Have you ever seen an ad on social media and wondered, “How do they know I’ve searched for this product on another website?” The answer […]
Have you ever seen an ad on social media and wondered, “How do they know I’ve searched for this product on another website?” The answer to the question is… “Thanks” to cookies!
It is a small text file that is placed by the browser on your computer when you visit a website. This cookie will track your web browsing. This cookie has an expiry date, i.e. it is deleted after a certain period of time.
This cookie, placed on your computer, can be used for several purposes:
They store your preferences on a website, i.e. automatic account login, location, language and other settings chosen. This helps to improve your experience as a user of a site.
They mainly record the user’s behaviour and the visitor’s path on the internet in order to create a user profile that is enriched as connections are made. On the basis of this user profile, it is then possible to place personal advertising. This user profile can therefore be resold to third-party sites and social networks, for example, which will then present you with advertisements for brands or products previously searched. This is how you end up with an advertisement for a pair of shoes that you were looking for a few days or weeks before, without you having asked anyone for anything.
At Qwant, our positioning is quite different since we do not collect your personal data and we do not track your searches.
Since its launch, Qwant has been offering advertising that respects the privacy of its users, based on the search context and not on the user’s profile, without any history.
Image source: Wirestock on Freepik
