Internet has revolutionised delivery of goods and services
in this era to an extent that consumers can now buy goods and services from the
seller over the internet by visiting different websites which have those
products which are needed by customers. These websites are a form of online
stores where goods and services are displayed with their corresponding pricing,
depending on different e-retailers in a given location.
Businesses set-up online stores and tend to
make posts about their products on their social media accounts for their followers,
who normally range between hundreds to millions.
In most cases, mere posts on your social media
accounts may not be enough to advertise your business due to the fact that a
number of your potential customers may not be your followers on your social
accounts, hence the only way to go about this is to finance social media Ads to
help you reach-out to a larger audience within your locality and beyond
borders.
Many of us have seen these uncalled social media Ads
which at times tend to be helpful, especially when they’re advertising
something which you have been looking for in nearby shops for a while. These
Ads at times tend to be annoying especially when they pop up in the middle of
an interesting video or even when they show-up at the bottom, in the corner or
in between your chats and friend lists on social media accounts. Many of such
Ads are so tempting that the packaging itself forces you to play and/or click
on them. At times when you remove them from your page as an option provided on
it suggests, you may not be in position to answer that stressing question(to
many of us); asking us to explain why we took the decision to remove the Ad.
Like most people, I have been patient and adherent
to some (if not all) the demands by such Ads on my social accounts until
recently when I realised something beyond these Ads. Are they just Ads or one
hell of encroaching our own privacy?
A friend of mine one day went to an electronics shop
to buy certain accessories for his phone and luckily, he got something beyond
his expectation; indeed the accessories were too good to believe at a price
charged. This was his first time to think of buying any accessories for his
phone and did not even search anywhere online for what to and not to buy. To
his surprise after one day, online Ads started pouring into his social media
accounts, advertising the same accessories he had bought with a similar phone like his; being used as a
model phone to display the compatibility of the accessories
To many this may sound senseless but before you
judge my argument, I want to tickle your mind. Wouldn’t you be surprised if
someone dresses exactly like you whenever you plan to meet them; even if it is
a single meeting, you’ll be inquisitive about such a co-instance. Likewise, the
accessories which he bought are obviously hardware parts and were from a very
local shop but what a co-instance that exactly the same accessories can show-up
as Ads in his social media accounts.
In addition to that, I searched for a certain
product from one of the online shopping websites but to my surprise as well,
every time I browsed for anything, Ads for this product kept on pouring
alongside my desired browsed pages. It became so irritating to see that even
when opening my emails, in a certain corner there was still this same Ad. Now I
ask myself, who/where/how/when do we give our identity to such online marketing
websites to access our social media pages so as to show them up always? At
times I wonder why the products me and my friends discussed about during a
conversation appear on my pages as Ads. You can be my witness if you have ever faced
a scenario when a stranger you talked to in the morning at the coffee stall
comes in the list of the “people you may
know” on Facebook and other social media applications in the evening.
These social media Ads at times appear to be a bunch
of suggestions, which to me pose a school of thought that Social media giants
offer our identities and personal information through the posts we make about
our daily life to Ads running companies; otherwise how comes that many of the
Ads running on your pages tend to appear as a well-planned suggestion list,
matching most (if not all) your fantasies. For those into make-up or restaurants
a lot, you’re likely to see Ads pouring in onto your page in from companies and
businesses operating in such fields.
I have no idea whether there is something people should be worried about but my wish would be that an expert in this needs to come out and explain
to curious minds before we see an historical bleach of privacy involving
any social media giants. In fact #MyPrivacyIsMyProperty.
