How do the advertisements know that I am newly interested in something if I never typed it but casually talked about it around the house?

Question

I just got fired a month ago. I have not been doing ANY research on the next move but casually talk to my partner about going for a coding boot camp. I haven’t even updated my LinkedIn or anything like that.

Suddenly, I am served coding Bootcamp ads on Youtube, they show up on the little dedicated ads banners on websites and so on.

I am not referring to the more predictable situation where I search for true crime shows or so and have all these streaming services serving me ads based on my search history.

In: 13

Answer 1

Mostly it’s coincidence and [pareidolia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia). In your particular example, another explanation is that some algorithm has put you and your partner into the same cohort for advertising purposes, perhaps based on frequent co-presence of your phones. If your partner googled “coding boot camp” after your conversation, then the advertising algorithm thinks you might be interested in that as well.