Peter Vander WallFounder driving creative community growth

Target is stalking you

Name: Target is stalking you
Uploaded: 2023-03-25T15:00:28+00:00
Duration: 40 s
Channel: Peter Vander Wall
Description: A short YouTube video by Peter Vander Wall (uploaded March 25, 2023) explaining how Target’s customer analytics can identify life events (e.g…

25 Mar 2023 · 1 min

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0:40

A short YouTube video by Peter Vander Wall (uploaded March 25, 2023) explaining how Target’s customer analytics can identify life events (e.g., pregnancy) from shopping patterns and then serve targeted ads. The first anecdote describes a father who initially complained about diaper ads for his 18-year-old daughter, then apologized after learning she was pregnant—used to illustrate Target’s predictive advertising.

Chapters

How Target figured out a girl was pregnant before she even told her family. So one day, a guy walks into Target, and he's fuming mad. He heads straight to the customer service desk, and he demands to speak to a manager. What? A Karen? Right. He starts yelling at the manager. You keep sending my daughter ads for diapers and baby products. She's only 18 years old. This is inappropriate. The manager apologizes, and the man leaves. But then he comes back just two weeks later, and he apologizes to the manager. It turns out his daughter was pregnant, and she just hadn't told him yet. Target's customer analytics are so good. They can recognize shopping patterns and predict life events that are happening to you. And then they just advertise certain products to you based on the events they think are going on in your life. Like having a baby. And that.