A puzzle for Monday

I have been wondering why company A gets so much airtime in the course of my wandering around the Internet, gets so much space on all those websites which rent space out to the advertisement servers of the likes of Google and Microsoft.

It is true that I have regularly spent significant sums with company A over a period of some years. It is also true that I don't believe that these advertisements result in my spending more or less with company A: they just irritate.

But then there is company B, in the same line of business, with whom I spend the same sort of money. No advertisements from them at all.

Giving the matter a bit more thought, I might spend half as much a year, over a much longer period, with various utilities. But these arrangements were set up long before the arrival of the Internet and maybe my limited online interactions with them are not enough to trigger the attentions of Microsoft or Google.

I might spend half as much a year with the Financial Times for access to their online newspaper, complete with a widget which inserts a copyright notice when you do a Copy & Paste with words. Although not when you do a Snip & Sketch with images. And while this arrangement was set up online, I don't recall seeing any advertisements of this sort from them, although there are quite a lot in the online newspaper itself. Irritating, but I suppose they would argue that they need to do that to keep the headline price down. 

I spend rather less with Amazon and I don't recall seeing any advertisements of this sort from them either.

I might spend a third as much a year with Wikipedia, to be more precise the Wikimedia Foundation. No advertisements from them, although they do occasionally send me invitations to donate more. Not that I am complaining, as I get good value from them, using Wikipedia several times a day, day after day - and I would hate to see it infested with advertisements. I like it the way it is.

Apart from that, I can't think of any other regular online spends of any size.

Which takes me to two tentative conclusions. First, big, regular online spends sometimes but not always trigger a steady stream of advertisements. Second, occasional spends, online access or online mentions often trigger a burst of advertisements. On example here being the burst of advertisements from Anchor Pumps triggered by some online interest in Anchor Butter. See reference 1.

Perhaps when I am a bit older and short of things to do, I will keep a diary, perhaps in the form of a spreadsheet, with which to work out how all this works.

PS 1: recent online interest in floating care homes has not resulted in any advertisements from their operators, despite the large amounts of money involved, well outside our usual range. Perhaps my lack of actual spending has blocked them. I might also say that there were at least two of these care homes heading out of the Solent on Saturday evening. Back in business after the plague. Sadly, reference 2 only seems to do sailings to come rather than sailings past, so I can't presently give their names and affiliation.

PS 2: I suspect the snap above of not being a real picture. Is it one of images I was moaning about at reference 3? It makes a difference to me: a snap of a real floating care home is different from the computer cooking one up. I like to be able to trust images that look like snaps: a little Photoshop yes, but completely fake no. And I don't want to have to resort to Fourier flavoured trickery to be able to tell them apart.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/05/new-kid-on-block.html.

Reference 1: https://southamptonvts.co.uk/Live_Information/Shipping_Movements_and_Cruise_Ship_Schedule/Cruise_Ship_Schedule/.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/07/scary-story.html.