The Accidental Marketing Department
Why My Skincare Clicks Became His Ad Feed
The Accidental Marketing Department
Why My Skincare Clicks Became His Ad Feed
Ever get an ad you swear wasn’t meant for you?
A discount for something you didn’t search, a retargeted product you never clicked, a strange sense that someone else’s curiosity has been assigned to your inbox?
Same.
And that’s how I became the accidental marketing department for
.Case #1: The Coupon
I text him one link.
A nice sweater. Muted blue. A bit of Parisian flair. I think it would look good on him.
Thirty minutes later, he gets an email:
“Still thinking it over? Here’s 15% off.”
He asks if I signed him up for something.
I didn’t.
But in a way, I did.
Household-Level Targeting (Or, Why This Happened)
The system assumes that if we use the same Wi-Fi, we must live together—and if we live together, we must shop together.
While advertisers talk about “users,” what they’re often targeting are households.
Platforms like Google or YouTube use shared Wi-Fi, location, and behavioral patterns to group us.
And once you're in the same “household,” it doesn’t matter who clicked.
If anyone did, that’s good enough to act on.
I browse. He gets the retargeting.
When I visit a site with Google Ads and he’s logged into Gmail, my clicks are bundled with browser fingerprints, location data, and time-of-day metadata. Then he opens his inbox—or YouTube.
The algorithm finishes the thought.
I send him a sweater link? He receives the discount.
I keep a face mask to myself? He still gets retargeted.
I click on one article about gut health.
He gets: “Feeling off? Here’s what your microbiome might be missing.”
This is how he ends up with my promotional codes. It’s as if the internet believes we are one person—split across two screens.
Which, in a way, we are.
Case #2: The Ad
This time, I didn’t send him anything.
I was browsing a skincare sale. (Not for him.) I looked at three serums, two cleansers, and one guilt-inducing overnight mask. I left the tab open. I went to bed.
By morning, he’s being served ads for the same brand on YouTube.
He has never used a serum by choice—only as a reluctant co-star in my retinol era.
I didn’t sign him up. I didn’t use his device.
But in a way, I did.
Environment-Level Tagging (Or, Why This Happened)
The system doesn’t know who’s in the room. It just knows the room is warm.
Many websites use trackers—Facebook Pixel, Klaviyo, Google scripts—that don’t just tag your device. They tag the entire environment.
So if I load a site with those trackers, they don’t care that I leave. They just remember that someone on this network showed interest.
I leave a skincare tab open. He opens YouTube hours later. Now he gets the ad—because the system remembers that someone from here cared.
It’s the digital equivalent of perfume in the air. I sprayed it. He walks in. He’s now associated with sandalwood and niacinamide.
I browse. He gets the coupon.
He clicks. I convert.
The ad model shrugs: “Close enough.”
In theory, we’re separate individuals. In practice, we’re a bundle of entangled signals. Cookies don’t care who owns the laptop. They just follow the crumbs.
Marketing Attribution, Romantic Edition
There is no “do not track” setting for suggestions made in good faith
—across couples, families, or anyone who happens to share a Wi-Fi signal.
If I browse on your behalf, you will be marketed to. If I send you a link, your email becomes collateral. If I linger on a product page, your inbox starts warming up.
It’s not surveillance in the traditional sense. It’s something more porous. More relational. Like the algorithm is third-wheeling.
The Merge
We used to say, “What’s mine is yours.”
Now it’s: “What’s in my cart is in your inbox.”
Love languages used to be touch, words, time, acts, gifts. Now it’s promo codes and behavioral signals.
I don’t know who “we” are online. But according to the internet, we’re a joint marketing segment with shared affinities and a mild interest in linen-blend separates and imported Tottenham Hotspur merch.
(That’s a UK football—soccer—team, for those not currently being targeted.)
The Thing That Doesn’t Have a Name
Household-level targeting has a name. Retargeting has a name.
Cross-device attribution, CRM enrichment, lookalike modeling—every part of the system gets a name. Individually.
But the collective pattern I’m describing—the way your browsing trails into someone else’s ad experience, the way intent quietly jumps between screens, the way proximity gets mistaken for preference—doesn’t.
There’s no term that captures the whole thing.
No name for the cumulative reassignment of curiosity.
No setting for: “Please don’t show ads to my partner based on my 11:42 p.m. gut health spiral.”
And I wonder—if we did give it a name, the pattern might start to reveal itself.
Not just as a series of odd coincidences, but as a design choice.
Call it something like behavioral spillover. Marketing drift. Ambient attribution. Or algorithmic osmosis.
Because language is how patterns become visible.
And visibility is what makes them open to question.
Technically, my privacy wasn’t violated.
But also technically, he’s getting microbiome ads because I had a weird night.
Did I need him to know I was comparison shopping for probiotics?
I did not.
But the ad server disagreed.
And that feels… worth noting.
Other Things I Didn’t Mean to Market
A short list of other things I’ve accidentally advertised to my partner:
A ceramic nonstick frying pan I wasn’t actually going to buy
My friend’s registry (he got a wedding coupon code)
A very expensive blanket
A very expensive metaphor disguised as a blanket
The concept of aging
17 open tabs about “small space lighting”
A brief but algorithmically loud interest in running shoes
And last week: sunscreen for dogs
(I regret nothing.)
Coming soon: “Because you viewed this, he might like that.”
And the thing is…
They’re probably right.
Ever gotten an ad that clearly wasn’t meant for you? Please share your favorite (or, preferably, strangest) cross-targeting moment in the comments.
(I’m collecting case studies for future research, accidental or otherwise.)
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