Tripadvisor

[Evil Chris]

To jump back a bit, though. I highly doubt this sort of thing is being done by anything locally residing on my own machine.
More likely, since I was logged in to Tripadvisor, they keep track of what destinations I had been searching for, observe the pattern therein, and then the targetted mail goes out.

[miz_wright]

Originally Posted by Evil Chris

To jump back a bit, though. I highly doubt this sort of thing is being done by anything locally residing on my own machine.
More likely, since I was logged in to Tripadvisor, they keep track of what destinations I had been searching for, observe the pattern therein, and then the targetted mail goes out.

*nods* That's always been the goal of direct mail - gather demographic info and target the user using his or her search strings.

eBay and Amazon have done it for years.

[Hell Puppy]

Originally Posted by miz_wright

*nods* That's always been the goal of direct mail - gather demographic info and target the user using his or her search strings.

eBay and Amazon have done it for years.

The current word for it is business intelligence. Customer data is highly valuable and used smartly really increases your revenue per customer and can even do things like provide operational efficiencies.

Amazon is very very good at it. "You might like...", "Today's recommendations for you...", "More items to consider...", "Frequently bought together..."

If you use amazon regularly it becomes damned near psychic.

It amazes me how many large companies are sitting on gold mines of data from paying customers, but have zero clue about how to mine it and use it.