Before anyone grabs their pitchforks and condemns ad-retargetng, the question has to be asked. How much did the OP pay to use Facebook as a social platform? With that said...
There is nothing nefarious here. This is standard internet marketing efforts.
OP wasn't neccesarily suggestiong anything nefarious, but was curious about the technical details of how this is done -- as are many of us.
Can anyone give a basic technical explanation of how ad retargetting works, of how the information on what you looked at on Amazon makes it to wherever it is that controls what ads you see on facebook?
I used to think this was the case, but I use chrome in incognito mode ( and only for fb!) and I'm starting to get retargeted ads. I suspect they are using some sort of 3rd party on the backend. Moreover, it's not only ads now ... I'm also seeing suggested groups that seem eerily creepy ...
> "How much did the OP pay to use Facebook as a social platform?"
Spare me the "pitchforks".
Nothing is free. We all pay for what appears to be free, the price is just very well hidden in the current case. Advertised products will have the cost of advertisement factored in their price.
I am happy to block these unwanted ads, and to give people the tools to do so. Let's see where the supply/demand curves for ads intersect when you give people the choice.
> Ghostery works for the advertisement industry by building profile of blocked ads to allow them to tweak the ads so you don't want to block them.
From the wikipage and the copy I have installed, it look like only if you enable Ghost Rank. (And as ways to use data goes I can think of worse things than making ads less annoying.)
There is nothing nefarious here. This is standard internet marketing efforts.