Recently in my Google Reader feed (my RSS feed reader of choice) I have been seeing ads for Elon University’s Masters in Interactive Media program. (below)
This begs the question: How much does Google actually know about me? Do they know I went to Elon and am involved in the web development community? Probably. They know that the majority of what I read is about user interaction design and web design. They know that many of my emails have to do with freelancing, and dealing with clients. They also know that I get a fair amount of emails from Elon asking for money. Do they log this information and then apply it to the ads that they generate when I read other sites? Or is Elon aggressively hitting the right markets so that their ad keeps popping up?
If anyone knows who at Elon is in charge of marketing and online ad placement, I would be interested in asking them how they are marketing this ad around the interwebs.
-Ben