The Cookie Crumbles

It seems a long time since we visited St Michael's Mount in Cornwall and I spent two hours searching but COULD I find the Marks & Spencers?

Anyway no such problem now because I'm bombarded with M&S advertisments whenever I log into Facebook, Ebay and other web sites. Last week I bought some shorts from the Marks & Spencer web site and now, whenever I look at these other sites, I'm presented with this:

M&S are presumably paying good money to Facebook and others to wave this attractive image in front of me but having just bought three years supply of shorts from them it is money down the drain.

I thought Cookies (the little tracking files which grass on our viewing proclivities) were supposed to be really smart and anticipate interest rather than blindly repeat information from past purchases so it brings into question the decisions of media buyers to transfer millions of pounds worth of advertising from old media to new. I quite like browsing through advertisements in the local free paper.

This cookie stuff is trying to be too clever and failing miserably. It's like in the old days, if I'd bought a jacket from an old-fashioned outfitter* in the High Street and every time I walk past his shop he runs out into the street waving an identical jacket at me shouting "do you want to buy THIS jacket?!!!".

(*a Victorian gentleman's emporium where clothes were purchased over a friendly chat and a pinch of snuff. They kept one's inside leg measurement on a card index in a fine oak bureau).