. If they're showing you an ad for a product you actually bought, they're doing it wrong. It's supposed to show you an ad for something you looked at, but didn't buy.

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If it's not being done purposely for reasons others have mentioned, then I wonder if it comes down to the company's integration with Google. Presumably, Google wouldn't know if a sale took place unless the merchant somehow notified them. I'm guessing this might be with a pixel, script, or similar on their order confirmation page.

So, if the merchant failed to implement this, Google would never know to stop showing the ad.

No, the merchant stops bidding for the as once you complete the purchase.

Generally speaking, no. The cookie pools of users to retarget will be stored not by the merchant but a third party (either the company serving the ads, or a middle man). When a user gets tagged they'll stay in the pool of people to re-target either until their expiration date is hit, or until they are removed. So the merchant would have to notify (automatically) that a user should be removed, not just chose to stop bidding on that user.

Or they are trying to do the thing BMW and Apple do where they are trying to make you feel good about a decision you already made.

Or at least trying to avoid the feeling of being stalked you might get if their all-pervading ad-retargeting campaign that follows you round the internet for weeks after you first visit their website stops the day you actually buy.

Hey, if it keeps you from returning the product or avoiding a merchant, it has worked.

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